More Edukashion

M'great mate David Skelton and I are engaged in a debate about representation in the House of Commons.

Well, I write "debate", but I've commented on an article he has written - a courtesy I don't extend to readers of this blog.

Nick Hornby's Spiritual Son

The best blog I have ever read* is Headscissors. This is one of Paul's finest ever posts. It's about football.

*I mean that. I don't just mean it's the funniest (although it is). And I am including political blogs (most of which aren't much cop) and websites run by newspapers. Headscissors is everything a blog should be: unique, insightful, readable (a surprisingly uncommon quality) and true. It really deserves a much wider audience.

A Helpful Contribution

What evidence exists that suggests that dinosaurs were particularly sexist?

What To Do With The BBC

Despite being a right wing firebrand, I don't want the BBC to be destroyed. It is an enormously important British institution and the fact that there is a great deal wrong with it is no reason to give up on it. Far from it.

I have long favoured subscription. The licence fee is ever more indefensible and anachronistic in a multi-media age, but the absence of adverts during movies and longer programmes is welcome. (Although the corporation advertises itself quite a lot.) So why not let people sign up to a panoply of BBC services if they want to, and not if they don't?

Yet the notion that the BBC flourishes because it is free from commercial pressures is a nonsense. First of all, it chases ratings like the most whorish business. Most of its programmes serve no "public service" ideal whatsoever, and those that do are often inferior to the best that Channel Four has to offer.

And this article by Peter Sissons shows starkly how the corporation has grown fat and self-satisfied (yes, I know I can talk) and needs to lose its sense of entitlement.

The licence fee - collected in a way that would shame the most dastardly highwayman - must be abolished, and the BBC needs an injection of fresh (but not necessarily younger) blood and new (or rather old and conservative) ideas.

And by the way, we can handle seeing middle-aged female presenters on our screens, and would welcome it.

All You Need To Know About How To Do Comedy

"I'm not going to apologise for being true to myself. My strategy is to make me laugh. If there's anyone in the world like me, that's a bonus."

Ricky Gervais sums up in a nutshell the approach that every single comedian should take to their craft.

Feel Better About Seemingly Irrational Hatred!

I - quite genuinely - find boring people offensive. I don't think that being boring is a morally neutral matter.

Samira Ahmed

I worked at Channel Four News last year. (Yeah I know! Me of all people! Ahahahaha!)

M'former senior colleague Samira Ahmed - who is an outstanding newsreader, journalist and correspondent - has a new website. Do check it out. She's a bone fide star.

If Frank Turner Took Steroids ...

... he might look rather like Carl Hayman.