Is £500,000 worth it for Dahl’s hut?
A shrine for Saint Roald and Saint Rowling (from today's Guardian) Roald Dahl's family is seeking £500,000 (US $790,300 at current rates) to transfer the hut in which the late author wrote some of...
Category: Arts
What’s wrong with sleepovers, exactly?
I saw an article by Amy Chua, the Chinese-American academic, in which she proclaims herself a “tiger mother” and tells the world that Chinese mothers (or maybe she means mothers from a particular group...
Casualty and ME: turning reality on its head
I got a reply from someone at the BBC Complaints department, which (much like the response to my earlier complaint about male rape jokes) wasn’t so much an apology as a self-justification. It included...
The cute nurse and the abusive ME patient (updated)
After the Gilderdale story made headlines this past January (and the other coverage of assisted suicide and mercy killing that happened around the same time), I was expecting both stories to be featured in...
Rape is not funny. Yes, even when it’s George Michael. (updated)
A couple of hours ago I went downstairs to chat to my sis who is visiting with her little girl, and one of the new generation of comedy shows, Mock the Week, was on....
Is the iPhone really a design classic?
London Design festival: Has British design lost its way? | Art and design | The Guardian There’s a feature in today’s Guardian about the Anti Design Festival, which starts this coming Saturday in London...
Me on the Late Show: transcript
Yesterday (Saturday) morning, I got to speak on the Late Show with Joanne Good on BBC London (94.9FM). She was doing a feature on bad comedy, specifically an incident in which Frankie Boyle, a...
Ricky Gervais on ME, and other bad comedy
Yesterday I had a brief exchange of tweets with Organica, who told me of her enthusiasm for the British comedian, Ricky Gervais, best known for writing and starring in The Office, his stand-up shows,...
Polanski versus Gary Glitter
Yakoub Islam (on Facebook) linked this video, in which Chris Rock compares Roman Polanski to OJ Simpson: People are defending Roman Polanski because he made some good movies? Are you kidding me? He made...
Planning decisions are never democratic
There is a letter in today’s Guardian in response to the long saga of the intervention by the Prince of Wales in the planning dispute in Chelsea. The letter is from Georgine Thorburn of...
England people not very nice
Letter: Why I’ve withdrawn from National debate | Stage | The Guardian A letter from Rabina Khan (this one, possibly) on why she’s pulled out of the debate on the National Theatre play, England...
When the medium is The Message
It has been reported that The Message, a film about the arrival of Islam which featured Anthony Quinn in the original, is being remade, this time with Muslim actors and set around Makkah and...
Muslim review of “Jewel of Medina”
BBC NEWS: When Islam meets Bridget Jones This is a review by Shelina Zahra Janmohamed, the author of the Spirit21 blog (you can also find the review there). She concludes that the book is...
Racism or just commercial sense?
The other week, I prepared a post about the controversy caused by the singer Estelle, whose song was top of the UK singles charts a couple of weeks ago, alleging that the singers being...
Intrusion as “art” or “journalism”
Right now the London South Bank Centre is playing host to the World Press Photo exhibition, containing “approximately 200 award-winning photographs from across the globe that capture the most powerful, moving and at times...
Reflections on “The Art of Integration”
Last week I got an invite, from Bint-eh Adam of Tranquilart fame, to attend the launch of Peter Sanders’ photographic essay The Art of Integration (you can see miniatures of the photos here and...
Rushdie’s knighthood and “courage”
Self-pitying, pretentious and ungrateful – so why has Rushdie been knighted? | the Daily Mail This is an article by Ruth Dudley-Edwards, criticising the decision to give a knighthood to the infamous Salman Rushdie....
BBC Radio – The British Mosque
Radio 4 – The British Mosque This is a BBC Radio 4 programme which was broadcast on Friday, which discusses the debates among architects involved in British mosque design, which actually has practices dedicated...
Joe Queenan: the recurring white hope
From Friday's Guardian film/music review section, Joe Queenan on a recurring theme in Hollywood films prominently featuring Africa or black people generally: that "no matter how bleak the situation seems, they can always rely...
Borat’s Kazakh is actually Hebrew
Guardian Film: Secret of Borat's fluent Kazakh – it's Hebrew From the Guardian website: not only is the "Kazakh" spoken by Sacha Baron Cohen in Borat actually Hebrew, but the film is full of...