Comments on: Healthy Living Financial Times Interview

By: Petra

Petra — Mon, 30 Oct 2006 20:18:22 +0000

All this excersise and you’re still a big wiggly lump of marshmallow.

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By: raincoaster

raincoaster — Sat, 21 Oct 2006 07:32:28 +0000

That’s nothing. Daily Kos did an analysis where they took the front page of CNN.com and stripped out the advertising, advertorials, “synergized marketing,” and meaningless feelgood non-news. They ended up with something like nine lines of text. Would dig out the link, but have been at a writer’s conference all day pimping the Shebeen Club and as perhaps you know, most of the action at a conference is in the bar. My research skillz r not @ their finest.

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By: idlex

idlex — Sat, 21 Oct 2006 04:26:39 +0000

I gave up reading the Times, the Guardian, and the Telegraph for much the same reasons.

This is an outright lie.

I gave up reading the Times because their printers went on strike for a year. It used to have a great letters page, and Bernard Levin.

I next took up with the Guardian, and Jill Tweedie. I only gave up the Guardian when they started adding on supplement after another, to the point where it took a whole rain forest to print a single issue of the darn thing.

I started reading the Telegraph, rather against my will, because it happened to be the household newspaper. I was told that it had the best news sections of any paper, if it was a bit short on considered opinion. But when the Telegraph started printing obscure web pages as news, I stopped believing even in their vaunted news reporting integrity.

The Independent, as I knew it 10 years ago, was a sober newspaper. But in it’s current manifestation it has become degraded into a vehicle for a kind of cultural terrorism. Global Warming. Bird Flu’. Etc.

I’ve given up. I no longer read any newspaper at all.

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By: idlex

idlex — Sat, 21 Oct 2006 04:05:30 +0000

I’m not a great radio listener, Paul. Listening to Di Luke was an enchanted aberration. As was listening to Radio 5 a few years ago. My greatest radio experience was, perhaps, to listen to Neil Armstrong step onto the surface of the Moon in 1969 or whenever.

I recently gave up reading the Independent, simply because it was no longer the balanced paper I knew when I first started reading it some 10 years ago, but is now dedicated, as someone said somewhere, to “misanthropes and cranks”. I should remark that I gave up reading the Times, the Guardian, and the Telegraph for much the same reasons.

I hate most television, except documentaries. It’s apparently all going to to go difital (I think I’ll leave that typo in) in the next few years. But I’m not sure I can really be bothered. I didn’t have a TV set when Neil Armstrong landed on the Moon, and I’m not sure why I need one now.

And over the last few days, all TV channels have been mounting an attack on women who wear burqas (or maybe parkas). And it’s an attack that is being mounted by our b*st*rd Prime Minister, no less. I profoundly hate every single day this man continues to be our Prime Minister.

I belong to the 60’s generation. I went through the whole darn thing, flower power shirts and all. And we were as demonised then as Muslims are now. Indeed, we still remain demonised, us ancient would-be hippies. But the latest new crime is not to smoke cannabis, but to smoke tobacco. I’ve seen it all before.

It’s just that Evil Eye…

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By: PaulD

PaulD — Fri, 20 Oct 2006 01:23:42 +0000

And anyway does this Samantha ever say anything on this radio show?

Idlex, you astound me. This sounds like someone who has never heard the finest 30 minutes on the radio calendar… the one remaining reason I do not emigrate. I cannot believe it of you.

And no, she never speaks. That’s the whole point.

Humph: “Samantha has been helping the elderly archivist collect records from the higher shelves in the library. She climbs the ladder and passes the record down to him, whereupon he cleans the dust and wax off beneath her.”

(Probably wasted as we’ve all moved on to Elgar)

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By: raincoaster

raincoaster — Thu, 19 Oct 2006 20:04:21 +0000

Being Canadian, she was probably wearing a parka, not a burqa.

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By: idlex

idlex — Thu, 19 Oct 2006 19:26:37 +0000

The chairman, the lugubrious Humphrey Lyttelton, makes constant reference to The Lovely Samantha who is, we suspect, nothing more than a figment of the audience’s imagination. Rather like Melissa was until Newmania went and spoilt it! (PaulD)

He didn’t spoil it at all. He confirmed my prior convictions. And Emma Peel is, and always will be, the ageless star of the Avengers. Although I suspect that Melissa wears glasses, and spends most of her day sending text messages.

And anyway does this Samantha ever say anything on this radio show? It reminds me that I used once to listen to a late-night radio show featuring a Canadian DJ called Di Luke. She had a gorgeous Canadian purring bedroom voice (Americans mostly have harsh, screechy voices by comparison with Canadians), and I would listen not to the tedious music she played, but to her between-track commentary. One night she was running a phone-in quiz, and I got one answer right before anyone else, dialed the number, and found myself – Oh, Heaven – actually talking to her.

I have no idea what she looked like. She may as well have been wearing a burqa. It didn’t matter.

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By: raincoaster

raincoaster — Thu, 19 Oct 2006 16:54:27 +0000

newmania, did you lock down Boris’ vote for Mayor of London? No good showing up for these things if you don’t get them to sign on the dotted line.

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By: Melissa

Melissa — Thu, 19 Oct 2006 12:56:56 +0000

PaulD & idlex

lol

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By: Melissa

Melissa — Thu, 19 Oct 2006 12:46:14 +0000

ps loved meeting JT too – ace (and a chum of newmania’s)

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