Here's to 2015!

Well, here it is then, 2015. Hope it's a good one!

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BBC Radio 4 is beginning the year by paying handsome tribute to one of its star presenters, James Naughtie. 

In honour of his famously long and elaborate questions on Today - each consisting of a minimum of six sentences, an-over-50-words-long main clause and at least 30 subordinates clauses - the station is broadcasting a day-long dramatisation of the book which the Today man's questions most frequently bring to the listener's mind: Tolstoy's War and Peace.

War and Peace is often said to have a conservative bias though (before Tolstoy turned liberal in Anna Karenina), which is something that's not often said of Jim. 

I'm not listening to today's dramatisation, however. It's too long. It's like bloody War and Peace. 

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Talking of which...

Pre-6 o'clock chatter between Jim and Justin in the Today studio, on the morning of the 21st November 2014, caught on a guest's mobile phone and shared exclusively with us here at Is the BBC biased?:

WELL, JUSTIN, Clacton and Rochester are now no more than strongholds of UKIP. No, I warn you, that if you do not tell me we at the BBC are now at war, if you again allow yourself to palliate all the infamies and atrocities of this Antichrist (upon my word, I believe Farage is the Antichrist), I don't know you in future, you are no longer my friend, no longer my co-presenter here on Today. There [as other guests enter the 'Today' studio], how do you do, how do you do? I see I'm scaring you, sit down and let's get ready to talk to the Radio 4 audience and tell them all the news.

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So, as Boris Yeltsin was wont to say, Ваше здоровье!

Or as James Naughtie is (probably) wont to say:

May the best ye hae ivver seen be the warst ye'll ivver see. May the moose ne'er lea' yer girnal wi a tear-drap in its ee. May ye aye keep hail an hertie till ye'r auld eneuch tae dee. May ye aye juist be sae happie as A wuss ye aye tae be. 

(which, according to Google, translates as "May the best you have ever seen be the worst you will ever see. May the moose never wear your girdle with a tear drop in its eye. May you always stay hale and hearty till your elderly eunuch dies. May you still be just as happy, wuss, as you ought to be.")