Celebrities Category
Celebrity news & gossip from the world’s showbiz and glamour magazines (OK!, Hello, National Enquirer and more). We read them so you don’t have to, picking the best bits from the showbiz world’s maw and spitting it back at them. Expect lots of sarcasm.
Anne-Marie and Ant McPartlin get top-billing in the Sun
Any more puff in the Sun’s piece on Ant McPartlin and the paper would be classed as a Class B drug. As the record shows, Ant is a drink driver scheduled to reappear as the lovable host of Britain’s Got Talent. Just in time for his return to the public eye on his own terms (see court case), Ant stands before the Sun and blinds his with his loveliness and his love for his now ex-wife’s former PA.
Ant says his new lover, one Anne-Marie Corbett, is his “rock”. “She’s a beautiful soul.” She is “the most wonderful true woman”. He then harps on: “I don’t feel the need to defend Anne-Marie but I will say you’ve got to be careful judging other people’s relationships or what you think is the truth that’s been put out there.” As for the ex-wife, Lisa Armstrong, well, Ant notes in a story on the Sun’s font page: “‘She can live her life how she wants to live her life and say what she wants but I prefer to keep that private.” It’ll go no further with us, Ant.
So Ant’s back on the magic box with Dec. And it’s Ant ‘n’ Dec all over again – but not Dec ‘n’ Ant. The big star comes first and the sidekick second – see Batman and Robin, Jesus and Mary, Simon and Garfunkel, and Robson and Jerome. Like it not, Ant is the bigger deal. It’s not by accident that his name comes first. Nonsense , of course. It’s just an alphabetical thing. So it was Ant and Lisa; and now it’s Anne-Marie and Ant. Fair’s fair, Lisa…
Posted: 20th, January 2019 | In: Celebrities, News, Tabloids | Comment
Daily Telegraph subs confuse Jemima Khan with Jemima Lewis
Jemima Lewis is the Daily Telegraph’s radio critic and columnist. Jemima Khan isn’t. The Daily Telegraph is no longer sub-edited in house. Not that you’d notice…
Posted: 16th, January 2019 | In: Broadsheets, Celebrities, Key Posts, News | Comment
Bros find success in failure – 1980s band enjoy fame after documentary ridicule
The answer to the stuttering refrain “When will I, will I be famous?” was simple: when you’re shaggable, have pop star hair and write a catchy tune the promoters love. Now Bros, who asked the question in 1987, have triggered a new answer to it: when nostalgia bites and you become the nation’s pet thickos. And so it is that after a documentary brought them to back to the fore, Surrey-born Matt and Luke Goss – the other part of the original Bros band, Craig Logan, is busy – have announced they will be performing a comeback show in London.
For those of you missed the Decembeer 2017 BBC documentary Bros: After The Screaming Stops, here are a few choice cuts:
The lovely irony is that the documentary followed twins Matt and Luke as they reunited ahead of their ill-fated 2017 tour. Showing us failure has resulted in success.
And you too can be famous – just as soon as “you’ve read Karl Marx
/ And you’ve taught yourself to dance.”
Posted: 14th, January 2019 | In: Celebrities, Key Posts, Music, News, TV & Radio | Comment
Passenger turns her airport purgatory into a 1980s-style pop video
Tweeter @katiemgould kept her blood moving as she waited four hours for a plane by making this video to You Make My Dreams by Hall & Oates. The cat in the video is “my travel buddy Bowie”:
Posted: 11th, January 2019 | In: Music, Strange But True, The Consumer | Comment
Bob Einstein tells a funny and a revolting joke
Bob Einstein has died aged 76. Best known for playing Marty Funkhouser in Larry David’s Curb Your Enthusiasm, Einstein is seen here telling a joke at a show Q&A.
Want to hear a joke? pic.twitter.com/wyYlSntXst
— William Mullally (@whmullally) January 3, 2019
And this – which is “revolting” and is very NSFW:
Goodbye Bob Einstein (aka Marty Funkhouser) and thank you for this joke. “I like that guy.” pic.twitter.com/dmOJDx4CT4
— Matt Wilstein (@mattwilstein) January 2, 2019
Here he is pulling over Liberace for playing too fast. Einstein is Officer Judy, the character who made his debut by lip-syncing to a Judy Collins record.
And not forgetting Super Dave:
Bob Einstein – November 20, 1942 – January 2, 2019.
Posted: 7th, January 2019 | In: Celebrities, News, TV & Radio | Comment
Top-Ho, Jeeves: Happy Public Domain Day 2019 – what you can use for free
It’s Public Domain Day, the moment when lots of old works become free to use. It’s a biggie this year because for 20 years nothing new has been released. In 1998 Disney and other copyright holders got the State to impose copyright restrictions for an additional 20 years. The 1998 Copyright Term Extension Act is a horror. Works from 1922, including James Joyce’s Ulysses, turned copyright free in 1998 but anything published the following year was protected. But from today music, book, posters, art, films and plays published in 1923 will be free of intellectual property restrictions. Dig in. Go create.
Jennifer Jenkins, director of the Duke Law School’s Center for the Study of the Public Domain, explains:
But now the drought is over. How will people celebrate this trove of cultural material? Google Books will offer the full text of books from that year, instead of showing only snippet views or authorized previews. The Internet Archive will add books, movies, music, and more to its online library. HathiTrust has made over 50,000 titles from 1923 available in its digital library. Community theaters are planning screenings of the films. Students will be free to adapt and publicly perform the music. Because these works are in the public domain, anyone can make them available, where you can rediscover and enjoy them. (Empirical studies have shown that public domain books are less expensive, available in more editions and formats, and more likely to be in print—see here, here, and here.) In addition, the expiration of copyright means that you’re free to use these materials, for education, for research, or for creative endeavors—whether it’s translating the books, making your own versions of the films, or building new music based on old classics.
Here are some samples from the American Public Domain Day List, as compiled by Jennifer Jenkins and Jamie Boyle at the Duke Center for the Public Domain.
Films
* The Hunchback of Notre Dame starring Lon Chaney
* Short films featuring Buster Keaton, Charlie Chaplin, Laurel and Hardy and Our Gang
* Animated films including Felix the Cat and Koko the Clown
* Safety Last!, directed by Fred C. Newmeyer and Sam Taylor, featuring Harold Lloyd
* The Ten Commandments, directed by Cecil B. DeMille
* The Pilgrim, directed by Charlie Chaplin
* Our Hospitality, directed by Buster Keaton and John G. Blystone
* The Covered Wagon, directed by James Cruze
* Scaramouche, directed by Rex Ingram
Books
* Joseph Conrad, The Rover
* Robert Frost’s poem “Stopping by the Woods on a Snowy Evening”
* Nikolay Gogol, Dead Souls
* Rudyard Kipling, Land and Sea Tales for Boys and Girls
* Edgar Rice Burroughs, Tarzan and the Golden Lion
* Agatha Christie, The Murder on the Links
* Winston S. Churchill, The World Crisis
* e.e. cummings, Tulips and Chimneys
* Robert Frost, New Hampshire
* Kahlil Gibran, The Prophet
* Aldous Huxley, Antic Hay
* D.H. Lawrence, Kangaroo
* Bertrand and Dora Russell, The Prospects of Industrial Civilization
* Carl Sandberg, Rootabaga Pigeons
* Edith Wharton, A Son at the Front
* P.G. Wodehouse, works including The Inimitable Jeeves and Leave it to Psmith
* Viginia Woolf, Jacob’s Room
Music
* Yes! We Have No Bananas, w.&m. Frank Silver & Irving Cohn
* Charleston, w.&m. Cecil Mack & James P. Johnson
* London Calling! (musical), by Noel Coward
* Who’s Sorry Now, w. Bert Kalmar & Harry Ruby, m. Ted Snyder
* Songs by “Jelly Roll” Morton including Grandpa’s Spells, The Pearls, and Wolverine Blues (w. Benjamin F. Spikes & John C. Spikes; m. Ferd “Jelly Roll” Morton)
* Works by Bela Bartok including the Violin Sonata No. 1 and the Violin Sonata No. 2
* Tin Roof Blues, m. Leon Roppolo, Paul Mares, George Brunies, Mel Stitzel, & Benny Pollack (There were also compositions from 1923 by other well-known artists including Louis Armstrong, Irving Berlin, George Gershwin, WC Handy, Oscar Hammerstein, Gustav Holst, Al Jolson, Jerome Kern, and John Phillip Sousa; though their most famous works were from other years.)
Spotter: Aleteia , Boing Boing
Posted: 1st, January 2019 | In: Film, Key Posts, Music, News | Comment
Thick and Williams pays millions in tribute to Marvin Gaye
Jackie Wilson, George Michael and a friend
Fools and wannabes borrow. Geniuses steal. Robin Thicke and Pharrell Williams are now millions of dollars lighter in the trousers after Marvin Gaye’s family proved beyond any doubt that the pair’s hit song Blurred Lines owned much to Gaye’s 1977 song Got to Give it Up. Thicke and Williams appealed the ruling and lost. Yesterday a new amended judgement confirmed the settlement.
The singers jointly owe damages of $2,848,846.50. Thicke must pay an additional $1,768,191.88. Williams and his publishing company must pay a further $357,630.97.
The Gaye family is also entitled to prejudgment interest on the damages award and respective profits against each of the signers, totalling $9,097.51. They are also entitled to 50 per cent of the songwriter and publishing revenue.
Marvin Gaye died in 1984. According to reports, when he was killed Marvin’s estate was $9.2 million in debt.
Posted: 13th, December 2018 | In: Money, Music, News | Comment
Ozzy Osbourne made it to 70
Ozzy Osbourne has made it to 70 – the full three score years and ten. Photographer Mark Weiss recalls his time with the rock star in the 1980s.
We just hit it off right from the start with my first shoot with him for the cover of CIRCUS magazine–, I was young and didn’t know crap. When I asked him to do something he did it he made it easy for me. He gave me my confidence. He was up for anything..from my first shoot with him in a pink tutu, to a shaved head, dressing up in drag or hoping around in a Easter bunny outfit. When Ozzy needed a new guitar player– I found him one.
‘Mark is like a member of our family. I remember meeting him on our first solo tour, when he was just a little kid with a camera at the front of the stage. We’d give him an All Access pass. Now he’s part of the family. We’ve had lots of memorable times together. Sometimes he can be a pain in the ass – he’s always got that camera and he’s always whistling to get your attention. And I go, “Will you fucking stop doing that?” But it’s good. He’s one of the good guys. Mark just appears when you’re standing around, and you go, “Oh, there you are!” If we’re doing anything and Mark wants to get in, we just let him in. He’s one of us.’
– Ozzy Osbourne
See lots more great photos of Ozzy and read the whole story at the stupendous Flashbak : “Ozzy Osbourne and Me: Shooting A Rock God in the 1980s.”
A DJ lesson from Grandmaster Flash – 1982
In 1982, Grandmaster Flash taught us how to be a DJ. Flash (nee Joseph Saddler on January 1, 1958) instructed us in cutting, scratching and mixing.
You can buy the console Led Zeppelin used to record Stairway to Heaven
The Helios console Led Zeppelin used it to record Stairway to Heaven is for sale. And that’s not all. The mixing desk is the combination of two recording consoles pulled together n 1996 by Elvis Costello and Squeeze’s Chris Difford.
This slice of history is for sale at Bonhams:
They used part of the Island Records Basing Street Studio 2 Helios Console (1970-1974) and part of Alvin Lee’s Helios console from Space Studios (1973-1979).
The two consoles were combined in 1996 after Difford and Costello acquired both from storage in order to set up their own studio HeliosCentric Studios ‘which would be for everyone to use – a chapel of music in a quiet spot.’ They sought advice from the original creator of Helios, Dick Swettenham, and carefully amalgamated the pair to create what is arguably one of Swettenham’s first, last, and largest project.
The newly combined console was installed on a peaceful farm in Rye that became a haven for musical artists and has been in constant use ever since. Artists who have used the console in both their original and amalgamated guises include: Led Zeppelin, Bob Marley & The Wailers, Eric Clapton, The Rolling Stones, George Harrison, Jeff Beck, Stephen Stills, Jimi Hendrix, Mott The Hoople, Cat Stevens, Free, KT Tunstall, Athlete, Paolo Nutini, Sia, Olly Murrs, Dido, Pet Shop Boys, Scouting For Girls, David Bowie, Paul Weller, Mud, Gary Barlow, Supergrass and Keane.
Department Specialist Claire Tole-Moir comments: ‘It is hard to overestimate how crucial a role this console has played in the British rock and pop scene. It is entirely unique, being an amalgamation of two already incredibly influential and important consoles, and in its current form has hosted some of the most popular bands of recent years. Songs and albums recorded on this bespoke console and its original parts rank among some of the most recognizable and best-loved pieces of music in existence, and have resulted in Grammys, Brit Awards and multiple number one spots. This console is a piece of Britain’s modern cultural history.’
Spotter; Dangerous Minds, Flashbak
Posted: 30th, November 2018 | In: Music, News, The Consumer | Comment
The strange death of Billie Carleton that triggered a moral panic and set British dugs policy for decades
One hundred years ago, just two weeks after the end of World War One, Billie Carleton, a 19-year-old actress staring in London’s West End, died of a drug overdose. The ramifications of her death lasted for decades. The gulls tory is a cracking read. By way a taster, here’s an extract from the story from the brilliant Flashbak.com:
The time was ripe for a moral panic, and in February 1916 cocaine was again mentioned in the newspapers when Horace Kingsley, an ex-soldier and ex-convict, and Rose Edwards, a London prostitute, were each given six months’ hard labour for selling cocaine to Canadian soldiers at a military camp in Folkestone. The day after the verdict, the Times’ medical correspondent came down hard on the drug: ‘Cocaine is more deadly than bullets,’ he wrote – an extraordinarily crass thing to write when in the preceding month alone about 10,000 British men had perished on the Western Front, many by bullets. The ignorant stupidity continued when he added that ‘most cocainomaniacs carry a revolver to protect themselves against imaginary enemies’. A few days later an H. C. Ross wrote to the same newspaper about ‘small silver matchboxes’ he had seen in well-known West-End jewellers that were designed to be sent to friends and loved ones on the front and which contained three tubes filled with tablets of morphine hydrochloride, to be taken when severely wounded. The letter concluded, ‘Morphiomania is a terrible malady.’ Which indeed it is, but possibly not of undue concern to a soldier who has just had his leg shot off.
A contemporary illustration of the ‘sordid’ opium party at Dover Street in September 1918.
The Times, ironically, had recently been carrying advertisements for preparations of morphine and cocaine by Harrods and Savory & Moore (Mayfair chemists and suppliers to King George V), describing them as a ‘useful present for friends at the front’. In February 1916, both stores were found guilty of selling morphine and cocaine contrary to restrictions contained in the 1908 Poisons and Pharmacy Act. The prosecutor, Sir William Glyn-Jones, secretary of the Pharmaceutical Society and practising barrister, made a point of saying that it was an ‘exceedingly dangerous thing for a drug like morphine to be in the hands of men on active service … it might have the effect of making them sleep on duty, or other very serious results’. Both Harrods and Savory & Moore were fined, albeit nominal amounts. In July 1916 Regulation 40B of the Defence of the Realm Act came into effect, which criminalised the possession or sale of opium or cocaine by anyone except licensed chemists, doctors and vets. Further domestic legislation followed after the war when the Treaty of Versailles contained a clause requiring signatories to introduce domestic drugs legislation. In Britain this evolved into the Dangerous Drugs Act 1920; this Act changed drug addiction to a penal offence, though up to then, within the medical profession, it had been treated as a disease.
Carleton’s death, seemingly of cocaine, and the subsequent inquest and court cases often featured on the front pages until April 1919, and both The Times and the Daily Express used the case as an excuse to run an investigation into London’s illicit drug trade…
Read it all: ‘Disgraceful Orgies’, ‘Unholy Rites’ and the Death of Billie Carleton 100 Years Ago
Posted: 28th, November 2018 | In: Celebrities, Key Posts | Comment
Elvis: ‘I was kidnapped and tortured’ and Brad Pitt loves Jennifer Aniston
Brad Pitt still loves Jennifer Aniston. The National Enquirer breaks the news. In doing so the magazine finds reason to restore Pitt and Aniston to its front page, which is lucky. We have to wade into the magazine, not reading more until page 10, where we learn of Brad’s “rekindled” romance with ex-wife No. 1 Jennifer Aniston.
A “source” tells that Brad has “never stopped loving Jen”. And what speaks more of timeless love than divorce, 13 years of separation and marriage to Angelina Jolie? Sainted Jolie will be doubtless delighted to learn that Jen is the only women Brad ever truly loved.
Bigger news from that that is news that Elvis Presley has been “kidnapped and tortured”. Can it be that didn’t die but was stolen to order, possibly by a nefarious Eastern mogul who wanted Elvis to croon for him and him alone?
The truth, according to the NE, is revealed in a “trove” of secret letters Elvis penned 50 years ago. Apparently in reaction to Harum Scarum, a 1965 movie flop starring the singer, thugs drugged, kidnapped and abused The King. The villains ripped off Elvis’ clothes, burnt his flesh with lit cigarettes and a red-hot poker, kicked him repeatedly, forced him to drink a blood cocktail, injected him with all manner of drugs and stabbed him in the leg with a corkscrew. He was “near death” when he was rushed to hospital. All true. And all revealed in letters Elvis sent to “Hollywood spiritual advisor Carmen Montez”. Sadly, she and Elvis are both dead – but you can read all about in a new book by someone who isn’t.
Lastly, Jennifer Garner is to “secretly” marry John Miller. When they will secretly marry is unsaid, but should it happen remember: you read it first in the Enquirer…
Posted: 26th, November 2018 | In: Celebrities, Key Posts, National Enquirer, News | Comment
RIP Ricky Jay, master magician and small riot instigator
Ricky Jay was 72 when he died (June 26, 1946 – November 24, 2018). The actor, writer, historian and close-up magician features in a terrific article by Mark Singer for The New Yorker in 1993. The opening bars are great:
The playwright David Mamet and the theatre director Gregory Mosher affirm that some years ago, late one night in the bar of the Ritz-Carlton Hotel in Chicago, this happened:
Ricky Jay, who is perhaps the most gifted sleight-of-hand artist alive, was performing magic with a deck of cards. Also present was a friend of Mamet and Mosher’s named Christ Nogulich, the director of food and beverage at the hotel. After twenty minutes of disbelief-suspending manipulations, Jay spread the deck face up on the bar counter and asked Nogulich to concentrate on a specific card but not to reveal it. Jay then assembled the deck face down, shuffled, cut it into two piles, and asked Nogulich to point to one of the piles and name his card.
“Three of clubs,” Nogulich said, and he was then instructed to turn over the top card.
He turned over the three of clubs.
Mosher, in what could be interpreted as a passive-aggressive act, quietly announced, “Ricky, you know, I also concentrated on a card.”
After an interval of silence, Jay said, “That’s interesting, Gregory, but I only do this for one person at a time.”
Mosher persisted: “Well, Ricky, I really was thinking of a card.”
Jay paused, frowned, stared at Mosher, and said, “This is a distinct change of procedure.” A longer pause. “All right-what was the card?”
“Two of spades.”
Jay nodded, and gestured toward the other pile, and Mosher turned over its top card.
The deuce of spades.
A small riot ensued.
Posted: 26th, November 2018 | In: Celebrities, Key Posts, News | Comment
Joan Crawford’s holiday tips – with no hippies
Joan Crawford’s holiday tips – how to enjoy a wonderful Thanksgiving with no hippies – “I always add a splash of vodka to everything”. Taken from her memoirs, Joan Crawford My Way of Life:
“Joan Crawford on entertaining at home: The best parties are a wild mixture. Take some corporation presidents, add a few lovely young actresses, a bearded painter, a professional jockey, your visiting friends from Brussels, a politician, a hairdresser, and a professor of physics, toss them all together. It’s especially important to have all age groups. Of course I wouldn’t want to have hippies come crawling in with unwashed feet, but all the younger people I know are bright and attractive and have something to say. They also dress like human beings. They love to listen, too. Another important party secret is I always add a splash of vodka to everything. Nobody ever knows and everyone ends up having a wonderful time.”
Spotter: CONELRAD – All Things Atomic
Posted: 22nd, November 2018 | In: Celebrities, Key Posts | Comment
13 Ways to reuse your Thanksgiving turkey – by F. Scott Fitzgerald
F. Scott Fitzgerald (September 24, 1896–December 21, 1940) – will now offer 13 ways to reuse your Thanksgiving turkey. The writers says the recipes were harvested from “old cook books, yellowed diaries of the Pilgrim Fathers, mail order catalogues, golf-bags and trash cans. Not one but has been tried and proven — there are headstones all over America to testify to the fact”.
Eat at cook’s own risk:
Turkey Cocktail: To one large turkey add one gallon of vermouth and a demijohn of angostura bitters. Shake.
Turkey à la Francais: Take a large ripe turkey, prepare as for basting and stuff with old watches and chains and monkey meat. Proceed as with cottage pudding.
Turkey and Water: Take one turkey and one pan of water. Heat the latter to the boiling point and then put in the refrigerator. When it has jelled, drown the turkey in it. Eat. In preparing this recipe it is best to have a few ham sandwiches around in case things go wrong.
Turkey Mongole: Take three butts of salami and a large turkey skeleton, from which the feathers and natural stuffing have been removed. Lay them out on the table and call up some Mongole in the neighborhood to tell you how to proceed from there.
Turkey Mousse: Seed a large prone turkey, being careful to remove the bones, flesh, fins, gravy, etc. Blow up with a bicycle pump. Mount in becoming style and hang in the front hall.
Stolen Turkey: Walk quickly from the market, and, if accosted, remark with a laugh that it had just flown into your arms and you hadn’t noticed it. Then drop the turkey with the white of one egg—well, anyhow, beat it.
Turkey à la Crême: Prepare the crême a day in advance. Deluge the turkey with it and cook for six days over a blast furnace. Wrap in fly paper and serve.
Turkey Hash: This is the delight of all connoisseurs of the holiday beast, but few understand how really to prepare it. Like a lobster, it must be plunged alive into boiling water, until it becomes bright red or purple or something, and then before the color fades, placed quickly in a washing machine and allowed to stew in its own gore as it is whirled around. Only then is it ready for hash. To hash, take a large sharp tool like a nail-file or, if none is handy, a bayonet will serve the purpose—and then get at it! Hash it well! Bind the remains with dental floss and serve.
Feathered Turkey: To prepare this, a turkey is necessary and a one pounder cannon to compel anyone to eat it. Broil the feathers and stuff with sage-brush, old clothes, almost anything you can dig up. Then sit down and simmer. The feathers are to be eaten like artichokes (and this is not to be confused with the old Roman custom of tickling the throat.)
Turkey à la Maryland: Take a plump turkey to a barber’s and have him shaved, or if a female bird, given a facial and a water wave. Then, before killing him, stuff with old newspapers and put him to roost. He can then be served hot or raw, usually with a thick gravy of mineral oil and rubbing alcohol. (Note: This recipe was given me by an old black mammy.)
Turkey Remnant: This is one of the most useful recipes for, though not, “chic,” it tells what to do with the turkey after the holiday, and how to extract the most value from it. Take the remnants, or, if they have been consumed, take the various plates on which the turkey or its parts have rested and stew them for two hours in milk of magnesia. Stuff with moth-balls.
Turkey with Whiskey Sauce: This recipe is for a party of four. Obtain a gallon of whiskey, and allow it to age for several hours. Then serve, allowing one quart for each guest. The next day the turkey should be added, little by little, constantly stirring and basting.
For Weddings or Funerals: Obtain a gross of small white boxes such as are used for bride’s cake. Cut the turkey into small squares, roast, stuff, kill, boil, bake and allow to skewer. Now we are ready to begin. Fill each box with a quantity of soup stock and pile in a handy place. As the liquid elapses, the prepared turkey is added until the guests arrive. The boxes delicately tied with white ribbons are then placed in the handbags of the ladies, or in the men’s side pockets.
Spotter: Brain Pickings, via flashbak
Posted: 18th, November 2018 | In: Celebrities, Key Posts, The Consumer | Comment
Richard Baker: voice of BBC TV’s first news bulletin dies
Richard Baker has died. The former BBC newsreader and Proms presenter was 93. Baker introduced the corporation’s first news bulletin broadcast on 5 July 1954. To many, his was the face of TV news. He also voiced the children’s series, Mary, Mungo & Midge, first produced by the BBC in 1969. Asked why he did not smile more often on television, Baker replied: “Because there is seldom anything in the news likely to make anyone smile.”
The Times adds:
Mr Baker served on a minesweeper with the Royal Navy Volunteer Reserve during World War Two, which interrupted his studies at Cambridge University.
He was born in north London [Willesden] and was the son of a plasterer, attending grammar school before reading history and modern languages at Peterhouse College.
He worked for the BBC from 1954 until 1982.
The BBC recalls his big break:
In 1950, he wrote to the BBC asking if they were recruiting actors, resulting in an offer of a job as a presenter on what was then called the Third Programme, much later to become Radio 3…
When the news department began planning bulletins, Baker and Kenneth Kendall were recruited..
Notable how chance played a key role in so many careers…
Posted: 17th, November 2018 | In: Celebrities, TV & Radio | Comment
Newspaper says Spike Lee not Stan Lee is dead
Stan Lee, fabled comic book storyteller, is not dead. Well, he’s not if you get your news from this paper, which declares: “Spike Lee Dies at 95.” A grinning Stan Lee seems to enjoy the news in New Zealand’s Gisborne Herald:
Mr Lee is dead
Spike Lee is away:
Spotter: @HuwZat
Posted: 13th, November 2018 | In: Celebrities, Key Posts, News, Strange But True | Comment
Stan Lee reads Edgar Allan Poe’s The Raven
‘The only advice anybody can give is, if you wanna be a writer, keep writing. And read all you can, read everything” – Stan Lee (December 28, 1922 – November 12, 2018).
One story Stan Lee read and enjoyed was Edgar Allan Poe’s The Raven. The artist and storyteller who created Spider-Man, Iron Man and the X-Men reads from the book. It’s terrific. Thank you for all the stories, Stan Lee. “Excelsior!”
Spotter: Stan Lee reads Edgar Allan Poe’s The Raven – Open Culture
Posted: 12th, November 2018 | In: Books, Celebrities, Key Posts | Comment
Video: Freddie Mercury’s final days
The new biopic about Queen singer Freddie Mercury (5 September 1946 – 24 November 1991), tells us how he met the band and pulled his partner, Jim Hutton. The is much artistic licence. In one sun, Freddie Mercury tells the rest of the band about his HIV. It’s during rehearsals for their hymned 1985 Live Aid appearance. But Mercury wasn’t diagnosed until 1987. The rest of Queen did’t know the full extent of his illness illness until 1989.
He had a very responsible attitude to everyone that he was close to and he was a very generous and caring person to all the people that came through his life and more than that you can’t ask,” said May in 1991. “I tell you we do feel absolutely bound to stick up for him,” added Taylor, “because he can’t stick up for himself anymore, you know?”
Spotter: Laughing Squid
Posted: 8th, November 2018 | In: Celebrities, Film, Key Posts, Music | Comment
Martin Scorsese’s Best 11 Horror Films
Hymned director Martin Scorsese has produced a list of his eleven most terrifying horror movies. There’s nothing after 1983. This might be more down to his age than any decline in the standard of horror. Scorsese was born in late 1942. Maybe when he reached his 40s, he stopped being frightened?
It’s also notable that noticeable that many of the directors whose work impressed him are no longer alive. Robert Wise died in 2005; Vale Lewton (1951); Lewis Allen (2000); Frank de Felitta (2016); Alberto Cavalcanti (1982); Charles Crichton (1999); Basil Dearden (1971); Robert Hamer (1963); Stanley Kubrick (1999); Jacques Turner (1977); Jack Clayton (1995); and Alfred Hitchcock (1980). Perhaps there’s a bit of professional rivalry? Anyhow, the list if great:
The Haunting (Robert Wise, 1963)
Isle of the Dead (Val Lewton, 1945)
The Uninvited (Lewis Allen, 1944)
The Entity (Frank de Felitta, 1983)
Dead of Night (Alberto Cavalcanti, Charles Crichton, Basil Dearden and Robert Hamer, 1945)
The Changeling (Peter Medak, 1980)
The Shining (Stanley Kubrick, 1980)
The Exorcist (William Friedkin, 1973)
Night of the Demon (Jacques Tourneur, 1957)
The Innocents (Jack Clayton, 1961)
Psycho (Alfred Hitchcock, 1960)
Spotter: The Daily Beast (2015).
Bob Marley features on League of Ireland side Bohemians’ new kit
The new away kit of the League of Ireland side Bohemians features a big photo of Bob Marley along with Rasta-styled trim. It looks a bit naff, a T-shirt version of those coffee bars in Amsterdam that play Bob Marley songs on loop in the hope that priapic Stag dos and goofed teens ignore the freezing winds and think they’re fighting for freedom in Jamaica. But the Bohs want to explain why they chose Marley and not Che Guevara or some other cultural totem turned by marketing ninnies into a hackneyed teen icon. Bob Marley played a gig at their Dalymount ground on 6 July 1980. The stadium has “special place in the hearts of football and music fans”. So Marley is on the shirt.
Denis Buckley was at that show. “Inside the dilapidated ground the facilities were woeful,” he recalled in an article for The Journal:
The national press pondered pompously on whether he should be allowed to bring his weed into the country. It was tempered by the prevailing belief that despite the epidemic of alcohol abuse throughout the county allowing this “Rastafarian” to bring marijuana into Ireland would be the gates opening on something far more damaging than the public brawling and domestic violence visible on every street.
The music itself was perfect for political messaging. The rhythm section was serious and adult. Dancing Queen it was not. Marley put a speech by Haile Selassie over a dub: “Until the philosophy which holds one race superior and another inferior is finally and totally abandoned, everywhere is war.” Right time, right place.
The Boomtown Rats also played at Dalymount in the 1970s, but for some reason the club didn’t feel a large graphic of Bob Geldof would have the same impact.
Posted: 23rd, October 2018 | In: Key Posts, Music, Sports | Comment
Women fight over the wonderful Ant McPartlin
Update time on the lives and loves of Ant McPartlin (dontchajustlovehim!) and his now ex-wife Lisa Armstrong (boo! hiss! move on, luv!).
Good ol’ Ant letting the women fight as he makes a dignified retreat.
Ant admitted adultery. And the Star leads with the news that Lisa, who was monstered in the Press, is “gagged” from liking tweets calling Ant’s new true love and rock, one Anne-Marie Corbett, a “backstabber”. Rumours are that Anne-Marie’s lawyers “reportedly demanded” Lisa stops liking messages calling Anne-Marie things like a “husband-stealer” and “cretin”. Yeah, that’s what we thought: when did Twitter become so civilised and measured? Although the Sun does says Lisa liked a tweet calling Ant a “lying addict”.
But the really irritating thing is that the Star says Lisa is in line for loadsa cash “from Ant’s £62m fortune”. His fortune? Surely their fortune?
This soft-soaping of poor Ant continues via Simon Cowell, who harps on about Ant being “grumpy” and “depressed. “We’re living in a time now when people do get depressed or crack up,” says Cowell, who not only has huge grasp on human history but also a vested interested in the world siding with good-old Ant, “and it was harder for him because it was in public.” His alleged affair wasn’t in public. His drug taking wasn’t in public. His crashing into car carrying a family whilst he was well over the drink-drive limit was in public.
The Press has been very much on the side of Ant McPartlin, as he was “getting over an addiction to painkillers following knee surgery”; his condition connived into a campaign we all can take heart from; turning McPartlin from a man who deserves a private life into a role model; his plight told in his own words; a “source” assuring Sun readers that divorce would be “the right thing for his health”. This is “freakishly clean” Ant who in 2013 admitted to having taken drugs.
Cowell the historian might note than whilst come thing change others remains constant: famous man leaves long-suffering wife for blonde is a story as old as the hills.
Posted: 22nd, October 2018 | In: Celebrities, Key Posts, Tabloids | Comment
I Was Big Bird: Caroll Spinney retires from Sesame Street
Oscar the Grouch and big Bird are looking for a new inside man following news that Sesame Street puppeteer Caroll Spinney has retired from the roles he’s performed since the show’s 1969 premiere.
“Big Bird brought me so many places, opened my mind and nurtured my soul,” said Spinney. “And I plan to be an ambassador for Sesame Workshop for many years to come. After all, we’re a family! But now it’s time for two performers that I have worked with and respected – and actually hand-picked for the guardianship of Big Bird and Oscar the Grouch – to take my alter-egos into their hands and continue to give them life.”
…
After five decades as the heart and soul of Big Bird and Oscar the Grouch, it’s impossible to entirely separate the man from the characters he so vibrantly brought to life. Big Bird visited China with Bob Hope in 1979. He’s danced with the Rockettes, and with prima ballerina Cynthia Gregory. He’s been feted with a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, celebrated with his likeness on a U.S. postage stamp, and named a “Living Legend” in 2000 by the Library of Congress. Performing Big Bird has taken Caroll to China, Japan, Australia, France, Germany, Canada, and the United Kingdom. He has performed on hundreds of episodes of television, starred as his big yellow avatar in the feature film Follow That Bird, and conducted symphony orchestras throughout the United States, Australia, and Canada. Spinney even met his wife of 45 years, Debra, on the Sesame Street set in 1973.
From now on, Matt Vogel and Eric Jacobson, will be warming Oscar and Big Bird. For an inkling of what they can expect, Spinney told Jessica Gross in 2015:
There used to be an urban tale that my right arm was twice the size of my left. Although that wasn’t true, I would say it was twice as strong. The bird’s head weighs four and a half pounds, which doesn’t sound heavy until you try to hold it over your head for fifteen minutes. A guy once said, “Well, four and a half pounds, that’s nothing. I could hold a hundred pounds over my head.” I said, “I don’t think so. I bet you can’t hold your empty hand over your head for five minutes, let alone if I put a four and a half pound head in your hand at the same time.” About two and a half minutes into it, he’s going, “Geez…” He never made it to the five minutes. He said, “This is stupid, I’m not doing this.” Well, he was stupid, anyway.
You can see Spinney at work in I Am Big Bird :
Posted: 19th, October 2018 | In: Celebrities, Key Posts, TV & Radio | Comment
Chow Yun-fat has $714 million to give away
The Shanghaist reports on the minted star of Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon:
Chow’s wife, Jasmine Tan, says that her husband manages to live so frugally in one of the world’s most expensive cities by frequenting street food stalls and rarely buying new things, according to an Oriental Daily report from last week. For example, for 17 years, Chow stuck with his trusty Nokia flip phone, only recently purchasing a new smartphone when his old device finally stopped working.
The 63-year-old Chow is often seen riding public transportation where he rocks a simple wardrobe — a shirt costing him 98 yuan ($14) and sandals costing another 15 yuan ($2). When asked why he likes to shop at discount shops despite his tremendous net worth, Chow replies, “I don’t wear clothes for other people. I just wear whatever I find comfortable.”
Chow Yun-fat, everyone, the most popular man in Hong Kong – which might explain why he doesn’t give his fortune away in his own lifetime…
Posted: 18th, October 2018 | In: Celebrities, Money | Comment
