Of Snakes and Lambs

Not the same Larry Lamb

You learn something new every day.

Yesterday I learned that we don't have a new type of snake in the UK, bringing the total number of species to four, despite the BBC reporting that we do early last month. So, after the BBC website corrected itself yesterday, it turns out that we're back to just having three species of snake here in Britain.

The full background is here, and very interesting it is too if you're into grass snake taxonomy. (And who isn't?). It's also interesting if you're into corrections of "rather muddled reports in the British media". 

So what I have I learned today then?

Well, Andrew Marr talked this morning to writer James Graham and actor Bertie Carvel about Ink, their new play about Rupert Murdoch - a play that, surprisingly, doesn't appear to be a crude hatchet job on the man and which sounds well worth seeing. 

This is what I learned:

Andrew Marr: Larry Lamb, Murdoch's first editor, is determined to beat the Mirror under any circumstances, in any way necessary, and that leads to the first topless Page Three. 

James Graham: Yes, so it was incredibly dangerous, incredibly shocking. They kept it very quiet. Larry Lamb, in fact, from my research, kept it quiet from Murdoch...

Andrew Marr: Who didn't like it, who didn't like it very much. He was against this when he saw it, wasn't he? 

James Graham: He has these enjoyable contradictions as a man, because even though he's very what we see him to be, very forthright and determined, he actually has this sort of prudishness around this stuff, and as far as I can understand he was sort of furious, he was absolutely furious that Larry Lamb had done this to his newspaper. To him, it confirmed in other people's minds on Fleet Street that they were just this down-market, trashy pair of pornographers who were doing anything to win.