It takes time to become a veteran in this business (advertising). So, it takes a while (39 years in my case) to be asked to look back on the olden days of what I do.
I was honoured to be asked by Barry Hearn to join him for a 60 minute chat with The Lane’s Creative Director, Ian ‘Fletch’ Fletcher about advertising, then and now.
So here’s Barry’s Marketing Society / Lane podcast called leading Conversations #21.
Please do enjoy. And let me know what you think.
I often think Dove is the world’s greatest brand.
I wish I worked for Dove. I wish I had made this ad.
Sure, it’s just a big money spinning international cosmetics brand trying to shift units.
But it does stuff like this, and it does stuff like this a lot.
I love you Dove you.
And what’s more.
Self Esteem sings the song.
A quickfire hour of searingly satirical, company-devised theatre has a lot to make you laugh in it, but also a lot to admire in the excellent script, direction by Jess Haygarth and a gender-blind cast of four: each of equally engaging presence.
There’s our overly familiar productivity manager, Shelley, who runs the show, and the other three cast members’ lives, as the recruiter of zero hours contract staff: a nurse, a care worker and a fast food junior.
Each is mired in a relentless monotony of impossible-to-hit targets, incessant work with no room to breath, or struggling with childcare and putting their kids’ lives at risk.
This Kafkaesque nightmare is life in modern Britain that disproportionately impacts the young and the female, and although the show is mostly humorous the blackness of the humour reminds us that this kind of life is shit, degrading, exhausting and ultimately dangerous.
Set against a backdrop of a countdown clock, every second of this taught production is there for a reason. Music and sound effects are used to superb effect to create a sense of urgency that counters the mundanity of these (mostly) young people’s lives.
The message is clear. Zero Hour contractors are mere fodder for the machinery of Britain’s industries, although the play either fails to or decides not to, land a blow on the Brexiteers who contributed to this mess by running those that fuel this carnage out of town.
It chooses instead to focus on Britain’s unfortunates who have to use this form of economic barbarism to put food on the table.
The four performers really are a joy to behold and the show is a rare ‘out of August’ treat at Summerhall (where we saw it, although it’s on tour) to bring back happy memories of The Fringe’s Summerhallery theatrical majesty.
I saw two 4/5 star shows in Summerhall’s Red Lecture Theatre, where this is performed, last year. “I hate it Here” would not have been out of place in such rarified company.
In fact, I loved it there.
I have to take my hat off to John Lewis for running what is a corporate (CSR we call it in the trade) ad rather than a Christmas ad this year.
It has no call to action for gift buying, it features no ‘product’ and let’s face it, if you had a skateboard on your Christmas list to Santa you wouldn’t expect your guardian (can’t call them parents any more) to source it from John Lewis.
So, instead what we have is a delightful story about a really, really nice man who fosters a very vulnerable looking teenage Skatergirl.
It’s a delight and I don’t give a fuck that it destroys Blink 108’s All The Small Things because I had no emotional connection to the song anyway.
What this does is make you genuinely feel that John Lewis is a good company for good people and it’s a good place to therefore shop, even though nobody has any money this year and Christmas is effectively cancelled.
My biggest shock is that it’s not Bill Callahan singing.
Good work.
Another 60th Birthday present that my pal Mike Donoghue bought me. It’s a curious concept strictly for the anorakish like me.
It’s been a perfect bog jobbie companion since May but passed its last useful event this morning.
I mean there’s not that much to say about this other than it’s a compendium of photos of record store branded paper bags and carrier bags – everything from Ripping Records to Woolworths and I very much enjoyed its company in that lonely room.
Thanks Mike.
This is Ishiguro’s first novel. A very short outing but with all of his trademark unreliable narration technique and formal, often stilted (deliberately so) language and a considerable use of repetition.
It’s very beautiful as ever and set up his distinctive, unique in fact, stylised compositions.
It’s set in Nagasaki just after the war as the city rebuilds and a pregnant woman meets an older neighbour who is bringing up an almost feral daughter who feels like a modern day teenager, even though she is only around seven years old.
It flips between that period and the present day where our narrator now has two adult children, one of who is troubled and one dead, of suicide.
The story flips between the two time periods and we are gradually introduced to host of male characters: husbands, father in laws and lovers few of whom are in any way positive to the lives of those around them.
It’s a beguiling read with a shortage of plot, although this doesn’t hamper what is a quality read with a great deal of subtlety between its sparse lines. Nonetheless there is a strange, even creepy, subplot that really engages the reader and takes some working out, as does the Japanese naming conventions and the complex interrelationship of everyone involved in this sad little story.
Ishiguro went on to win the Nobel Prize for literature later in his career and has been on top of his game throughout.
It deals with the complex rights and traditions of life in post war Japan where women are second class citizens and yet strongly influence the menfolk around them.
I read it in little over a day but it has a powerful impact and is a highly rewarding and thought-provoking read. Highly recommended, as are all of his novels. Simply lovely.
I’ve clocked Richard Walker, CEO of Iceland Frozen Foods, on Question Time and thought he was the smartest person in the room more than once. Jeana therefore bought me this book subtitles, One Man’s Manifesto for Corporate Activism, in which he sets out his policy on life, carbon reduction and fair play all round (remember his palm oil crusade?)
He’s privileged and he admits it up front being born into the family firm. And it’s a £2bn plus family firm. Clearly his dad is his hero and has established a strong social democracy ethic. Walker admits he has a conflicted life travelling the globe in search of the perfect wave as a dedicated surfer yet bemoaning the rise in greenhouse gas emission. But that doesn’t stop me admiring him greatly, because his firm has led so many industry initiatives that it’s ridiculous.
He also deliberately started out at the firm (albeit only 10 years ago) as a shelf stacker and recounts the tale of how he had to work for acceptance. But this gives him a good and genuine perspective that feels like more than a PR stunt.
He cares deeply about his workers and his customers and he is a strong lobbies of government and businesses in his supply chain to constantly find better ways to package products.
Iceland has the advantage of having no shareholders, but then a lot of the people in retail you most hate don’t either, that doesn’t make them corporate activists it makes them tossers, Walker clearly is far from that.
It’s very well written, even if it lingers too long, often, on what a great thing Iceland is doing. I mean the PR department has surely proofed this, if not ghost-written it. And it goes on a bit longer than you’d want. But, all said, if you want an insight into how to care in business then read this.
It certainly left me wishing there was an Iceland near me, but I’d have to burn so much hydrocarbon juice to find one that I’d be undoing the point of it.
Today in Focus has long been one of my favourite podcasts for its in depth coverage of the news of the day. Usually it’s deadly serious and very informative without a strong political agenda.
The last two days however, in the face of the global negativity we are endlessly enduring, has been a lightweight, delightful revelation as it has explored the motivations behind the so called ‘Wagatha Christie’ case in which Coleen Rooney (Wagatha) has accused Rebecca Vardy (Grass) of selling her private Instagram stories to the Sun newspaper after creating an elaborate means by which to trap her.
Vardy claims Rooney’s accusation is libellous and has taken Rooney all the way to the top civil court in the UK at the cost, to each, of over £1m.
It’s actually a hilarious story about ego and greed with, in my view, Rooney the wronged one but Vardy the potential victor.
The Guardian use this as a deep dive in to WAG (Wives and Girlfriends of English footballers) culture, privacy and the UK’s antiquated libel laws.
So there’s something for everyone and, if on Friday you want more serious stuff, we’ll no doubt be back to a diet of Johnson and Putin.
Enjoy it while it lasts.
I’m a big fan of Jon Ronson, having read several of his books and his two previous podcasts: The Butterfly Effect and The Last Days of August, both of which were brilliant. He also did a fabulous Grounded with Louis Theroux, the first in fact.
So this new outing from BBC Radio 4 had all the credentials for greatness.
It’s essentially an exploration of what he calls Culture Wars, but it’s not massively clear who the ‘wars’ are between or what he means by this.
The first three episodes suggest he has a pathological hatred of American Christian Fundamentalists who take on Femisists, the Pro Choice Movement (episode one)and the Liberal Left who used West Virginian schools as a test bed for new school text books in the 70’s (episode two).
By episode three he’s on to the AIDS epidemic and how, again, Christian Fundamentalists added homophobia to their delightful list of hobbies.
But then the themes start to wander and crumble a little. Episode four is about satanists and five, by which point I was losing interest, is about freedom of speech at Stamford University around about the time of the birth of the internet, built around some huge fall out over a Jewish Scottish joke (that isn’t even funny).
The trouble with this series is threefold:
I’m feeling Ronson has maybe hit a bit of a dry stretch in his career and this podcast is amongst his weakest ever work. At times turgid and often uncertain as to the overall point he is trying to make.
It’s all just a bit dull, frankly.
It was a quiet early lockdown day last year.
I’d been providing free mentoring sessions through a Covid Scheme in Scotland when BOOM, my life changed.
Rebecca Shannon came into it.
Ostensibly looking for advice she was really just doing what smart entrepreneurs do, sifting the world for insight and inspiration.
We hit it off on the spot.
She liked my approach and later, it turned out, she liked my writing style having commissioned me, there and then, to help with her blogs and her website.
I liked her honesty, her energy (my God her energy), her enthusiasm and her laser sharp ability to get to the point.
She’s a professional coach in Faversham (yes, I do have a cosmopolitan outlook, don’t I?), an HR practitioner to trade, but now knocking people like me, and I’m willing to bet, you, into shape.
She loves a quote, and when I say loves, I’m talking Beatles 1966 scale.
Take this, on her LinkedIn and website home page.
“Your smile is your logo, your personality is your business card, how you leave others feeling after having an experience with you becomes your trademark.” Jay Danzie
With Rebecca you get a sense that you are joining a personal gang (she calls it her Tribe, with good reason) and once you’re in there’s no way out.
She’s a singer too as it happens and a mum with the passion of a lion. She sure loves those boys.
She also recommended one of the best business books I’ve read in years called Feck Perfection by James Victore that makes her list.
There really is only one Rebecca Shannon. This is she.
(I was tempted to edit her unique writing style to fit with my convention. But she’s not conventional, so it stays as seen largely.)
My favourite author or book
Oh my this is a tough one …and that’s just from the ones I have read and I know there are so many more out there which will become my favourites.
They tend to be the ones I have just read …. as they find me just when I need them.
So most recent ones would be Wintering by Katherine May … a truly slow and beautiful book about something I have been practicing and living …. hibernating for the winter to rest and replenish and learning more about the power of this not just in the literal winter but when times are difficult tough or challenging.
And the magic of this book is that it was written just a few miles from where I am…. and in a town I love; Whitstable … which I didn’t know until I started reading.
Feck Perfunction by James Victore …. this was love at first read. A book I recommend to everyone …. including you Mark and led me on a exciting exploration of not just self … but James himself with an interview … several conversations and a place on his Creative Warrior School (… which I have been bunking off in my winter time to get back to it!)
It is fecking perfunction itself … as he is as, am I and as are you!
The book I’m reading
Always reading more than one, they are dotted around the house and I will dip in and out as I feel drawn to them
Two are next to me in bed … where I am writing this so I’ll go with those.
The Last Bear by Hannah Gold and beautifully illustrated by Levi Pinfold.
I’m with Michael Morpurgo on this one … ‘Unforgettable’ …I am reading a chapter a night with my youngest son and enjoying the slow build of the most beautiful story of the last bear on a distant island …it’s like reading the most delicious mug of hot chocolate … warming from the inside out …I’m excited about the last few chapters, enjoying the anticipation as I reach the last line of the chapter we are on… and intentionally resisting reading the next …he is away with his Dad for a couple of days … and so it builds!
Hearttalk by Cleo Wade ….. this feels like a chat with your very best friend. It’s light and easy …. and packs a powerful punch with a mix of prose poetry and scribbled notes.
The book I wish I had written
Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier …. it would be a whole other story!
Oh and the one Mark and I are going to write together.
The book I couldn’t finish
Midnight’s Children By Salmon Rushdie …. a Christmas gift from a very brief encounter …didn’t get very far with either!
The book I’m ashamed I haven’t read
I am giving up shame …… it’s no good for anyone.
My favourite film
That is just too difficult …. the range here is too big … the choices too broad … too many for so many different reasons.
The Way We Were ….. for the sheer beauty of the leading man Robert Redford.
Out of Africa … and yes Robert is there and so is Meryl Streep who is just incredible.
“I had a farm in Africa, at the foot of the Ngong Hills”.
Bond films and Star Wars films …… all of them … for the sheer excitement that builds and the feeling when you lean back into the cinema seat (remember them ?) and the iconic music comes on.
Random and from a younger me … Reservoir Dogs, I’m not sure I could watch it now.
The Marvel Films …. I love watching them with my boys and am totally lost as to what most of them are about so a fantastic way to switch off!
And, I nearly forgot…Breakfast at Tiffany’s.
My favourite play
I have not been to the theatre nearly enough in my lifetime and I can’t even remember the last one.
The box set I’m hooked on
Again don’t really do them.
WandaVision ….with my eldest son totally addictive and yet again I have absolutely no idea what was going on but just couldn’t stop watching.
My favourite TV series
Sherlock. I don’t really watch TV anymore apart from some carefully selected Netflix’s shows and films.
My favourite piece of music
Clair de Lune.
My favourite dance performance
Nobody puts baby in the corner …couldn’t resist .
The Last film/music/book that made me cry
I have go to’s for this … as crying is healing.
Film….. Life Itself and this quote.
Music Adele overload.
Feel my Love … and whenever I sing it … it’s for my boys X.
When we were young … for my Dad x.
Everybody loves the things you do
From the way you talk
To the way you move
Everybody here is watching you
‘Cause you feel like home
You’re like a dream come true
You look like a movie
You sound like a song
My God this reminds me, of when we were young
Book …This is me letting you go by Heidi Priebe .
This is not a process that comes easily to me …. (despite many opportunities to practice) ….. this poignant book was a guide …a companion through a time where the tears were stuck ….. this is how I got unstuck and the healing began.
The lyric I wish I’d written
I gave you soft, I gave you sweet
Just like a lion you came for sheep
Oh no, don’t try to hustle me
You took my love, mistook it for weakness
I guarantee I won’t repeat this
No, don’t try to hustle me
The song that saved me
The song I need always presents itself … and saves me in that moment so they change with each moment
To save me from a bit of a ‘Funk’ … Masaka Kids Africana Dancing To Jerusalema By Master KG Feat Nomcebo & Burna Boy.
The instrument I play
I don’t.
The instrument I wish I’d learned
Piano …. I did for a while and then stopped … I will again.
If I could own one painting it would be
The one that would light up my world …… I own a few of these already so no need to choose one
An original that I commission … like this will hang in my new home …. when I find it! the home not the painting!)
This is The Light Within by https://www.jacquelinerooney.com/
The music that cheers me up
See above ….. anything that gets me moving and lifts my soul.
The place I feel happiest
My sunny bench outside my home.
The decking overlooking the woodland garden in our family cottage in Wales.
Saint Lucia.
My guiltiest cultural pleasure
Bridgerton … pure fantastical desire (no guilt).
I’m having a fantasy dinner party, I’ll invite these artists and authors
I don’t have real dinner parties and if I did right now it would be for all the people I love ….an eclectic mix of wonderfully wondrous people.
Artists and authors I’d love to come too James Victore (see favourite books) Jacqueline Rooney a favourite artist (and whose paintings light up my world (see above) Robert Redford as my dinner date!
And I’ll put on this music
I’d ask James Victore to serenade me (again) on his guitar along with Jacqueline and her father with some Irish songs ….and all the songs that would get us up and dancing.
If you liked this there are many more to read now.
TKs sells high end designer products at deep discount prices. Typically up to 70% off.
So you could buy a £100 designer white T shirt for £30.
Or you could go to Primark and buy a white T shirt for £10.
That’s the perfect analogy for the strategy the Tories have landed on for their £350m injection of extra tutoring.
So instead of buying a £10 T shirt people buy a “bargain” £30 T shirt that does the same job.
Now look at the Tory strategy.
Instead of giving schools £350m to buy tutoring in, they appoint a bunch of brutally expensive tutoring “Agencies’ and provide up to 75% off (but tapering down to 10% off over time).
The headline tutoring rate? £90 an hour. (Less 75% that’s £22.50 an hour to the school. Cost to taxpayers: £90 an hour). For the record the tutor does not receive £90 an hour. Far from it.
The cost we paid for our kids’ tutors: £20 an hour. Were the tutors substandard? Nope.
Is this idiocy in the extreme? Yep.
Maybe Gavin Williamson should get himself a maths tutor.
(I can recommend a good one for about £20 an hour).
Well, you can’t even to begin to imagine how proud I am of this.
First off, I was in the pitch team that pitched for the brief for the 2021/22 season ticket campaign at Whitespace.
Secondly, we won it.
Thirdly, I’m in the final film itself as “hats and scarves salesman”.
I am literally beside myself.
#GGTTH!
If you’re a fan of Coe there is plenty in this novel to pique your interest. It’s a scabrous as ever about the state of the nation (as was the case in 2015 when he wrote this Osbornian nightmare).
It takes austerity as its backdrop and as usual Coe spares the Tory government nothing in terms of its unfairness and divisive policy, one that has proven to be pointless and did nothing but deepen the divide between Britain’s haves and have nots.
It’s loosely a follow up to his earlier Winshaw critique “What a Carve up” but not in so direct away as his Trotter trilogy.
It’s also nothing like his best. The number 11 theme that runs through it is a bit clunky and the story, whilst cleverly plotted, lacks some of the cohesion of his earlier, and later work. Nevertheless it’s Coe, and that’s enough for me to romp through it to a highly unexpected ending that takes us into sci-fi, fantasy, horror territory, albeit briefly.
I dunno, his language in this book feels a little laboured (no pun intended) and maybe rushed because it has a formality that doesn’t seem quite so evident in his other work. It’s a use of language, especially the descriptive prose, that isn’t as rip-roaring or light on its feet as he usually is.
But that’s not to say you shouldn’t enjoy his distinctive annihilation of centre right (increasingly moving away from the centre towards populism) politics.
It’s interesting that the main characters are female and maybe that’s what’s slightly mis-stepping him. I mean he is a real English bloke, right?
I enjoyed it for what it’s worth, but in Coe terms no more than a 6/10.
Jon was my first boss back in 1985 at Hall Advertising. He hired a hot new secretary soon after, that I quickly winched and later married.
He, and his wife Chris, had a daughter, Ria, who we thought had such a cool name that we unashamedly nicked it for our daughter Amanda.
(Only joking, she’s also called Ria.)
But that master/servant relationship that began in the pre-internet days soon became a peer-to-peer and extremely good mates relationship, and it thrives to this day.
We even live quite close (only a few miles as the crow swims) he in Aberdour, I in South Queensferry.
We have both run Festivals.
His, The Aberdour Festival, has put him on first name terms with King Creosote (which I think is cool). Mine, the spectacularly unspectacular and now defunct Queensferry Arts Festival.
By the way King Creosote’s first name isn’t King, it’s Kenny.
One of the things that has cemented our relationship is our love of the Penguin Cafe Orchestra, whom we both saw, with Chris and my, not his, Ria at Glastonbury in 2011 (amongst other occasions).
The other is beer and food and wine and that.
And good advertising.
And good books.
Jon is cool but he doesn’t think so and you couldn’t tell it from the preposterously ham-fisted portrait he ‘knocked up’ in 30 seconds when I asked him to. Not for him a trip to Patrick Lichfield’s, oh no, he, like me, is a bit of a basher and what will do, will do.
I made it monochrome which spares some of the abject amateurism of it.
Anyway, Jon, you have great taste and I’m delighted to share your Unknown Pleasures with my readers.
My favourite author or book
Where do you start? When I was young, I read to impress – Iris Murdoch, Anthony Powell, CP Snow, JP Donleavy (although I really did like him). I then went through a phase of reading books in rotation – one to improve me, one to learn something technical, usually something to do with the Apollo space missions, and one to read without thinking.
I’m much less rigorous now and over the years I’ve read everything by Len Deighton, John Le Carre, Christopher Brookmyre, David Lodge, Tom Sharpe, Iain Banks (but not Iain M. Banks) – even Jilly Cooper. At the moment I do like Hilary Mantel, Jonathan Coe, Ian McEwen and William Boyd. And Ian Rankin.
I’ve just finished Barack Obama’s book which was uplifting and dispiriting in equal measure. How do we get from such a patently intelligent and humane man to Donald Trump in such a short space of time? Jon Sopel’s latest book Unpresidented is an entertaining romp through the last US election campaign.
I can say, as anyone that has ever worked with me will testify, I have yet to read any of the airport books like “How to be a winning manager by the time you get off the plane”
The book I’m reading
One Long and Beautiful Summer by Duncan Hamilton – a paean to county cricket as it used to be before the gel-haired marketing know-it-alls took over and turned cricket into a game for people with the attention span of a particularly dim goldfish.
The book I wish I had written
No real desire to write a book, not even the one that’s apparently inside me.
The book I couldn’t finish
Quite a lot but Lincoln in the Bardo was definitely one I couldn’t get into.
The book I’m ashamed I haven’t read
Can’t think of any particular one, although I would like to have appreciated Dickens more instead of rejecting him because he was a set text at O-Level.
My favourite film
Toss-up between Apollo 13 and Local Hero.
My favourite play
I’ve seen a lot of stuff at the Traverse and it’s difficult to pick any one as a favourite but I did enjoy Under Milk Wood by the Aberdour Players in our local village hall. The writing is brilliant, and it prompted me to get the BBC Richard Burton narration as an audiobook. Which is probably better than The Aberdour Players’ version.
My favourite podcast
Like Stephen Dunn I thought 13 Minutes to the Moon was outstanding.
The box set I’m hooked on
When does a TV series become a box set? I can’t cope with TV binges so still watch one at a time.
My favourite TV series
At the moment it’s Unforgotten
My favourite piece of music
Pretty much anything from my Jolly-Jon singalongaplaylist
My favourite dance performance
Every time I’ve seen NDT it’s been stunning, but I go to dance performances with Mrs S on the basis that if I have to sit through a dance show, she has to go for a curry afterwards…so the last dance performance she went to was with Mark Gorman as she doesn’t really like curry….
The Last film/music/book that made me cry
Oh What a Beautiful Morning from Oklahoma at my mother’s funeral. Although it was absolutely pissing down, so there was some laughter through the tears.
The lyric I wish I’d written
The Christmas one Hugh Grant’s father wrote in About A Boy that allowed Hugh to live quite happily without having to work.
The song that saved me
Not sure I’ve ever needed saving but California Girls by the Beach Boys reminds me of being a hormonal 13 year old, getting interested in girls and thinking the Californian ones sounded exciting – if only I had known what to do if I met one.
The instrument I play
I’ve tried and failed several – but one day I’m going to master the guitar and be transformed into the acoustic Bob Dylan
The instrument I wish I’d learned
Piano or clarinet
If I could own one painting it would be
Probably something by David Hockney
The music that cheers me up
Bean Fields by the Penguin Café Orchestra. With thanks to Mr Gorman who introduced me to the delights of the PCO.
He’s also tried to introduce me to Nick Cave but I’d rather poke my eyes out with a burning stick, thank you very much.
The place I feel happiest
Achiltibuie – thanks to Jim Downie.
My guiltiest cultural pleasure
Death in Paradise
I’m having a fantasy dinner party, I’ll invite these artists and authors
David Mitchell (the comedian, not the author), Billy Connolly, Meryl Streep, David Attenborough and Danny Boyle
And I’ll put on this music
My Jolly-Jon mix tape obvs.
If you liked this you might like to read the others in this series.
I knew, when I asked Murray to write this for me, that he was dying. But I knew he’d relish it. I knew that he would entertain us and shed light on his most treasured cultural memories.
It’s perhaps significant that the book he had just completed in the last weeks of his life was about stoic philosophy. Because he was stoic and witty to the end.
We weren’t big mates or anything. But I admired his great strategic mind and his love for African music, something we shared.
He will be greatly missed by his family and many great friends.
God bless Murray.
Here is something my good friend Pauline Platt sent me when my Mum passed away that may bring comfort to his family.
What is dying?
The ship sails and I stand watching till he fades on the horizon and something at my side says “He is gone”.
Gone where?
Gone from my sight, that is all: he is just as large as when I saw him.
The diminshed size and total loss of sight is in me, not in him and just at the moment when someone at my side says “He is gone” there are others who are watching him coming and other voices take up a glad shout, “There he comes””.
And that is dying.
He struggled to compose emails to me as we messaged each other “It’s the cancer Mark”, he told me when I said to him that one of his emails had “…hit the scrambler”.
You can see it in some of his final tweets.
Now we are left with these reflections after his short life.
Murray and I share a distinction. Both of us are ex-chairs of the Institute of Practitioners in Advertising in Scotland (the IPA). I think he was the first ‘media man’ to hold the position. I was the first idiot.
Those of you who know him, know he’s no longer working, but he is a source of great inspiration to us all. That’s because he has terminal cancer and, rather than getting all sorry for himself, he’s doing stuff like this.
He’s being positive. He’s living the life he has left.
Captain Murray. We salute you sir.
My favourite author or book
Iain M. Banks (or Iain Banks if you’re more of a fan of his literary fiction) has long been my favourite author. He switches seamlessly between literary and science fiction and this Culture Universe is, to me at least, one of the most beautifully realised pieces of world-building in science fiction. And probably the best example of “fully-automated luxury communism” in literature. So many future-scapes are written as dystopian that it’s a real tonic to read about a universe which spells out such a vividly realised utpopian vision.
Not only that, his sense of playfulness and humour shines through in both the names and the dialogue of the “Minds”, the AI’s who run the whole shebang. I’m very sad every time I’m reminded there will never be another new Culture novel. RIP Iain.
The book I’m reading
I have just finished Viktor Frankl’s “Man’s Search for Meaning” after reading a lot of Stoic Philosophy with which It showed a lot of similarities.
The book I wish I had written
Consider Phlebas by Iain M. Banks
The book I couldn’t finish
Too many to name. Life’s too short to waste on books you’re not enjoying.
The book I’m ashamed I haven’t read
None. Life’s also far too short to be ashamed about not reading a book.
My favourite film
Bladerunner. Brilliant set-design, great performances, a stunning soundtrack. It’s perfect.
My favourite play
I can’t even remember the last time I saw a play so I don’t think I’m qualified to answer this question.
My favourite podcast
I’m not really a podcast listener, but I’m a great admirer of what Giles Edwards and team have achieved with the isolaTED talks series. Some fantastic talks from impressive people in aid of an important and worthwhile cause.
The box set I’m hooked on
Last thing I was hooked on was zerozerozero on Sky. Mexican drug cartel ultraviolence, Italian mafia codes of honour and American avarice all rolled into one. Highly entertaining
My favourite TV series
Antiques Roadshow is a Sunday evening staple in our house. Of course you’d never sell it.
My favourite piece of music
As Long as I Have You by Garnett Mimms. A stomping piece of Northern Soul which we chose as first dance at our wedding after being introduced to it by Gideon, the guy behind Block 9 at Glastonbury who’s a friend of Emma (my now wife’s) best pal from school.
My favourite dance performance
Ashley Page’s The Pump Room performed by Scottish Ballet to an Aphex Twin remix of Nine Inch Nails. Most unexpected.
The Last film/music/book that made me cry
I’m not sure I’d stop if I started, so I’ve not cried for a while now.
The lyric I wish I’d written
I’ll leave it to the professionals.
The song that saved me
See My Favourite Piece of Music
The instrument I play
I don’t play any musical instrument but I do play other people’s records occasionally. Does DJing count?
The instrument I wish I’d learned
I wish I’d started DJing earlier
If I could own one painting it would be
Not a painting but a print, specifically, The Great Wave off Kanagawa by Katsushika Hokusai. As a (very) amateur printer myself, I’m fascinated by the technique involved in creating these incredible woodblock prints.
The music that cheers me up
I’m a funk fan. Anything with a driving baseline
The place I feel happiest
Behind the decks. I was fortunate to hold a brief residency at the SubClub in Glasgow in the mid 2,000’s and warming up for Hardfloor to an over-capacity crowd from that booth is one of my happiest memories.
My guiltiest cultural pleasure
LIfe’s too short to feel guilt about the pleasures you take.
I’m having a fantasy dinner party, I’ll invite these artists and authors
David Byrne, Brian Eno, Olivery Bondzio, Snoop Dogg, Beyonce, Hilary Mantell, Margaret Atwood
And I’ll put on this music
Mostly African recently, although, not necessarily Afrobeat. I’m a huge fan of the Analog Africa label and have been slowly completing my collection of their compilations.
The extraordinary creative work created by AMV BBDO for Bodyform continues.
Following its category redefining ‘Womb Stories” Here comes another bunch of greatness that brings to life womens’ descriptions of the pain that periods (and worse, endometriosis) cause them.
It will create huge empathy for the brand and may even help women articulate to their unsympathetic partners what it is they are going through.
So commercial and educational in one fell swoop. Congratulations.
(Please note, there is no sound on these animations.)
“One might say that the publication of a novel takes a village” says Curtis Sittenfeld in the acknowledgements of her sixth novel, Rodham. But in the case of Rodham one could easily expand this acknowledgement way beyond a village, to a nation and perhaps more accurately; a gender.
Because this is a book that every American woman should read and feel that, whether persecuted or empowered, this novel was written for them.
And then every American man should be made to read it as punishment. As a warning that what we have taken for granted (first dibs at opportunity) might not , should not, last forever.
In a year where Black Rights have dominated the non-Covid news this is a book about women’s rights and it seems appropriate that this, and Colson Whitehead’s The Nickel Boys were, by a long chalk, the most compelling ones I’ve read.
This novel doesn’t just ooze restrained moral authority, it takes those that flaunt sexual democracy by the bollocks and kicks shit out of them.
This is the feminist book that makes feminism real, for all.
It’s an unbelievable achievement in writing.
And yet it’s so, so damn prosaic. It’s so, so kind of uneventful.
Despite its monumental subject matter and the giddy heights to which it aspires, and attains, the fact it’s written as a kind of diary, where the author never tires of listing the most banal aspects of a setting, again and again, without ever boring the reader, makes it firstly seem real and secondly incontrovertible. Hillary Clinton would never tell us about the time her aide wiped a snotter from her nose before she went on stage for a speech unless it was real/true. Right?
In roller coaster terms it reaches the zenith but then never drops, suspending you above reality in a construct so simply but brilliantly inconceivable that it seems it must be true.
It’s difficult to explain, without telling you the story, how brilliant Sittenfeld is at taking a fantasy, making it a reality and then laughing to herself as you try to unravel the one from the other.
Time and again I found myself stopping to marvel that this was, you know, all made up.
But let’s pause in this gushorama.
Let’s start from the beginning.
The pitch is this. “Rodham. What happened after Hillary didn’t marry Bill Clinton.”
And that’s it.
Except it’s not. Sittenfeld could have gone loopy on us, could have stretched her political imagination beyond any horizons we have to adhere to in reality.
Instead she writes Hillary Rodham’s autobiography, in the first tense, including, you know, that time she had Bill bring her off on a freeway, while he was driving. That time he… (I’ll save it for you to find out the other often quite sordid, eyebrow raising details).
So far, so titillating. But, titter ye not.
This a work of absolute seriousness. The autobiography (except it’s not) of the famous wife of a famous philanderer, but the most popular, and let’s face it, most handsome philander on the planet. A philanderer she married and stood by through thick and thin.
Except, not here. Because she didn’t marry him. Not here.
Why not?
I ain’t tellin’.
One third of the novel takes us up through her girlhood up to the point of her not marrying Bill Clinton. The next two thirds follow the consequences.
Would either go on to political success?
Would they remain in contact?
Would their parting of the ways influence American politics?
Would Donald Trump rise to the heights that he did (the one spoiler I will give you is that Trump makes several cameo appearances to great humorous effect)?
Would there, in fact, even BE any consequences? After all, in this history it was simply an imagined (but real) relationship between two law students. One extremely handsome. One extremely clever.
Even though the entire novel is a fiction it is teasingly stitched together with truths. Real things that did happen but, in the words of Eric Morecambe, “just not necessarily all in the right order”.
It really is a breathtaking literary achievement with deft touches like (How Marvellous!) – a diary entry of an impressionable teen – but it’s not a diary entry, (how disappointing!) it’s the autobiography of one of the most famous women in the world. But it’s not.
Twice Sittenfeld evokes the vision of a cerulean sky. In a novel of plain speaking it is a word that stood out to me, that sent me scurrying to Google dictionary. It’s use was allowable.
It’s also prescient. She was published in early 2020, but there’s an important reference in it to Kamala Harris, Kamala was only appointed Biden’s Vice Presidential candidate in August 2020. There were 5 or 6 women in the running for that role, most notably Katherine Warren, But Sittenfeld doesn’t write her in. She writes in Harris. And Harris wasn’t even the only black woman in the running. So it’s not sleight of hand. I repeat, it’s prescience.
You’ll need some basic knowledge of American politics to get the most out of this. I have a little more than average for a non-American and that helped me, but I’m pretty sure you’ll get the point if your knowledge only stretches to the big names we all know.
I don’t know Sittenfeld. I don’t know her work. But I’ll certainly be looking out her back catalogue after this.
Absolutely 10 out of 10 and thank you Helen Howden for spotting this and lending me it to read.
A gift from above.
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I’m not even going to mention the obvious subject as it’s affected us all in different ways, other than to say my list of theatre and cinema highlights is extremely short and has been replaced by TV and podcasts.
One of the highlights was moving from self employed to employed status after 15 years.
Things were looking uncertain until an unlikely opportunity arose with Whitespace, a company I have been involved with, one way or another since its inception 25 or so years ago as a subsidiary of 1576. Finally I can wholly lay claim to the title of being a ‘Whitespacer’ as a Strategy Director. It’s been immense having worked on not one, but two, global cosmetics brands, a global pitch for a motor company and a series of successful pitches and client engagements including a huge Oil and Gas start up, a home builder, the new www.netzeronation.scot website, Business Gateway, the Port of Leith Housing Association rebrand, a University, an online learning business, a charity and a lovely tech start up in pharma. Stimulating, all of them.
Sadly my time with Front Page came to an end after a long and happy relationship, it still is. And I’ve worked throughout with another long term client in the wonderful Nexus 24.
The experiment with The Marketing Centre proved to be unsatisfying in the end but I gave it my best shot and they are good guys.
I’m grateful to them all for their support, friendship and income.
Two more relationships came to an end, after 10 years I stood down as Chair of FCT and simultaneously my nine years as Chair of Creative Edinburgh came to a happy conclusion. Both were my choice and I wish both of them well in the future.
But my role as Scottish Chair of NABS remained deeply satisfying and we ran a tremendous National Music Quiz and Art Auction plus the 15th Scottish music quiz, all going online for the first time, and resulting in a record year of income for NABS. A great result driven by an amazing voluntary team in Scotland. Special thanks has to go to Anna Kormos and to Marian in Manchester for their huge contributions.
My Mum’s dementia (Alzheimer’s) has worsened steadily and in August we took the inevitable decision to put her into a care home. It’s been a great decision because the staff at Northcare Suites (100 Telford Road) have been superb. It’s the lap of luxury and although she remains terribly confused, and visits have been strictly limited, she has settled in well and is in good overall health otherwise.
Amy continues to amaze us with her tenacity, creativity, drive and ambition and she started not one, but two, new businesses this year. One in Health and Nutrition (https://www.amygormanhealthnutrition.co.uk) which has seen her build a solid portfolio of clients and a part time role at The Foundry in London, the other as a freelance fundraiser where she has enjoyed great success with at least four clients this year. All the more incredible because she left CAFOD to go it alone in February just as the unmentionable struck. She is awesome.
Ria and Tom both worked at Amazon over the summer. The job from hell. But Tom, in particular, immersed himself in it so hard (60 hour night shift weeks) that he saved enough to escape the UK and move to Whistler in Canada for the next two years. It was brilliant having them and Keir with us all summer and we miss them terribly.
Of course Ria skooshed her first year in Dentistry at Dundee and is back there, living with Keir in Perth where he has an interesting job at a whisky auctioneers. She’s working like a trojan and filling us with pride. All three of them are.
This gave Jeana the opportunity to reignite her homemaking career which she revelled in (but I’ve/we’ve missed our steady procession of AirBnB guests, her second career, that we grew to love so much). Next year maybe.
She started a new career and excelled, as a baker! Brilliant lockdown sourdough and maybe even better fruit bread. Both to die for, and if we eat too much of either, or both, that’s exactly what we’ll do. Dangerous!
Of course, having finally succeeded (after five failed attempts) in the Glastonbury lottery it was cancelled, as was Primavera (who still haven’t refunded me by the way). That was a big blow and I missed the chance of escapades with the boys in Barca and Alan in Somerset. Next year? Hmmm, dunno.
No holidays at all, not even Perthshire in November. I desperately missed our annual pilgrimage to Italy in particular. Next Year? Hmmm, dunno, maybe.
The most exciting and preoccupying thing, for me, of the year was seeing the 45th President of The United States of American undone. He’s scum, and election night found me beside myself as it looked at one point as if he’d gone and done the impossible, but the good people of America proved they DO have a conscience and 80 million of them at least have a brain.
It puts the achievement and humanity of Obama onto an even greater pedestal and the man has become a beacon of brilliance for the world to see, if he wasn’t already.
Biden and Harris (the 46th and 47th Presidents) were not perhaps the most dynamic offering for the American electorate, but decency is back and soon I expect to see a woman in the White House Oval Office. She will be great once Biden passes the baton. He did what he had to do – carefully, graciously and in a dignified manner that befits the office. He’ll no doubt have to buy his own lightbulbs on movers day, but the fact that he knows his way around will not obligate the outgoing filth to show him round.
Sadly we, in the UK, are stuck with filth for now. The disgrace that has held office in Downing Street is there for all to see and no further comment is necessary.
Turning to the best bit.
My best of’s.
It wasn’t a vintage music year but I enjoyed, very much, the following:
Michael Kiwanuka rightly won the Mercury, although I backed Moses Boyd.
I also greatly enjoyed Songs for our Daughter by Laura Marling (even though she doesn’t have one) and she would also have been a deserved winner.
Taylor Swift’s two albums were excellent folksy releases.
I listened to a lot of Dub Reggae, mainly from the 70’s.
Sudan Archives’ Athena was excellent.
Big Thief and Dirty Projectors both brought smiles to my face.
Janelle Monae’s sole single release, Turntables, is awesome.
And I loved Weyes Blood’s Titanic Rising (although I think that was a 2019 release).
What I can’t understand is the adulation Fiona Apple’s Fetch The Bolt Cutters garnered. I tried, believe me.
Here’s a link to my Best of 2020 tunes on Spotify. (Too much old stuff on it for my liking.)
In cinema there was little to thrall about so Steve McQueen’s Small Axe series almost picks up the ‘best of’ gong by virtue of its feature length running times (particularly Lover’s Rock).
But the prize goes to another Adam Sandler masterpiece. The quite ridiculous Uncut Gems. Wow!
Parasite was a big disappointment to me, as was Fincher’s Mank.
True History of the Kelly Gang (pre you know what) was epic and wonderful.
I also saw and really liked Little Women before the shutdown and 1917 which is outstanding and a contender for my movie of the year.
I liked the Go Go’s documentary.
The Trial of the Chicago 7 was great Sorkin fare and gets there on merit, but hardly a classic.
The Borat sequel only makes it onto the list because of the lack of competition and the brilliant expose of Giulliani.
And so to TV. The year of TV.
It kicked off with something I thought wouldn’t be bettered, Normal People, but it just got better and better.
I Will Not Destroy You.
The Crown.
We Are Who We Are.
The aforementioned Small Axe.
Unorthodox (a little gem).
The Queen’s Gambit.
Song Exploder. (A Podcast conversion to Netflix)
Homecoming (another podcast convert – especially Season 2 with Janelle Monae)
The Plot Against America.
Educating Greater Manchester.
Des.
Dracula (on BBC).
Quiz (it was a good year for ITV drama).
Dirty John.
The Third Day on C4.
Industry (a late contender for series of the year. Please bring it back. Filthy and brilliantly performed).
And another was the excellent Criminal. A franchise that extended across Europe using the same police interview room (with different casts for different countries) to create unusual very cleverly plotted procedurals that were anything but procedures.
But, at the end of it all I’m going to give it to The Comey Rule for the remarkable performance of Jeff Daniels.
In podcasts, my new found love, there was so much it was ridiculous:
Shout outs for Adam Buxton and Louis Theroux.
Steve Richard and Matt Forde made politics lovable.
5:38, Hacks on Tap, Left Right and Centre and Pod Save America enthralled me through the American election.
In drama podcasts, Tunnel 42 was magic, as were both seasons of The Horror of Dolores Roach.
Slow Burn is brilliant but Season Four (David Duke) wasn’t its best. For that you need to listen to the Clinton and Watergate series’.
Hunting Ghislaine was also brilliantly horrifying and it was great to hear yesterday that the bitch is not being bailed.
In music Soul Music (BBC Radio 4) and Song Exploder were both joys to behold. As was The Clash Story.
But my Podcast of the Year is a toss up between 13 Minutes to the Moon (Season Two about Apollo 13), Transmissions (the story of Joe Division and New Order) and Wind of Change, the conspiracy story about the CIA writing The Scorpions’ classic song of the same name.
And then there’s Desert Island Discs of course.
Turkey of the year was Phoebe Reads a Mystery. Appalling schmuck.
I had a terrific reading year too, finally joining a Book Club:
Feck Perfunction by James Victoire is a great business read.
The Salt Path by Raynor Winn
One Two Three Four about the Beatles by Craig Brown is superb. And Kraftwerk: Future Music from Germany was another great musical read. A musical trilogy was made up with The Eavis’ Glastonbury 50. An event I never made. Naeb’dy did.
Pine by Francis Toon is a good Scottish book. Not as good as Shuggie Bain by Douglas Stuart (but I still don’t think it should have won the Booker – far better were last year’s TWO winners Girl Woman Other by Bernardine Evagelisto and The Testaments by the incomparable Margaret Atwood – not her best but still fantastic).
I really enjoyed Ian McEwan’s rewriting of history in Machines Like Us, a real return to form.
I read two McEwan’s this year. Solar was the other, but it was shit.
The Testament of Gideon Mack is a great wee Scottish story by James Robertson and I’m also enjoying his 365 Stories as my bog book this year.
Conversations with Friends by Sally Rooney wasn’t as good as Normal People (the TV series).
Worth Dying For – The Power and politics of flags was good fun.
I finally read Small Island and loved it. As I did in reading Everything is Illuminated by Jonathan Safran Foer. Hilarious.
Tender is the Flesh: by Agustina Bazterrica is a tremendous, undiscovered, Brazilian novel about post apocalyptic times where humans are grown as food.
But my two books of the year were epic masterpieces, each of them. Rodham by Curtis Sittenfeld and The Nickel Boys by Colson Whitehead. Both dealt with American discrimination, the former of women, the latter of Black lives. Both are beyond excellent.
My walk of the year was Glen Etive, with Ria, all 26 miles of it.
Oh, one last thing. I lost weight.
The fact that Sweeney, best known for his work on the BBC’s Panorama and Newsnight, felt the need to include his name in the title of this tells you something.
He’s a man on a mission and, until the last episode, it felt that mission was being delivered with a cool disdain that nevertheless erred on the side of balance. He wraps the production with a rather more pointed conclusion that undoes a little of the, earlier, brilliant work.
But that’s a minor gripe, because this is a beast of a production in so many ways.
Firstly the music chills you to the core, right from the off.
Secondly, Sweeney himself is a class act. A formidable presenter with an intellect to match.
And thirdly, the content and its protagonist(s), are, indeed, beasts. And not the cuddly sort.
By the closing credits Sweeney has annihilated Maxwell and, jury aside (we’ll have to wait till July for that decision), he has good reason, if not proof.
She’s a piece of work is Ghislaine Maxwell.
Brought up by a monster and in a long term relationship with another (both dead, maybe both by suicide) she inherited an attitude of princessly, entitlement from her, probably sociopathic, criminal of a father, whom Sweeney further paints as a narcissistic sadist.
She’s a daddy’s girl extraordinaire, spoilt but not spared the lash (which Sweeney conjects she may have developed a taste for) she treats others around her as expendable trash on her rise to the top.
But the top of what? The top of nothing, frankly. OK, the top of a society invitation list, maybe. But this woman has not contributed an iota of ANYTHING to the furtherment of any aspect of the human race.
Her lover, Jeffery Epstein, needs no introduction, and although we nevertheless get plenty of that from Sweeney it’s really her role as his handmaiden and chief pimp that constitutes this story.
And the story is brilliantly, quite lasciviously told, in tones of barely concealed glee as Sweeney hacks her legacy to pieces and feeds it to the listener in bite sized pieces.
She is devoid of goodness.
She’s a coward (running away into hiding the second Epstein’s protective layer peeled away).
And she’s a rapist. So entwined with Epstein’s actions, sometimes joining in after hunting down and luring his prey that she can only be seen as conjoined with the filth that his (stolen) money facilitated him.
It’s gripping, frightening and disgusting.
It’s no wonder Sweeney seems so emotionally involved.
He’s a man on a mission and I , for one, sincerely hope his target rots in a jail cell for the rest of her entitled days.
Bravo John. Bravo.
When we moved our company, 1576 Advertising Ltd, from Edinburgh’s Old Town to its new New Town home in 1997, or so, we were determined that we wouldn’t create a series of ghettos in its Edwardian Town House of five floors (30 rabbit holes) so we instigated a policy, from day one, of ‘hotdesking’.
Hotdesking you say?
In 1997?
Surely this couldn’t work either technically or socially?
You’re right on both counts, sort of.
Technically it was tricky. (I mean, just look at the email address.)
But we made it work. We’d run Ethernet cabling throughout the building, at great cost, and we were 100% Macced up. (No-one else was. It was a PC world in those days.)
But we were obstinate determined.
So, although the logging in and out was tricky it was by no means impossible.
It was the social experiment that really failed.
We wanted to stimulate fresh thinking by having creatives mix with planners, producers and account handlers.
We wanted variety in people’s lives.
We wanted to discourage the collection of desk detritus that comes with nest-building in a permanent workspace.
And, as it turns out, some 20 years later, in this post-Covid world, I truly believe this is about to become the norm.
People will now have the option to blend working from home with office based toil.
Work spaces will shrink so that 100 workers can fit into the space that served only 50 before. Technology-sharing (and therefore hotdesking) will become de rigour – we are already seeing it in co-working spaces anyway.
Where our 20th Century social experiment failed was that it was too soon. We couldn’t convince our otherwise pioneering people that rather than seeing us as GIVING them variety we were perceived as freedom-thieves.
It broke my heart.
I thought I was right, then.
I know I was right, now.
But prescience can represent pearls to swine. (Although I was no swineherd.)
It was all part of our belief in the importance of culture. Underpinned by this quote I just unearthed from Campaign Magazine in November 1999.
“1576 went through some serious rites of passage this year. After whatseemed like a charmed relationship, the agency split up with Direct
Line, the lucrative mainstream account that had given it the freedom to
build its creative profile on less profitable accounts. ’It was a
watershed,’ Mark Gorman, one of the three founding partners, says.
’Direct Line was a significant piece of business but the relationship
wasn’t working any more. We resigned it because we put a lot of thought
into our culture. We want to differentiate ourselves from other agencies
by the way we work with our clients.’
Campaign 1999.
Oink.
He’s a great man (with a horrible voice, it has to be said).
A truly great man.
And an example for humanity of what you can do with wealth. Not only is he leading the fight for the developing world in medical research and disease control through his donations, but by his fundraising too.
And he has a new podcast with Rashida Jones called “Bill Gates and Rashida Jones Ask Big Questions”.
The first episode is excellent and I was really interested in an optimistic view he took on post-Covid society. It may not be a unique view, or even his own, but it struck me as relevant.
His postulation is that post-Covid our life patters will have been so fundamentally disrupted and restructured that they may never return to the old way of working.
One, positive, consequence of not being “downtown” office-based will be that instead of gravitating to massively busy city centre drinking dens (post work), we will instead socialise in our communities far more. So that suburban bars and restaurants will massively benefit and the city centre hostelries will be permanently maimed.
I would speculate further.
As the “High Street” collapses, and the bars and restaurants that populate them, follow retail in its demise the city centre will entirely re-purpose into residential areas and those bars and restaurants will become community hostelries rather than after work boozers.
All of this will, in my view, contribute to a levelling out of geographic meaning and a better balance to all of our lives.
Go Bill.
Not so much a podcast, as a sharing of BBC Radio 4’s Book of the Week by Barack Obama, narrated by the great man himself.
In interviews, Obama can be a bit ponderous but narrating his life story he rattles along without hesitation and takes your breath away with the quality of his written word and his beautiful almost soporific rendition.
It’s a thriller of monumental proportions picking off, in turn, his Primaries for President, the first election, The credit crunch, the ACA, Michelle’s visit with The Queen and, most grippingly of all, the killing of Bin Laden.
It’s two and a half hours of majesty that I devoured in one (long) walk and wanted more, much more.
And I’m wondering if the audio book, given this, would be a better bet than the written version; although I’d want the spine to grace my bookshelves to prove that I am an advocate for the man that will go down in history as one of greatest presidents (human beings) of all time.
I love him, man.
I really, really do.
WARNING: THE FOLLOWING POST CONTAINS STRONG VIEWS AND LANGUAGE THAT SOME PEOPLE MIGHT FIND OFFENSIVE.
“It’s an oven ready deal.”
“The NHS will get £430m a week.”
“We’ll save £50 billion a year.”
Did you actually, really, fall for that? Did you?
Did you really?
Did you factor in that Boris Johnson is a fucking lying cunt?
Did you believe that Dominic Cumming was a human being?
Do you think the moon is made off cheese?
Or did you just want to get rid of those foreign bastards that are are stealing our jobs? You know, the ones where they’re looking after your old dear in what was later to become a pox ridden no go zone.
I cannot even begin to say how angry I am with this government of lying, self-centred, evil cunts. A cabinet of nodding yes men and women having their strings pulled by a fucking moron. An actual fucking imbecile. A man who makes me want to physically violate my television every time I see the smirking, stuttering bag of shit utter a sentence that is packed so full of obfuscation and, just nonsense, complete nonsense and piffle, and condescension, as to render it entirely redundant.
This, a government that has lined the pockets of its equally smirking cunt friends as they buy their untested plastic vials while people wait for their inevitable redundancy. Thank fuck Johnny Foreigner has been banished to the eastern wastelands eh? Less competition for them.
It’s all so brazenly arrogant.
It’s all so, so fucking entitled.
It’s all so redolent of The Emire, but not striking back. We, the British EMPIRE, will retake what belongs to us: our sovereignty.
And these European, fucking, Beaurocrats will bow down to our Oven Ready Rights.
Well, actually Boris. Cunt. You were always fighting 27 against 1 and these Europeans think you are as much of a cunt as I do and they’ve made you look like a fucking fool and a cheat and a clown and a hopeless, simply appalling negotiator. A toff playing Ibble Dibble with a competitor, 27 in fact, that sees you for what you are. Arrogant, unprepared, deweaponised, trading on past glory. A threat.
And what do we do with threats?
We mitigate them. We extinguish them.
Go fuck yourself Boris. Your citizens fucking despise you. Well, if they think about it rationally for even a nanosecond we do.
We’re a nation of paradoxes, most are.
But one of our greatest virtues was our willingness, enshrined in law, to share some of our great wealth with others less fortunate; 0.7% of our income in fact. Part of the Tory party’s manifesto pledge to never reduce.
Until last week.
At which point Rishi thought that a 28% cut in our foreign aid, to save 0.2% of our national budget, was a good thing.
In a year where we borrowed $400bn how on earth could saving $4bn (exactly 1%) be significant?
Cutting 28% from our support for those that need it for water and shelter, rather than trinkets and indulgence, (yes, I acknowledge we have a poverty issue in the UK but that $4bn ain’t being transferred to UK food banks is it?) hardly befits a nation that has held the right for decades to hold its head high among its international peers.
Maybe Rishi admired Donald Trump’s devastating snubbing of WHO? (Thankfully to be resolved by Biden.)
Or maybe it’s because multi-millionaire accountants simply see it as a number, not a lifeline.
I think its shameful and disgusting.
Sleep well you despicable, glory-grabbing bastard.
What do Cabbage Patch dolls, Metrosexuality, Unicorn poo, Jennifer Aniston’s depression, the Jane Fonda Workout, The Mullet and The Karen have in common?
They’re all the subject of episodes of Decoder Ring, the great monthly podcast by Willa Paskin from Slate.
As eclectic as they are REAL, each episode pretty thoroughly researches a cultural phenomenon tracing it back to its origins and explaining the impact it has had on society and culture as its influence grew.
Sure Unicorn Poo may be less life changing than having a mullet, but trust me: these are THINGS.
These are things that matter.
And, with her tongue firmly embedded in her cheek Haskin treats each with reverence and respect.
She could be exploring the rise of Marxism in Tsarist Russia (if that’s even a thing). But she’s not, she’s wondering why a doll with eyes too closely set created monsters out of suburban housewives.
It’s that good.
Honestly, it’s like a little dollop of nectar has been spat into your ear by a hummingbird each time a new episode drops.
Go get gooey eared.
And thank me.
Wow. This is strong stuff.
In the late 1980s and early 1990s, a white supremacist became an American political phenomenon. David Duke’s rise to power and prominence—his election to the Louisiana Legislature, and then his campaigns for the U.S. Senate and the governorship—was an existential crisis for the state and the nation.
That’s how Slate sells the fourth in their outstanding Podcast series (The Watergate Scandal 10/10, The Clinton Scandal 9/10 Tupac – didn’t enjoy that, and now Duke.)
Heavy stuff with heft.
Slow Burn really is an outstanding editorial platform with a great track record and this adds further weight to Slate’s enviable reputation with a gripping tale, riddled with back stories and sidebars that add colour and context to the rise of a fascist to a position of influence, but no power.
Who could ever imagine a fascist in power in the USA?
Until 2016-2020. When it became a reality.
The difference between Duke and Trump is that Duke, ex Grand Wizard of the KKK was an acknowledged Nazi who tried to cover up his past, whereas Trump is only waves the flag of fascism (No brown short and swastika) albeit with the ability to create an authoritarian police state in the world’s third largest country.
Duke sought a Nazi state, for sure, but under the auspices of The GOP, The Republican Party.
Just like today.
And, yes, the GOP was embarrassed to shit by Duke, as those that will admit it are of his fascist successor.
Where Duke failed was through his ostentatious official past. His espousal of anti-semitic, anti black politicking stated for what it was. The cross burning couldn’t be airbrushed from Duke’s history, whereas Trump gets the police to enact his enmity and racism with only a powder puff hairs and an orange fake tan that says;
“Me, a Nazi, looking like this? Oh come on.”
It’s wonderfully narrated with relish, and a degree of awe (fear really) by Josh Levin. His anguish is palpable as he tells the tale of what could have been…
…and is now.
The story of Elizabeth Holmes and Theranos is an unbelievable tale of ambition and fame gone terribly wrong.
So say ABC Studios in promoting the podcast of Elizabeth Holmes’ outrageous fooling of too many people that shouldn’t have been fooled.
Theranos was her college idea (for which she dropped out hence the title) a machine that analysed single droplets of blood to diagnose up to 100’s of health conditions like diabetes in a single drop with no need to draw blood via syringe.
A life changer for the planet. And Chiat Day’s ads fell nothing short of that claim.
Except every single analysis ever done by Theranos required a syringe draw. Because they weren’t analysed on Theranos machines.
She fooled Walgreens into signing an exclusive distribution deal.
She copied Steve Jobs by wearing all black turtlenecks.
She adopted a deep baritone voice that was 100% fake, to give her an air of authority.
She suckered US Secretary of State for Defence George Schultz, but not his grandson.
Henry fucking Kissinger sat on her board.
Bill Gates invested millions, so did Rupert Murdoch ($125m to be precise).
And at one time it was valued at $9billion.
All on a bare faced lie. A hoax of grand proportions. Gargantuan in fact.
You have to feel sorry for the small investors, more so for the poor people that were given incorrect diagnoses, but the big boys were simply suckered, and failed in their due diligence.
It’s a brilliant story, brilliantly researched and brilliantly narrated by Rebecca Jarvis.
High quality stuff that you should seek out now.
Now this is glorious-if you can forgive the drama-documentary approach that makes it sound a little like ‘All ‘Allo until you zone that out.
It’s often a problem with a new podcast; you need to snuggle in and ignore the itchy sheets until you’re comfortably numb.
It’s the true story of, as described by the BBC who produced it (so no ads), “The rise and fall of Anna Delvey, who conned New York high society into believing that she was a multi-millionaire heiress.”
And, oh my, how wonderful the story is.
In America she’s hailed as something of an anti-hero because people like how she ‘beat the system’ but the simple truth she’s a lying, thieving scumbag, maggot that fooled a lot of rich wannabe suckers – although not quite as many as the story might want you to think.
Because, for a New York socialite she was struggling pretty hard to scrape together enough freeloading liggers to her bashes to make them even seem like bashes in the first place. (The one she leaves after pretending to need the bathroom as the night drew in and without paying the bill is particularly amusing.)
We are regaled with tales of how she melted a few high end hotels just by sheer gallousness, checking in to 5 star boutique joints by pretending to know the manager and so not have to leave a credit card imprint then running up thousands of dollars of bills on champagne and caviar.
She took banks to the cleaners, camped it up to put plans down for landmark statement buildings in which to house her Anna Delvey Art Foundation and generally just made a nuisance of herself.
It’s a rip roaring tale in which pretty much everyone involved is some form of a tosser, which makes it a delight for those of a Schadenfreudy nature, like me.
And it’s coming to a TV screen soon, not just in one form but two (Netflix and HBO both having different characters’ rights, although not hers).
It’s a blast. Enjoy.
I’m grateful to BBC News for the graphics below. Please don’t throw me into prison for using them.
Indeed you can read the BBC’s view on this link
It’s not the greatest list, is it? And why isn’t Nadine Shah on it? Crazy.
She’s amazing but the album is too patchy. I love her, and I’d love her to win, but her contemporary masterpiece has not, as yet been recorded.
I have little to say about this. Not a fan. A surprising nomination in my view.
This reviewed well but I am too old. No, sorry.
She’s the guy from Leftfeild’s daughter. That’s where the greatness ends. Absolutely not the winner.
Grime. I don’t listen to Grime.
I mean, I saw Dizzee Rascal at Glastonbury, but he’s pish. No thanks.
I don’t know this at all so I can’t comment.
Her fourth nomination, and rightly so. Laura Marling is a queen of UK indy folk and this one, whilst not immediately her best, is a grower. A certain contender in my view.
His third nomination (already?)
He may be too ‘popular’ now to be the favourite but this is a very good record indeed. A soul classic steeped in 70’s funky ooze. It’s a lovely joyous record with much in common with Marvin Gaye at his best.
A contender in my view.
The token Jazz record. He’s a drummer and his album is decent, extremely decent, as was Sons of Kemet’s last year and I put my fiver on them. Misguidedly as it turned out. However jazz records never win. Even in this new age of jazz.
(He’ll win then.)
Too bad a name to consider. But my pals like her.
I liked the singles from this but they are highly derivative. They couldn’t lace IDLES shoes.
Heavy is the Head is a truly wonderful song but I didn’t really like his Glastonbury set and this genre is winning too much, so it’s a no from me.
So, that means it’s a shoot out between Moses Boyd, Laura Marling and Michael Kiwanuka.
I initially predicted Marling would win, but having listened to Moses Boyd a lot now I’m coming round to that.
The great podcasts keep on coming. The seam is rich and golden and here’s another to indulge in.
This is a BBC publication about a Bulgarian businesswoman, Dr Ruja Ignatova, who persuaded millions to sign up to her rival to BitCoin, called OneCoin, reaping billions of pounds of illegal takings.
The trouble is, this crypto-currency has no blockchain and therefore cannot be spent anywhere.
It’s Fools’ Gold, and it’s worthless.
Then she disappeared.
Jamie Bartlett takes us through the story in double-quick time and leaves you gasping at Dr Ignatova’s bravado, ruthlessness and greed and the gullibility of the millions who fell for her classy veneer.
It’s pretty scary to be honest.
But it’s riveting and that’s why you should invest a few hours of your time listening to it.
gibberish 