Key Posts Category
Sophie Anderton: when the News of the World exposed the supermodel prostitute
SOPHIE Anderton is the former British celebrity billed at various times in her career as a supermodel, face of the 2006’s National Egg Awareness Campaign and coke-snorting prostitute. She is now featuring on Celebrity Big Brother. The much-missed News of the World exposed the sex for sale thus:
In a sensational secret rendezvous with a News of the World undercover man, the leggy supermodel STRIPPED to her G-string and Christian Louboutin stilettos and spread herself across the bed.
“I’m great at sex,” Sophie bragged as she beckoned our reporter to romp with her. “I’ll be a lot of fun. I’ll look great on your fucking arm. I’m a supermodel.”
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Posted: 24th, August 2013 | In: Celebrities, Key Posts | Comments (2)
The Top 12 tunes from the Golden Age of Pop that continue to be sung at British football grounds to this day
A NEW season, and a new chant.
Yes, Manchester United supporters have hailed the arrival of the Moyesiah with a new song: “So Come on David Moyes, Play Like Fergie’s Boys. We’ll go wild, wild, wild!”
And where did they get the tune? From Seventies chart giants Slade, and their straight-in-at-number-one-for-the-first-time-since-the-Beatles classic Cum On Feel The Noize…
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Posted: 22nd, August 2013 | In: Flashback, Key Posts, Sports | Comment
Ten landmark innovations that shaped football
AS Hawk-Eye is launched at the Emirates, bringing goal-line technology to the Barclays Premier League at last, we look back on ten landmark innovations that have shaped the game we know and love.
Goal posts
Long before jumpers, there were goal posts. Their raison d’être was to indicate where the goal was, but they served another purpose too: a notch was ‘scored’ on them after each goal, hence the phrase ‘score a goal’.
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A pictorial history of King’s Cross Station
KING’S Cross Station is named in honour of George IV. Fitting, perhaps, that our pictorial history of the grand London terminus (born: 1852) should feature many images of the Royal Family to-ing and fro-ing.
In a move to raise the rather tarnished image of the area, a statue of King George IV was erected at the Battle Bridge crossroads in 1830. The statue attracted ridicule and was demolished in 1842, but the new name for the area – ‘King’s Cross’ – stuck. Between 1849 and 1852 the Great Northern Railway (GNR) developed their London terminus in the area. The GNR purchased land for the station to the south of the canal and land to the north for its goods station and steam locomotive depot.
King’s Cross was never the smartest area.
The story of King’s Cross begins with the Fleet River and a small settlement, which grew up at a place known as Battle Bridge, named after an ancient crossing of the Fleet River which flows beneath, near the northern end of present-day Gray’s Inn Road.
Some of the earliest enterprises in the area were the spas, which developed around the Fleet’s springs, becoming fashionable resorts in the eighteenth century. It was, however, an early attempt at traffic planning which determined the area’s fate. Thomas Coram built the Foundling Hospital for children in 1742-1747 just south of the present day King’s Cross and ten years later, in 1756, the New Road was cut across the fields from east to west to channel traffic away from the city centre. Today, as the ever-busy Euston Road, it serves the same purpose.
By the early-nineteenth century Battle Bridge had become a depressing place. It was low lying and subject to flooding. The Smallpox Hospital had been built in 1769 and a fever hospital was added in 1802. It had become notorious for its tile kilns, rubbish tips and noxious trades.
On a personal note, I lived in this part of Islington for some time; family member’s worked in the roads behind St Pancras, the grander station next door. Noxious trades were often those in human flesh: no trip to buy first-edition newspapers or to the all-night Scala cinema and Mole Jazz was complete without an offer to buy sex or drugs.
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Posted: 8th, August 2013 | In: Flashback, Key Posts | Comment
The media-stoked moral panic over Ask.fm suicides and Twitter hate
TROLLING is big news. The latest story is that young people using the site Ask.fm are dying. This follows news that women are being subjected to vile abuse on Twitter. But only women to whom the mass media is sympathetic are featured as victims. And that is odd.
The Daily Mail delivers the case for the prosecution in bullet points.
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Posted: 7th, August 2013 | In: Key Posts, Reviews, Technology | Comment (1)
Incongruous Songs – when the music of rebellion is used by the wrong people
A FLASHBACK about Incongruous Songs. The music of rebellion adopted by the wrong people at the wrong place and the wrong time. Look what they’ve one to my song, ma.
In 1976, a Mancunian punk band called Buzzcocks borrowed £500 from friends and relatives and recorded and released the Spiral Scratch EP (Print run: 1,000 copies). 
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Posted: 6th, August 2013 | In: Flashback, Key Posts, Music | Comment
Twitter moralists only protect women they like: Mary Beard and Grace Dent are no Emma West
PROFESSOR of Classics at Cambridge Mary Beard says of the abuse many receive on twitter: “It is is scary and it has got to stop.” Beard was threatened with rape. In response to that, many Tweeters abandoned Twitter in a 24-hour silent protest.
Professor Beard was going to be silent but then received more abuse:
“Planned to be off twitter, but I’ve had more threats this morning (rape and worse). It IS still going on. Tried to report to Twitter, failed.”
One message was from an idiot threatening to bomb her home.
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Posted: 5th, August 2013 | In: Key Posts, Reviews | Comment (1)
The 22 greatest vintage guns for kids adverts
WHEN did you lean to like guns? As Lileks says:
I’m not saying it’s the be-all / end-all of ideological tests, but you can tell a lot about a person by their reaction to these ads. That was then, to understate the case. Nowadays we’ve done away with these dangerous violent antisocial pseudo-guns, and replaced them with merry-makers like Nerf guns and Supersoakers and other items whose makers encourage you to point them at your friends.
If a Nerf gun more likely to appeal to a nascent serial killer than a Daisy? What about a victual gun on Tour of Duty? There will be studies:
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Posted: 3rd, August 2013 | In: Flashback, Key Posts, The Consumer | Comment
Liverpool FC wants its fans and staff to be Thought Police narks
LIVERPOOL FC’s widely distributed list of things you cannot say has yet to be handed to all fans entering the Anfield ground. Your moral credentials will not be checked at the gate…yet.
I have said infantile things at football matches, mostly when I was young and thought it funny and possibly liberating to sing things I would never sing at a polite dinner table; belting out abusive lyrics to songs like the First Noel:
Hoddle, Hoddle, Hoddle, Hoddle
Born is the Queen of Golder’s Green
That’s racist! Nowadays it could be. I knew that words cold hurt. Well, that was the idea. You get worked up in support of your own team and say things designed to damage the opposition. You don’t mean it. The song was targeting Spurs’ best player and the fans, many of whom are Jewish (Golder’s Green has a considerable Jewish demographic). It would also be now classed a homophobic. Hoddle is not the King of Israel, as the Spurs fans might have had it. He was the Queen. Was I a homophobic anti-Semite? No. I just thought it was funny. The song did not show me in my true colours. They were just part of the match.
Was Hoddle offended? No. He just smiled and – get this – later became a born again Christian.
(It was he who said: “You and I have been physically given two hands and two legs and half-decent brains. Some people have not been born like that for a reason. The karma is working from another lifetime. I have nothing to hide about that. It is not only people with disabilities. What you sow, you have to reap.”)
Arsenal fans also had this to say about their own Nwankwo Kanu:
He’s big, he’s black, he’s had a heart attack, King Kanu, King Kanuuuuu
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Posted: 31st, July 2013 | In: Key Posts, Sports | Comments (2)
Kyron Horman: the magical August 1 deadline and what mother puts a price on her son’s head?
THE Kyron Horman case is ‘heating up’. It’s been 3 years and 2 months since the seven-year-old boy went missing from the Skyline Elementary school in Portland Oregon. The local Multnomah County Sheriff’s Office are still without a single clue as to what happened to him.
No-one has been named as a suspect. What crime, if any, befell the child has not been established. the media has been doing the police dirty work in cranking up pressure on Kyron’s step-mother, Terri Horman. She is now estranged from the boy’s father, Kaine Horman.
Why is the step-mother in the frame? Terri Moulton Horman is the last person known to have seen Kyron before he vanished from Skyline School on June 4 2010. And that’s it.
The Oregonian reports:
Kyron Horman’s mother to drop civil suit in son’s disappearance
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Posted: 31st, July 2013 | In: Key Posts, Reviews | Comments (4)
One Direction fans threaten to rape, stab and kill everyone at GQ magazine – the pick of the Tweets
A ONE Direction Fans writes in response to the article on the band in GQ magazine:
@trxpicalouis’ “whAT THE FUCK THEY MADE LOUIS LOOK LIKE AN ASSHOLE I S2G HE IS A FUCKING ANGEL I AM GOING TO FIND GQ AND FUCKING BOMB THEM SEE YOU IN JAIL”
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Posted: 30th, July 2013 | In: Key Posts, Music | Comment (1)
The Documerica Project: photos of Chicago’s black community in the 1970s
IN the 1970s, the US Government created Documerica Project (1971-1977). The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) hired freelance photographers to capture images relating to environmental problems, EPA activities, and everyday life in the 1970s.
John H White was one of nearly one hundred photographers hired for DOCUMERICA. His photographs captured the spirit and struggle of the African-American community in Chicago, Illinois in the early 70’s.
The captions are the original texts:
Sidewalk Merchandise On Chicago’s South Side. Many Of The City’s Black Businessmen Started Small And Grew By Working Hard Today Chicago Is Believed To Be The Black Business Capital Of The United States, 06/1973
Graffiti On A Wall In Chicago. Such Writing Has Advanced And Become An Art Form, Particularly In Metropolitan Areas. Black Artists Also Have Used Walls On Buildings In Black Communities In Chicago To Paint Outdoor Murals. They Feel It Is A Means Of Sharing Art With People In The Ghetto Who Don’t Go To The Museums. The Artists Also Have Given Painting Lessons To Community Groups By Decorating Walls On Some Buildings In Their Communities, 05/1973
Street Scene On 47th Street In South Side Chicago, A Busy Area Where Many Small Black Businesses Are Located, 06/1973
Black Beauties Complement A Float During The Bud Billiken Day Parade, 08/1973
Isaac Hayes Dancers Perform At The International Amphitheater In Chicago, 10/1973
Black Children Play Outside The Ida B. Wells Homes, One Of Chicago’s Oldest Housing Projects. There Are 1,652 Apartments Housing 5,920 Persons In 124 Buildings On The South Side. Many Buildings In This Part Of The City Have Been Systematically Vacated For Various Reasons. Even Though Many Are Salvageable, They Are Razed And Replaced With High Rent Highrises Which Have Little Or No Appeal To The Area’s Previous Residents, 05/1973
Worshippers At Holy Angel Catholic Church On Chicago’s South Side. It Is The City’s Largest Black Catholic Church. The Pastor Is Father George H. Clements, A Leader In The Black Community, 10/1973
Illinois Governor Dan Walker Greets Chicago Constituents During The Bud Billiken Day Parade, 08/1973
Black Products And Services Was One Of The Themes At The Annual Black Expo Held In Chicago. Also Present Were Black Art And Culture, Education, Talent, A Voter Registration Drive And Other Aspects Of Black Consciousness. The Aim Is To Make Blacks Aware Of Their Heritage And Capabilities, And Help Them Towards A Better Life, 10/1973
A Black Band Performs At The Lake Meadows Shopping Center In Chicago. Not Well Known, They Are Sharing Their Music At Home And Hope Their Start Will Lead To Greater Recognition, 08/1973
Black Muslim Women Dressed In White Applaud Elijah Muhammad During The Delivery Of His Annual Savior’s Day Message In Chicago. The City Is Headquarters For The Black Muslims. Their $75 Million Empire Includes A Mosque, Newspaper, University Restaurants, Real Estate, Bank And Variety Of Retail Stores Muhammad Died February 25, 1975, 03/1974
“The Fruit Of Islam”, A Special Group Of Bodyguards For Muslim Leader Elijah Muhammad, Sit At The Bottom Of The Platform While He Delivers His Annual Savior’s Day Message In Chicago, 03/1974
The Rev. Jesse Jackson Speaks On A Radio Broadcast From The Headquarters Of Operation Push, At Its Annual Convention. One Of The Aims Of The Organization Is To Open The World Of Business To Small Black Owned Businesses. Rev. Jackson Is Credited For Helping To Make Chicago The Black Banking Capital In The Country. He Helped Persuade White Companies To Stop Taking Profits They Earned From Black Consumers To The White Suburbs, 07/1973
Vote Registration Drive Was One Aspect Of Black Expo, An Annual Exhibit Of Black Talent, Education, Products And Other Aspects Of Black Consciousness Held In Chicago. The Aim Is To Make Blacks Aware Of Their Heritage And Capabilities, And Help Them Towards A Better Life, 10/1973
Black Man Operating A Newsstand In Chicago On The West Side The City Is Believed To Be The Black Business Capital Of The United States. Census Figures Show In 1970 There Were 8,747 Black Owned Businesses In The City That Grossed More Than $332 Million. But Black Capitalists Still Have More Trouble Staying In Business Once They Begin And The Main Reason Remains Racial Prejudice. Lack Of Capital Lack Of Business Expertise And Lack Of Support From The Black Community Are Other Factors, 06/1973
Black Youngsters Performing On An Empty Lot At 5440 South Princeton Avenue On Chicago’s South Side At A Small Community Program Called “an Open Air Fashion And Talent Show” Presented By “the New Between The Tracks Council”, A Community Block Group. It Is One Of Many Block Clubs And Community Groups Organized To Help Youngsters “do Their Thing” During Special Weekend Programs In Empty Lots In The Black Communities, 08/1973
Black Beauties With Colorful Hair Grace A Float During The Annual Bud Billiken Day Parade Along Dr. Martin L. King Jr. Drive On Chicago’s South Side. Up To Half A Million People View One Of The Largest Events Of The Year, Held For Blacks Of All Ages And Economic Status. The Parade Also Includes Black Politicians, Black Businesses Displaying Their Products And Black Bands, 08/1973
Chicago Ghetto On The South Side. Although The Percentage Of Chicago Blacks Making $7,000 Or More Jumped From 26 To 58% Between 1960 And 1970, A Large Percentage Still Remained Unemployed. The Black Unemployment Rate Generally Is Assumed To Be Twice That Of The National Unemployment Rate Published Monthly By The Bureau Of Labor Statistics, 05/1974
Posted: 29th, July 2013 | In: Flashback, Key Posts, Photojournalism, Reviews | Comment
Caroline Criado-Perez: twitter trolls and narks show us how police bigotry works
DO the police use an even hand when confronting the Twitter mob in full cry? When Caroline Criado-Perez decried the Bank of England decided to replace Elizabeth Fry with Winston Churchill on new £5 notes – this meant no women, save for The Queens, were on bank notes – she and others who campaigned for equality on folding money brought about a change of heart.
The Bank of England governor, Mark Carney, caved in to pressure and announced that Jane Austen is going on the £10 note.
This brought Criado-Perez to attention of the Twitter brains trust, some of whom called for her to be raped and murdered.
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Thom Yorke and Johnny Lynch entirely misunderstand Spotify and online music
THIS is one of those newspaper pieces where you have to check that the people are still living on the same planet as the rest of us. They’re talking about whether Spotify is paying enough in royalties to the musicians who produce the work. Yet they manage to miss the most basic point about the whole subject:
Spotify is selling a lie, though. In this post-Napster world, the pressure is on for new independent artists to have their music sit alongside massive acts – but we’re not getting anything back. We are told that it’s good exposure, and will lead to increased album and ticket sales, but this simply isn’t the case.
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Posted: 26th, July 2013 | In: Key Posts, Money, Music, Technology | Comments (3)
The best British Jaegers – the Pacific Rim challenge
WHAT if Pacific Rim was set in Britain? Yeah. Pacific Rim? As if. First off, no-one would have been able to stop sniggering. And second, well, the sniggering right. But let’s imagine. In the film the characters are called Jaegers. (Yeah. Like the middle-class, provincial fashion outlets). Almost all these Jaegers have two two-noun names created in a Tokyo language school randomiser: Brawler Yukon; Coyote Tango, Solar Prophet and the excellent Gipsy Danger.
Warner Bros’ build-your-own-Jaeger toy lets you create your own:
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The decline of man: the steady emasculation of our role models
THE decline of Man: modern man is in a state of crisis, reared on a diet of creams, depilated, patent skin and self-tanning unguents. Here, Anorak looks at the fall of manhood.
“I never fixed my eyes, but I spent more money to stretch the skin of my testicles. I did not like the wrinkles. It’s a new technique, many people in Hollywood have done it. It’s called ‘ball ironing’.”
It is generally assumed that George Clooney was joking when he delivered the above quote. One thing is true, though: ‘ball ironing’ (or ‘male laser lift’) is available at the Beauty Park in Santa Monica for just under $600, and it is proving very popular.
Clooney may not have had the treatment himself, but his familiarity with it is cause for concern. It’s just the latest in a series of milestones in the steady emasculation of our role models. And the rot set in, as it so often did, in the 1950s.
Dennis Compton
Compton (second left, with Burt Lancaster and Frankie Vaughan) was a brilliant batsman with a Test average of 50 (including over 200 runs in one match against South Africa using an antique bat borrowed from the cricket museum). He also found time to play football for Arsenal, with whom he won both the league championship and the FA Cup. Unfortunately, he also became the face of Brylcreem, and set the tone for future generations of sportsmen to dabble in the darker corners of male grooming.
Elvis Presley
Presley offended people in numerous ways –not least with his habit of wearing eye makeup. None of which stopped him from being drafted into the US Army. Here the prospective GI sits his written military exam, in slightly more discreet slap.
Henry Cooper
As deodorant manufacturers attempted to broaden their appeal to the male half of the population, they recruited macho sporty types like Our ’Enery (’ere wiv’ ’Arvey Smiff) who here advertises Brut with the immortal slogan ‘Splash it all over’.
Ron Atkinson
Big Ron: The Sunbed Years.
Graham Gooch
In his playing days as opening bat for England, ‘Goochy’ sported an imperial moustache and resembled an officer at Rourk’s Drift. His subsequent hair transplant came as something of a shock – and led to a series of rather defensive gestures. Defensive, not about the fact of the transplant, but the quality of the weave itself.
Here Gooch, as the official caption puts it, ‘test[s] his hair replacement treatment in a Central London health Gym, to disprove claims that the treatment does not work. The former England captain is at the centre of an disgreement, after a client of AHS (Advanced Hair Studio) along with the Advertising Standards Authority claimed that adverts claiming that Gooch could swim, shower, and play sport with his hair treatment were wrong and misleading.’
David Beckham
The signs were there as a young boy, when he enjoyed wearing knickerbockers and ballet shoes. Later we had his own take on Brylcreem advertising (above) and experiments with sarongs. His nomination here, however, is for his championing of the ‘back. sack and crack’ – the logical conclusion of the waxing mania that overtook British manhood in the twenty-first century.
Luis Figo
Deserves his place here for his role in the general poncification of older men, with his truly terrible Just For Men advertisement – a product for disguising grey hair and beards and allowing old men to kid themselves that they are attractive to women half their age.
Cristiano Ronaldo and Rio Ferdinand
AKA: Ronaldo and Rio in hotpants hell. What were they thinking? Seriously?
Shane Warne
He held his hands up to the hair transplant, and fair play to him for that, but Shane’s explanation for his subsequent transformation into a taught-faced waxwork is altogether less convincing: he attributed it to ‘good moisturiser’. Others spoke of botox, facelifts and teeth whitening. Wherefore art thou, Warney-o?
Leinster Rugby
The citadel falls. Once upon a time the best you could hope for in a rugby union changing room was a bar of coal tar soap and a turd in your kit bag. Now you are more likely to find a range of hair and skin care products. Leinster Rugby are now sponsored by Nivea for Men. Or should that be ‘Men’?
O tempora, o mores!
ENDS
Posted: 24th, July 2013 | In: Celebrities, Fashion, Key Posts, Sports | Comments (2)
Brands use the royal baby to flog their crap – the best and worst examples of desperate marketing
ASK not what your can do for your future King but what your future King can do for you. Kate Middleton and Prince William’s son is but a few hours old and already he’s working hard:
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Posted: 22nd, July 2013 | In: Key Posts, Royal Family, The Consumer | Comment
Hyperflesh masks of Jack Nicholson, Ron Jeremy, Mike Tyson, Barack Obama and Charlie Sheen
OI, big head, you’ve got a hyperflesh masks of Jack Nicholson, Ron Jeremy, Mike Tyson, Barack Obama and Charlie Sheen head.
Spotter: BlessThisStuff, Landon Meier
Posted: 22nd, July 2013 | In: Celebrities, Key Posts, The Consumer | Comment
Artichoke: Charles Saatchi and Nigella Lawson are a vegetable sculpture
ONCE upon a time, Charles Saatchi was a figure of mystery, a man who sold us the Conservative Party and told us that a pickled, halved shark in a vat of preservative was high art. Then he married TV cook Nigella Lawson, grabbed her throat in public and became a celebrity and tabloid mainstay. Now, in tribute to the great art collector’s life in ink and formaldehyde, an artist at the Lambeth fair has created Artichoke, a celebration of Nige and Chas in vegetables:
Posted: 22nd, July 2013 | In: Celebrities, Key Posts | Comment
Passports of the rich, famous and enviably photogenic
EVERYONE, save for her blessed Majesty The Queen, needs a passport to travel overseas. (A British passport is issued in the name of Her Majesty, so it is unnecessary for The Queen to possess one.) This mean that Her Majesty need not pose for the dreaded passport photo – small relief given that her head is scrutinised on coinage and stamps.
Britishers applying for a passport should submit an exacting photograph:
Your photo may be rejected unless it shows you:
facing forward and looking straight at the camera
with a neutral expression and your mouth closed
without anything covering the face
in clear contrast to the background
without a head covering (unless it’s worn for religious or medical reasons)
with eyes open, visible and free from reflection or glare from glasses
with your eyes not covered by sunglasses, tinted glasses, glasses frames or hair
without any shadows in the picture
In this gallery of passports, we see how the rich and famous coped with posing for tiny picture that would be scrutinised by lantern-jawed officialdom.
Passports issued in the 1950s to John F. Kennedy and Jacqueline Bouvier Kenned.
The stamps forms an almost perfect target about his head.
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Posted: 19th, July 2013 | In: Celebrities, Key Posts | Comment
Pictures of famous people posing with animals
FAMOUS people and animals. Do the pets make the famous faces look more of less lovable? Are the pets just props?
Sofia Loren
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Posted: 19th, July 2013 | In: Celebrities, Key Posts | Comment
Dzhokhar Tsarnaev pictured at the moment of his capture beats Rolling Stone for cool and iconic
SGT Sean Murphy was there when alleged Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev was captured hiding beneath the cover of a boat. He took photos. This one shows the 19-year-old carrying the red dot of a sniper’s rifle laser sight on his forehead.
Sgt Murphy says his pictures show the “real Boston bomber, not someone fluffed and buffed”.
Surely, he means to say ‘the alleged bomber’?
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Posted: 19th, July 2013 | In: Key Posts, Reviews | Comment (1)
Wati Holmwood: photos of the hated State of Origin streaker
STREAKER of the year is Wati Holmwood, who invaded the St of Origin ruby match, very possibly ruining it. He says: “It all happened so quickly, I don’t know what was going through my head. I just wanted to make it interesting but I stuffed up Origin. A lot of people hate me now.” Probably the same stuff when in 2011 he jumped a fence at the Sydney Football Stadium and interrupted a match between the Wests Tigers and the New Zealand Warriors.
The Left wing hates Israel because it despises the Western way of life
TODAY I took part in a debate about the left’s attitude to Israel at the Jewish Free School in London. My opening remarks are published below.
For me, the most striking thing about the left’s attitude to Israel is how much it has changed, how sweepingly it has been transformed over the past couple of generations. I don’t think there’s any other issue on which the left has so dramatically changed its thinking. In a nutshell, the mainstream Western left has gone from loving Israel to loathing it, from singing its praises to blaming it for all the world’s ills and accusing it of being a uniquely barbaric state.
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Posted: 17th, July 2013 | In: Key Posts, Reviews | Comments (61)
