Is it possible to write a post about a BBC journalist not knowing something that the blogger knows - and that the blogger expected the BBC journalist to know - without sounding smug?
No.
Anyhow:
Tonight's celebrity editon of Eggheadshad BBC News channel presenter/Panorama journalist Chris Rogers taking the Geography round against Chris from Eggheads.
You may remember Chris Rogers from such BBC 'events' as that News Channel interview with the North Korea expert whose was interrupted first by his young son then by his baby and then by his wife desperately trying to get their kids out of the room, or for his Panorama from Ukraine about far-right World Cup football hooligans where - away from the programme - he was caught on camera (off camera), giving a Nazi salute and goose-stepping.
As such I'd expect him to be good at geography.
But this question -
Which country lies between Costa Rica and the continent of South America?
- led him to say "I'm guessing this one".
The options were: (a) Belize, (b) Nicaragua and (c) Panama.
He was torn between Belize and Panama and finally plumped for the right answer, Panama (famous for its canal and for being between the link between Central America and South America).
To me that was obvious and something a star BBC journalist ought to just know, straight-off.
Later came a 'sudden death question':
Latvia shares land borders with Estonia, Lithuania, Belarus and which other country?
As someone who so-famously reported from Ukraine, I'd have expected Chris to have been a dead certainty to have given the right answer, Russia (famously, Latvia's most troublesome neighbour). But, no, Chris misfired and said 'Ukraine'.
Why do I expect better from high-profile BBC journalists?
I heard Yolande Knell’s report this morning. It sounded all wrong. Perhaps BBCWatch will give us a more sympathetic account of Israel’s position on all this in due course, but although I’ve spent far too long looking at the story online from as many angles as I can bear to unearth, all I can say is that none of the parties involved come out of it particularly well.
The left-wing press and of course, the BBC have had a field day. Of all the reports I’ve read, most seem to take the view that an injustice has been done to the current tenant of the New Imperial Hotel Jerusalem, 75-year-old Abu Walid Dajani who has been running the hotel for 800 years. (not personally, I assume)
The villain of the piece, according to Knell and the left-wing press, is ‘right-wing Jewish group Ateret Cohanim, which has a nefarious aim. What could that be? To “stop a Jewish take-over” or to “Judaize” East Jerusalem “which the Palestinians want as the capital of their future state”.
Since Ateret Cohanim are quite open about that aim, one might ask oneself whether such a take-over is so very terrible. In other words, is the Palestinians’ “want” enough to make it the Palestinians’ “right”??
The factor that makes this 14-year-old story newsworthy at this time is the Israeli court’s recent decision to uphold the validity of the sale.
The actual legal dispute concerns the alleged corruption surrounding the sale (14 years ago) of various properties including this hotel. The former owner of the properties was the Greek Orthodox Church, who didn’t come out of it smelling of roses either.
The dodgy individual involved in the transactionwas former Church finance director Nikolas Papadimos who has since done a runner.
Predictably, Yolande Knell was openly sympathetic to Mr Dajani and she took an adversarial tone with Daniel Luria, the representative of Ateret Cohanim; again, much as expected.
What I didn’t get was the apparently gratuitous soundbite (audio of a woman screaming because she was being evicted by ‘settlers”) “earlier this year.” I think I heard a gunshot in there too. Was this directly relevant to this case? Who knows. Or was it emotive ‘sound effects’, put in the report just because.
The vox-pop type quotes we heard from Mr Luria sounded disjointed, and I couldn’t help wondering if his comments about “Jewish Land” and so on had been truly representative of the whole of his testimony. Was I only hearing what I wanted to hear?
It all struck me as rather John Sweeney. There, I’ve coined a ‘thing’; to do a John Sweeney.
One detail we didn’t get from Knell was that Abu Walid Dajani hadn’t paid any rent for 14 years, but I suppose he probably had his reasons.
"Not only did this report repeatedly promote inaccurate information concerning the properties which are ostensibly its subject matter but Yolande Knell has clearly exclusively embraced the Greek Orthodox Church’s narrative.
More gravely, Knell unquestioningly promoted the partisan political narrative she long since adopted with her framing of Old City houses inhabited by Jewish Israelis as ‘illegal settlements’, the inhabitants as ‘settlers’ and her uncritical amplification of the claim that the location is “Palestinian”.
“Don’t knock Stacey Dooley” says Robin Aitken. in a new piece in "Unherd". I agree. She’s - what can I say? - Let’s try ‘a breath of fresh air’.
“Stacey’s apotheosis was when she won Strictly Come Dancing in 2018. I thought at the time that that might be the moment her journalistic career fell away beneath her like a spent booster rocket as she continued into the higher reaches of Celebristan. But that didn’t happen, and Stacey has remained true to her calling. Bravo then for Stacey and bravo too for the BBC which spotted, then nurtured and now supports her distinctive brand of citizen journalism.
But this appraisal of her work seems to have omitted her most eye-opening and, for some of us, her most affecting documentary. My Home Town, filmed in 2012. So, for your information, here it is again.
Watching this “Room for thought” video, (which I see is three weeks old at the time of writing) reminded me of Rod Liddle’s article in the Spectator, written in 2006, in which he defends Boris Johnson by simply providing context to Boris’s infamous piccaninnies comment: ‘And so on to the next bunch of grinning piccaninnies.’
In this video he goes a little further, describing the Unicef reps that chauffeured them around Uganda as a “couple of Swedish lesbians,” which leads me into another of Rod’s observations that came towards the end of the conversation, on the (infamous) Muslim protests against “gay education” that have been taking place outside a Birmingham primary school.
“On this one,” confesses Rod, “I’m with the Muslims” much to the bemusement of Carswell.
So what do we make of it?
I know what I make of it, but this is a blog post, not a doctoral thesis, so I’ll leave it there.
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Another interesting point I have to add (well, I’m not compelled to by law, but I feel obliged to do so) Is that Rod clearly states that although the BBC is clearly biased to the left, it cannot be accused of supporting Jeremy Corbyn. This is true.
Much as I might prefer it if the Corbyn/Milne/ McDonnell axis were not given any air time at all, I do realise that to insist on such a thing would be even madder than demanding the BBC no-platforms anyone to the right of the aforementioned trio. However, there are people who think that is a perfectly reasonable demand. For example, the ones who get all irate at the very appearance on TV of anyone not openly hostile to Israel.
When David Keighley launched his crowd-funded legal challenge to the Beeb, which I understand is based on the BBC’s weak methodology (particularly with regard to anti-Brexit bias) several donors commented that the bias they found most troubling was the BBC’s bias against Jeremy Corbyn.
It is interesting (to me) that BBCWatch, which focuses on the factual omissions and inaccuracies within the BBC’s coverage of Israel and the Palestinians, continually offers specific examples to illustrate the BBC breaching its own editorial guidelines. In other words, BBCWatch bases its critiques on objective analyses, albeit from a subjective (pro-Israel) angle.
Here is an example of the opposite camp attempting to use the BBC’s editorial guidelines to underpin its (pro-Corbyn) angle. An outfit called Media Reform Coalition attempts to debunk the BBC’s Panorama Programme on antisemitism in the Labour Party by pitting specific quotes from the editorial guidelines on impartiality and accuracy against examples they have selected from the programme. I'm not so sure it stands up to scrutiny, but what do you make of it?
Note to self. This is a blog post, not a novel, so I’ll leave it there.
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Did anyone else watch the first two of Kathy Burke’s C4 films, ‘All Women’?
It wasn’t on the BBC of course, but I’ve been scouring the reviews to see what the rest of the world made of them.
On the theme of luvvies morphing from actor to opinionista, this was quite high on a scale of validity (in terms of the actual justification of going ahead with the project) as opposed to certain other actor or actresses political advocacy for want of any better examples.
Kathy Burke had a genuinely enquiring approach to the topics she chose to feature. The ‘appearance’ episode was entertaining, although the relative superficiality of the film’s treatment of that particular topic was equal to the obvious superficiality of the topic itself. Especially as it was made-for-TV, a medium that virtually depends on physical appearance for its continuing existence - particularly where wimmin are concerned.
Do I make myself clear? It’s blindingly obvious to state that beauty is only skin deep, but it’s also quite trite, and coming from someone who describes her own appearance in the appropriately derogatory terms, well, she would say that, would she not?
I think Ms Burke is - was - a terrific comic actress. her “Perry” to Enfield’s Kevin was brilliant especially in the ‘our kid’ from Manchester episode, and her Waynetta was a delight.
But the defiant stuff about her chin had a hollow ring and when you saw her waddling along you couldn’t help thinking that she could have done with losing a few tons in the name of longevity if nothing else.
I wonder how many ‘fucks’ they needed to convey “edgy”? Or defiance and rebelliousness? Billy Connolly put me off the gratuitous ‘fuck’ when he got lazy with the jokes and liberal with the expletives. Not that I mind hearing the odd ‘fuck’ blurted out especially at times when it seems so much more expressive than any other swearword could possibly be. Sorry, but the swearing here was actually tedious and didn’t enhance Kathy’s image for me.
The motherhood thing was interesting. I imagine there was something deeply psychological in Kathy’s decision to not have children - because she seemed quite fond of children and even actual babies.
As a mother (which Andrea Leadsom once said, famously scuppering her hopes of ever becoming Prime Minister) I think not having children allows you to remain ‘as selfish as an average infant’ your whole life through. It’s hard to be quite as selfish ‘as a mother’ as you were before yer kids came along. I think the current trend favours selfishness (in women.) Is that a good or a bad thing?
Utter selfishness is quite unattractive, but so is in-yer-face-selflessness.
It's time to either ban the Edinburgh Fringe once and for all, or (better) to no-platform anyone whose is considered 'funny', as 'being funny' is a gendered, racist synonym for 'being bigoted'.
Let true comedians, like BBC comedian Milton Jones (who gave us the only truly successful joke in the Top Ten), take the truly edgy route of true comedy and attack those who truly deserve to be milkshaked or clobbered by jokes - namely, Brexit supporters, the Duke of Edinburgh and the old.
"What's driving Brexit? From here it looks like it's probably the Duke of Edinburgh", quipped the mighty Milton - surely the equal of John Milton (another noted wit).
That's the kind of biting, bang-on-the-mark joke right-thinking BBC Radio 4 audiences laugh their well-chosen, vegan-sympathetic socks off about every day on BBC Radio 4, uproariously. So, therefore, it must be funny.
*******
But, alas, not everyone's like Milton: For instance, to make a joke out of mental illness is appalling. We can all agree about that. All my multiple personalities are unanimous about that too. And France's greatest heroes - Napoleon and President Macron and St. Dominic of Grieve (who are also me, as you probably know) - also agree about that. The 'second-best' joke this year - "Someone stole my antidepressants. Whoever they are, I hope they're happy" - is, therefore, one of the most offensive things EVER. I've spent the entire day sobbing with rage over it and re-reading my teenage Sylvia Plath tribute poem over and over and over again. "Aunty, Aunty, you bi*ch, I'm through", etc. The white, middle-aged, male so-called 'comedian' behind it should be hounded off every stage in the country and then arrested and put in solitary confinement in the same cell with like-minded bigots like Tommy Yaxley Casciani of the EDL.
*******
The 'fourth-best' joke - "A cowboy asked me if I could help him round up 18 cows. I said, 'Yes, of course. That's 20 cows'" by Jake Lambert - fails to give testimony to the suffering of native Americans at the hand of cowboys - white racists like him. This so-called 'comedian' (white, middle-aged, male) is, and let's speak truth to power here and tell it straight, nothing but a racist. He - as a racist - needs to educate himself by watching the Disney documentary 'Pocahontas' which detailed the oppression of native Americans (like the story's lead character, voiced by leading American actress and follower of the Stanislavski system Dame Elizabeth Warren) at the hand of white, racist, middle-aged, male cowboys like this racist racist Jake Lambert.
*******
But it was the 'winning joke' that REALLY made my blood boil. I literally couldn't be more offended. David Lammy should find out the white, racist bigot of a so-called 'comedian' who told this and punch his *%^&*$£ing fascist lights out, gently and kindly. Arse. This *%^&*$£ing fascist mocked sufferers of Tourtette's Syndrome. I stand shoulder-to-arse with all Tourette's sufferers in finding this arse truly beyond the *%^&*$£ing pale: "I keep randomly shouting out 'broccoli' and 'cauliflower' - I think I might have florets." I was going to *%^&*$£ing complain but, according to the *%^&*$£ing BBC arse, someone got there first:
People with Tourette's angered after Swedish comedian Olaf Falafel's joke wins award at Edinburgh Fringehttps://t.co/nVcjdgxTds
A remarkably resilient Owen Jones, bright, shiny and unscathed after a 3am assault by numerous far-right thugs.
I’m a white guy with a media platform. There are people out there - members of minorities in particular - who are being targeted and physically attacked. There is an increasingly violent far right in British society and abroad” @OwenJones84pic.twitter.com/sbMGibmuiA
“Tommy Robinson ….a convicted far-right thug of…of..
“..of the EDL” interjected Shaun Ley, helpfully.
There are many other aspects to this fiasco that one could mention if one had the energy, but I do think the BBC should be made aware that Tommy Robinson shouldn’t be labelled “of the EDL" because that is misleading and it looks extremely biased.
Trump’s "Muslim ban." That's how Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib describe Israel’s last-minute decision to ban them from their proposed tour of Palestine, the non-existent state that non-exists in Israel.
Of course, they can’t actually go to Israel while boycotting it. That would be hypocritical!
You might have noticed there’s a particular type of spin attached to the reporting of a decision that turns out to be the gift that strikes two of the media’s least favourite birds - Trump and Israel - with one stone.
There are numerous examples of this spin, but let’s stick to the BBC. (1m 24s)
Newshour and The World Tonight featured two ‘anti” interviewees. The poisonous hag (sorry) Hanan Ashrawi who giggled with forced amusement at any question she deemed preposterous while making the ultimate preposterous statement herself, namely “Israel cannot tolerate dissent!”.
Next to reinforce the BBC’s disapproval was Yaakov Katz of the Jerusalem Post, whose argument against the ban came through as deluded naivety. He hoped the two democratically elected congresswomen ‘might see how open Israel is”. A likely scenario (I don’t think.)
However, a lengthier presentation of this development came with Beyond 100 Days. Katty Kay and David Eades (sitting in for Christian Fraser) with the help of Tom Bateman and Chris Buckler.
All were in default anti-Trump mode. While Katty Kay was probably quite correct to speculate that President Trump was using this opportunity to divide the Democratic Party (a shrewd move perhaps) by ‘tarring the whole party with the “views they (Omar and Tlaib) might have,” the actual views “they might have” were played down. Hardly mentioned (not mentioned) was the fact that the pair’s proposed itinerary left hardly any space (no space at all ) for any of the so-called ‘reaching out” that rose-coloured specs-wearing pro-Israel opponents of the ban hoped for.
Rather than detailing the anti-Israel /antisemitic histories of these two ladies, they glossed them over with the pared-down, cavalier “having been critical of Israel.’ Someone mentioned: “coming with open eyes, open ears and open minds.” (As if!) Buckler even revived the truncated “Go back to their own countries” theme, which I mistakenly assumed had been discredited for good.
Ilhan Omar has announced. “This is Trump’s Muslim ban being implemented.”
If you think this move by Israel is a bit of an own goal - and in many ways, that’s what it looks like, try thinking again.
Take, for example, the ‘bans’ our own country has implemented over the years. Take the bans that many of us consider having been unwarranted, for example when the Home Office banned Geert Wilders, Robert Spencer, Pamela Geller, Lauren Southern, bans we opposed in the name of freedom of speech. These voices should be heard, we said.
But how many of the people we wanted to hear were seriously coming with “open eyes, open ears and open minds.” Is it likely that Geert Wilders would have gone to one of Luton’s or Birmingham’s many Mosques to ‘learn’ about the beauty of Sharia from one of the imams? Perhaps he would then go back to Holland and say “Hey guys, I was a bit harsh on Islam. Forget the whole Fitna thing and bring it on”.
On the opposite side of the coin, look at the case of ‘Jews bake bread out of babies’ blood’ Raed Salah. He managed to evade the ban although I’m not sure if he was able to take up the invitation to take tea on the terrace with Jeremy Corbyn, but I’m pretty sure that nothing he did or saw in the UK helped moderate his antisemitic views or did much towards promoting peace and goodwill.
So I would speculate that Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib had no more intention of ‘learning’ anything at all from their Ashrawi-sponsored tour of Palestine.
I have to say that certain individuals who claim they are only defending their right to exercise free speech are in fact hellbent on crying ‘Fire’ in a crowded theatre. So on this occasion, Israel’s US-inspired decision is probably the right thing to do.
Meanwhile, Rashida Tlaib has been granted the right to enter the Israeli-occupied West Bank on humanitarian grounds. She has a 90-year-old grandmother there. The proviso is that she would “not promote boycotts” during her visit.
Silencing me & treating me like a criminal is not what she wants for me. It would kill a piece of me. I have decided that visiting my grandmother under these oppressive conditions stands against everything I believe in--fighting against racism, oppression & injustice. https://t.co/z5t5j3qk4H
I’ve been thinking about this for a while now. I haven’t written about it for two main reasons.
One, it would have made me look meaner and even more of a fanatical polemicist that I already do, and two, the subject is more nuanced, subjective and infused with a good deal more shades of grey than the traditional fifty. It’s also firmly embedded in emotional and a-historical folk-weavery than I can ever presume to tackle alone.
This is not the first time that we’ve featured this author here. The ITBB search engine reveals that he is no stranger to a particular brand of sentimental Palestinian folklore; saccharine, emotional heartstring-tugging - the Disneyfied narrative of the Palestinian Nakba and the complete absence within that narrative of accountability for their own ‘plight’.
Realistically I have to accept that something of this is entrenched in the national psyche, but what I find incomprehensible is the way that swathes of intelligent people have swallowed it whole - hook, line and giant rusty key.
‘It’s not just me saying it’ as every political advocate currently says to bolster whatever case they’re advocating. BBC Watch addresses the matter with the gusto and rigour that I cannot adequately muster. Shehadeh’s memoir popped up on Radio 4’s Sunday Morning with…(Scottish edition)
“Raja Shehadeh and Penny Johnson live in Ramallah in the occupied West Bank. They’re both writers and campaign for Palestinian civil and political rights. They talk to Sally about their writing and their life together.”
Shehadeh’s allegations of ‘land grabs’ and “building more and more settlements” – along with a subsequent claim that Israel makes “attempts at making [Palestinian] people leave” – are patently false.
Magnusson however again failed to make any effort whatsoever to challenge those blatant falsehoods and closed the item shortly afterwards with yet another misleading reference to “fifty years of occupation”.
In short, BBC Radio Scotland audiences heard twelve minutes of entirely predictable yet totally unquestioned political propaganda which not only failed to “help people understand” the subject matter but actively hindered that BBC obligation.
It may be the Scottish version, but it’s still the BBC. So what else can we expect?
This has something to do with the way the BBC has started to use ‘inclusive’ language to make Islamic culture as cosy and familiar as our own. The throw-away term “Friday Prayers’ is now used as fondly as “Sunday Lunch” and the term ‘Eid’ has become Eid al-Adha’ and we are confronted by BBC anchors like Jane Hill using the full-on Arabic pronunciation. Mona Siddiqui’s TFTD hammered the nail home firmly on this morning's Today Programme. (1:46:53)
But worse. Perhaps in the same spirit in which the Spectator brought in Julie Bindel to counteract Melanie McDonagh’s critique of Lauren Laverne’s approach to Desert Island Discs - presumably “for balance” - our last remaining refuge from creeping left-wing journalism has published a glowing review of Shehadeh’s latest work of fiction.
Going Home: A Walk Through Fifty Years of Occupation
Raja Shehadeh Claire Kohda Hazelton
On a rainy day in 1955, four-year-old Raja Shehadeh left school without putting his coat on. ‘I will soon be home, I thought, trailing the coat as it became heavy with rain.’ The walk was longer than he expected, or the rain heavier. He arrived back soaked through and fell ill with pneumonia. The journey home, without protection from the weather, could have killed him.
Should have put his coat on then?
Throughout his life in Palestine, Shehadeh has been buffeted by events that have seemed as uncontrollable as the weather. He was a very young child when his family were forced out of Jaffa by Israeli soldiers and moved to Ramallah, and 16 during the Israeli invasion of the city.
For nearly 30 years, Shehadeh — a lawyer, activist and writer — has taken a walk every year on the anniversary of the 1967 war and occupation of Palestine by Israel. The year of this book is 2017 —the 50th anniversary — and Shehadeh is 66, plagued by a recurring dream in which he is lost and can’t find his home.
Has he forgotten who started the ’67 war “and occupation of Palestine”? which by the way, was an intended war of annihilation.
Thankfully the below the line comments restore a modicum of common sense.
avi15 • 4 days ago • edited This article is the usual drivel. It gives the same misleading impression as the eastern European lady in my local high street, who sits on the pavement looking all pathetic and begging; and then, when she thinks no-one is looking she nips into the post office to send all her winnings back to eastern Europe and at the end of the day, she jumps into a not that old Toyota Auris parked round the corner.
Do we really have to fall for all of this guff? There are a million reasons why houses are demolished: normally, it has to do with not bothering with things like planning permission. If the Palestinian leaders wanted to make a deal and sort out their dispute with Israel, they easily could - they just don't want to. They're clearly making far too much money begging, looking all pathetic and hoping that one day the world will let them grab all of Israel and kill or expel all of its Jewish inhabitants.
Don't fall for this rubbish - which only serves to perpetuate the rule of fascist, anti-Semitic criminals - which is what both Palestinian regimes currently amount to.
And by the way, no-one "stole the Palestinians' land'. That's another lie they repeat to anyone gullible enough to listen, but which is used to justify any and every crime of violence, however heinous, that they commit.
This whole topic is one big confidence trick. A scam, really. It’s like that ad for equity release that features the most annoying elderly couple in the whole wide world saying “this nice young man has offered us twopence ha’penny for our house, so we took it straight away.”
Or, the most mind-boggling example of human gullibility on the planet in which the police took the testimony of that palpably raving psychopath and transparently delusional man Beech and used it to vilify and destroy people who found themselves defenceless and broken in the most Kafkaesque way imaginable.
Especially sharp-eyed (or snaked-eyed) regulars might remember me posting, from time-to-time, semi-gratuitous YouTube videos of Spaghetti Western scores by Ennio Morricone - the man behind the coyote calls, the whipcracks, the grunts, the whistles and the unforgettable tunes of Sergio Leone's Dollars trilogy (A Fistful of Dollars, For a Few Dollars More and The Good, The Bad and The Ugly), plus the haunting harmonicas and gritty guitars of Leone's mighty Once Upon a Time in the West - and, oh, so much more besides.
I love those films, though I believe it's the music that mainly makes them so special for me.
I probably ought to watch more films. But they're mostly too long and, besides, I've got Mark Mardell and Mark Easton to attend to.
Once at work a temp guy who loved his films began asking me if I'd seen such and such a film. I said 'no'. He went on. I went on replying the same. It went on for ages. Hours even. He even tried again the next day. He couldn't believe his ears.
My taste in films isn't overly sophisticated. I like Star Trek movies, Japanese Godzilla films of the 1950s to the 1970s, Carry On films, Hitchcock, the odd James Stewart or Cary Grant film, The African Queen, Some Like It Hot, a few Glen Ford westerns and - of course - my beloved Sergio Leone Spaghetti Westerns (plus the Don Spiegel-directed Morricone-scored Two Mules for Sister Sarah), and The Naked Gun and Airplane.
Most of my experience of cinema-going was a girlfriend-pleasing thing. She liked kiddies' films and horror films and took me to see plenty of both, bless her.
(I seriously loathe horror films, or any films with violence against women. It verges on a phobia with me).
I particularly remember being taken to watch The Lion King in Lancaster's now-defunct central cinema.
The film was ear-splittingly loud (as is the way of modern cinemas) but even that was no match for the hordes of young kids leaping up and down throughout and shouting and screaming at an intensity that would surely have shamed Douglas Adams's (Roger Waters and Dave Gilmour, Pink Floyd-inspired) megagroup Disaster Area - "the loudest band in the galaxy".
So many little mouths, so many decibels.
The little ones managed to pretty much drown out Elton John entirely (something some people might think to be no bad thing at all. But how can anyone really hate the singer of Your Song?).
Ah, Douglas Adams and Disaster Area. Time for a long quote:
The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy notes that Disaster Area, a plutonium rock band from the Gagrakacka Mind Zones, are generally held to be not only the loudest rock band in the Galaxy, but in fact the loudest noise of any kind at all. Regular concert-goers judge that the best sound balance is usually to be heard from within large concrete bunkers some thirty-seven miles from the stage, whilst the musicians themselves play their instruments by remote control from within a heavily insulated spaceship which stays in orbit around the planet – or more frequently around a completely different planet.
Their songs are on the whole very simple and mostly follow the familiar theme of boy-being meets girl-being beneath a silvery moon, which then explodes for no adequately explored reason.
Many worlds have now banned their act altogether, sometimes for artistic reasons, but most commonly because the band’s public address system contravenes local strategic arms limitation treaties.
This has not, however, stopped their earnings from pushing back the boundaries of pure hypermathematics, and their chief research accountant has recently been appointed Professor of Neomathematics at the University of Maximegalon, in recognition of both his General and Special Theories of Disaster Area Tax Returns, in which he proves that the whole fabric of the space-time continuum is not merely curved, it is in fact totally bent.”
This week's episode focused on Spaghetti Westerns. And it wasn't all Ennio Morricone and Lee Van Cleef. It also looked at the lesser lights who slung their guns and smoked their smouldering cheroots in Ennio's mountain-like shadow.
And it was all fascinating stuff, though no one got anywhere near approaching Maestro Morricone in terms of being The Maestro of 'this kind of thing'.
But what anecdotes Matthew told us along the way!
For example:
'Spaghetti Western' is the name we give to films set in the Wild West but shot in Europe.
But this is something that British film-makers had been doing years before A Fistful of Dollars.
The Singer Not The Song was shot in Spain by The Rank Organisation in 1960 and, instead of Clint Eastwood or Charles Bronson, it has Dirk Bogarde as a bandit calledAnacleto - which was also the name of a Pizza Express dessert, now sadly discontinued.
Its director, Roy Ward Baker, always described it as "that dreadful film that put paid to my career", but I think he underestimated it.
What Roy did, quite in spite of himself, was to make a picture that John Waters would have been proud to put his name on - a gay Western starring Bogarde as a Mexican bandit and John Mills as the Irish priest for whom he develops a strange attraction.
Dirk took the role because he thought he was going to be smouldering opposite Peter Finch or Richard Burton and because he'd get to wear a pair of incredibly tight leather pants. When he found that Mills had been cast he was so angry that he vowed to make life hell for everyone concerned. Which he did. But, as Samantha Fox once sang, the pants stayed on.
And:
This wasn't, however, the first British Western shot on the European mainland. In 1958 the Hollywood veteran Raoul Walsh signed with Rank to direct The Sheriff of Fractured Jaw - an action comedy starring Kenneth More as a British gunsmith who finds himself the arbiter of law and order in a one-horse Western town. Jayne Mansfield was his co-star who, whilst she was in England, also found time to cut the ribbon on a crucial section of the Chiswick flyover. Her character sings in the picture but Mansfield doesn't. The voice emanating from her high escarpments is that of Connie Francis.
I like yarns like that.
Meanwhile, the 'classic score of the week' this week was from Ennio Morricone. And I'm going to feature its climax in context - the final duel from Once Upon a Time in the West:
Now, please, if you've never seen it and still want to see it, close your eyes. This is the glorious climatic scene of the film, that reveals everything and brings the bad guy in black (Henry Fonda) to realise, as he death-rattles his last (with a harmonica stuffed in his gob), just who exactly the good guy in white (Charles Bronson) actually is.
So if you don't want to see it, as you've not yet seen it, just listen instead.
But the music and the direction and the acting work together in ways that made cinema history. The actors were responding to Ennio's music, played live while they acted out their quasi-operatic scene of life and death and revenge, measuring their motions to the intense but leisurely measures of his music.
I'm looking out of my window and watching the large tree at the far end of next door's garden throwing its branches and leaves into all manner of histrionic gestures in the heavy wind of an unhappily-timed carnival weekend in Morecambe.
That arm-waving tree raises in my mind the (possibly Blackadder-inspired) idea of a melodramatic actor from the 18th Century, or a 21st Century BBC soap, or a Newsnight Brexit reporter.
I'm doing so while blissing out on the opening minutes of John Luther Adams's Become Desert - a soft-spoken murmur of quiet string chords and bell-chimes.
I must say that, though I'm meant to be imagining a desert, with JLA's lovely, floating music, I'm much more easily imagining myself lying awake at 5 o'clock in the morning on a Bhutanese mountain relishing a silence blessed only by the fluttering of prayer flags and temple bells.
Two things arise from that, perhaps: Firstly, my 'orientalist' dreamery about Bhutan and, secondly, the curious fact that not all music that has an evocative intent always spontaneously evokes in its listeners mind what it's meant to evoke.
I really don't get 'deserts' from JLA's magical ambient piece.
And now I'm drifting towards thinking of cowbells in the Austrian Tyrol on a late summer's evening, high above the white-green rivers and the pretty churches and the Spar shops. 'Tyroleanist' dreamery perhaps, except that I've been there as a teenage tourist with my mum and dad - a long, long time ago, back in the mid-80s - and I heard cowbells on actual Kurt Waldheim-voting cows.
Memories....
I also remember being laughed at by a couple on the coach trip for wearing a Hawaiian shirt and having long hair. And how gorgeous the flower-and-gold-bedecked graves were. And the trans hippy guy/gal with the handbag on the lift up to a glacier (like Neil from 'The Young Ones' with lipstick) - a pioneer.
Ah, and John Luther - thirty minutes in - is still giving me intoxicating bells and string smells. No melodies, just harmonies and long string chords and Sibelius-like brass and very quiet choral aaaaahs and bells, bells, bells. It probably ought to be boring, but isn't.
Maybe I've not been to enough deserts to appreciate how evocative of a desert this piece is (as you may guess, I've been to none) but, with the tree still overacting in the wind just beyond my window, I'm relishing its Bhutanese/Tyrolean quietness, and the lovely contrast.
And just now, a sudden eruption of soft sunlight has flowed in like a smile. (Not seen the sun for days).
Bliss.
Should I switch on the BBC News Channel now? Or the Pointless Celebrities special?
If Boris Johnson or Priti Patel were listening to the news bulletin on today's The World This Weekend I suspect they might not have enjoyed it very much.
The main angle - repeated at the end of the programme - was Labour's 'warning' about their law & order plans, and the way the BBC newsreader read out "a growing culture of insolence among thugs" made me chuckle for the sheer extravagance of the shift in his tone of voice to signal his (and the BBC's) distance from the non-u word "thugs".
It was yer actual report that really stood out though.
I know colouring things in make a blog look untidy, but I think it helps show the balance of a report. Here the bit in blue won't have ruined Boris and Priti's Sunday lunches but the bits in red might very well have done:
Newsreader: Labour has warned that government plans to combat crime, including the extension of stop and search powers, could lead to social unrest. Boris Johnson, who also plans to create 10,000 new prison places, says he wants to "counter the impression of a growing culture of insolence amongst thugs". Here is our political correspondent Mark Lobel:
Mark Lobel: Boris Johnson says "the time has come to take a stand against violent crime" with more police, harsher sentencing and more prison places, but the Government's now coming under pressure to answer detailed questions about the proposals. Kit Malthouse, the minister tasked with overseeing the recruitment of 20,000 new police officers, admitted on Sky this morning that he has yet to work out what the first wave - which will start to be recruited in a few weeks - will actually be doing. The policy of stop and search has in the past led to accusations of racial profiling and resentment in some communities. Some question whether it helps to cut crime at all. Number 10 has admitted to the BBC that today's extension of the tactic is based only on initial feedback from trials around the country, described as "very positive", rather than a full report which there are still awaiting. Labour say fewer police officers are being pledged that have been cut in recent years. And it's not clear how new these policies are either, with 10,000 prison places pledged back in 2016.
The bits in red are (I think) telling us:
(a) that the Government has failed to answer detailed questions about the proposals;
(b) that Kit Malthouse has 'fessed up that the Government doesn't know what the new police officers will be doing;
(c) that stop-and-search "has led to accusations" of racism and caused social cohesion problems;
(d) that "some question" whether it does any good whatsoever;
(e) that the Government has 'fessed up to basing its extension of stop-and-search "only" on incomplete evidence;
(f) that "Labour say" that Tory cuts make a nonsense of the plans; and
(g) that "it's not clear" (to Mark?) that these plans aren't just rehashed old pledges.
Whether extending stop-and-search is a good thing or not, this report is surely biased, don't you think, against the Johnsonian Government's plans?
