Reviews Category
We don’t just report off-beat news, breaking news and digest the best and worst of the news media analysis and commentary. We give an original take on what happened and why. We add lols, satire, news photos and original content.
Savile, Glitter, Starr, Rossiter, Phantom Flan Flinger and Tory in New BBC Show Witch Hunt
THE “New“ Sunday Herald leads with a wanter poster-style front page. Readers see a front page divided into a macabre version of Celebrity Squares. In the frames are:
Jimmy Savile (dead): alleged paedophile who fixed it for young girls and boys to be sexually molested and single-handedly ruined the small business in Jimmy Savile impersonators.
Gary Glitter: convicted paedophile alleged to have sex with a underage girl in Jimmy Savile’s BBC dressing room. He single-handedly ruined the small business in Gary Glitter impersonators.
Freddie Starr: aged entertainer who “ate my hamster”. Denies being paedo. Did wonders for business in Adolf Hitler impersonators.
Read the rest of this entry »
Posted: 4th, November 2012 | In: Reviews | Comment (1)
1974: retina-burning interior designs in Women’s Day magazine
IT’S 1974 and Woman’s Day magazine has a selection of d’lish interiors.
Read the rest of this entry »
Posted: 3rd, November 2012 | In: Flashback, The Consumer | Comment
Thomas U. is the world’s worst German neo-Nazis jihadhist
THOMAS U. is the Hungary-born, German-raised former neo-Nazi who ran away to join the Taleban. Thomas U., 27, joined the German Taleban Mujahidin. He went to Waziristan. He changed his name to Hamza al-Majaari. His aim was to “to rid Afghanistan of the infidel occupiers”.
He had converted from Christianity to Islam in 2008. His wife followed his lead and did the same. Thomas U. said the koran had inspired him to kick drugs. A friend told him about the GTM. So. He headed to Afghanistan.
Read the rest of this entry »
Vintage advert: 300 ‘pretty girls’ for one dollar
VINTAGE advert of the day. Back in the day you could buy 300 “pretty girls” for $1. A combination of cheap females and a strong dollar made it all possible. For just 100 cents, Zen Publishers of Elkhart, Indiana, would give you the names and addresses of 300 “pretty, single lonely nurses, teachers, models, widows , farmerettes etc.” Sure, some of these game gals will have moved on by the time you get the list. Sure some of them might have died, changed their names or become men. But with luck on your side and a following wind you’ll be able to travel hundreds of miles across the country and stalk a real life woman…
Posted: 3rd, November 2012 | In: Flashback, The Consumer | Comment
Dudley Council fine man for cleaning up street litter
DAVID Baker, 39, passes his time keeping from Stourbridge tidy. He picks up rubbish left on the pavement. He used to put rubbish in big council-supplied plastic bags and then dump it in street littler bins. But Dudley Council stopped supplying those bags so Mr Baker took to using carrier bags.
He picks up papers, junk food wrappers and more.
Read the rest of this entry »
Posted: 3rd, November 2012 | In: Reviews | Comment (1)
Captain Kirk grabs the phallic cave rock
FLASHBACK photo of the day features Star Trek’s Captain Kirk and a favoured rock:
Posted: 2nd, November 2012 | In: Flashback, TV & Radio | Comment
James Meredith: in 1962 he forced President JFK to confront bigotry (photos)
FLASHBACK to December 19 1962: A dead raccoon was placed atop the car of James Meredith. His effigy was hanged. On 1 October, 1962 James Meredith enrolled as the first African American student at the segregated University of Mississippi in Oxford. White students rioted. President JF Kennedy called up the National Guard. Two people died. James Meredith was 28. He had forced the President to act. But it was not enough. In 1966, he marched to encourage blacks to vote. On the march he was hit by a sniper’s bullet. He says he remains at war with the system not the people. Barack Obama, he says, might not be white, but he was voted in by the same people who voted for all previous Presidents. Nothing has changed, he says. But he wants it to. Vote now. Vote often…
10244271
Mississippi Highway Patrolman handcuffs one of two men arrested in Goldwater, Mississippi, June 8, 1966 near the marchers who took up James MeredithÂs March to Jackson, Miss. The unidentified man above was a passenger in a truck which had been driven from a side street across the line of march and stopped. (AP Photo)
Posted: 2nd, November 2012 | In: Flashback | Comment (1)
Local News: Nothing happened between Wind Street and Swansea Castle
TO South Wales for the Local News Story of the Week, as broadcast on This Is South Wales:
SOUTH Wales Police were investigating an incident between Wind Street and Swansea Castle yesterday morning, but the matter was subsequently dropped and no further action was necessary.
Music To Murder By and other helpful albums
THIS post is brough to you by Music To Murder By, Music to Sell Valves By, Music to Clean Upstream Pollution By and Music For Buying A Car Ukrainian Style…by:
Read the rest of this entry »
The Best of British isn’t made here
WHAT is the Best of British?
HP Sauce has a Facebook page.
Nothing surprising about that, except that it uses the social media platform to trumpet its Britishness, and boasts that, “HP, the UK’s no. 1 brown sauce, has been adding oomph to your favourite dishes since 1903.”
Read the rest of this entry »
Posted: 2nd, November 2012 | In: Flashback, Key Posts | Comments (23)
Life in East Germany in photos
EAST Germany came into being in 1949. It was the communist German Democratic Republic. In 1961, the Berlin Wall split the city between East and West Germany. In 1968, the East German constitution stated that unification was impossible until the West became socialist. In 1990, Germany was reunified. The West had won the Cold War. What was life like back then behind the Iron Curtain in East Germany? These photos present a compelling picture:
10345597
Is this the worst star prize in TV game show history?
BULLSEYE was a super, smashing, great show. Marvellous. I watched it keeping score of how many superlatives Jim Bowen used. One thing, however, was rubbish: the star prize:
Posted: 1st, November 2012 | In: Flashback, TV & Radio | Comment
A nuclear bomb is not a dirty bomb
I’M not sure here whether it’s the Mail getting things mixed up or whether we’ve actually got a government minister getting mixed up. The likelihood of either is so high that who is able to tell?
A dirty bomb attack is a ‘real threat’ faced by Britain, the Foreign Office will warn today. The government claims nuclear terrorism is still one of the biggest threats to global peace. Minister Alistair Burt will use a speech to warn of the dangers posed by a rise nuclear weapons being smuggled around the world.
Read the rest of this entry »
Posted: 1st, November 2012 | In: Money, Reviews | Comment (1)
1972 gift special: a life-size doll of you
IT’S 1972. Cosmetic surgery is not yet so advanced. Dolly the sheep is but a dream But you want to create a replica of yourself. What to do? Become an Osmond? No. For $3,000 and no cents (exclusive of clothes and sculptor’s airfare) you could invest in “full-dimensional, life-size, reasonable facsimilies of you, or your favourite other person”.
You’d be mad not do. Mad, I tell you. Maaaaaaad:
Read the rest of this entry »
Posted: 1st, November 2012 | In: Flashback, The Consumer | Comment
Drug Testing On Arrest in West Merica: Skunk is weapon of choice for ‘designated’ driver
TO Bromsgrove and Droitwich, where anyone over 18 under arrest for “crimes including burglary, drug supply and possession or theft and fraud” will be tested for Class A drugs. They will be swabbed. Of course, swabbing can be sued to reveals a person’s DNA.
It’s called Drug Testing On Arrest (DTOA).
The purpose is to “steer people off drugs”.
Read the rest of this entry »
April Jones joker Matthew Woods’ sentence reduced – you should be offended
APRIL Jones has not been found. Paul and Carol Jones, April’s parents, have spoken from their home in Machynlleth, Powys, to thank the help and support they’ve ben given. They have been “overwhelmed“.
Mark Bridger, 46, is is jail. He’s been charged with 4-year-old child’s abduction.
Meanwhile, Matthew Woods, 20, of, Chorley, Lancashire, has had his 12-week sentence for posting an offensive tweet abut April Jones reduced to eight weeks on appeal.
Two magistrates sat at Preston Crown Court to debate whether or not making a deliberately sick joke in 140 characters or fewer is worthy or 12 weeks prison.
Read the rest of this entry »
Posted: 1st, November 2012 | In: Key Posts, Reviews | Comments (9)
1956: The Are You In The Know? booklet about menstruating, fashion and dating?
HOW did they date in 1956 ? Thanks to this historial document, we know. It was produced by “Kotex menstrual napkins“, and published by Kimberly-Clark, with drawing by Irving Nurick. Marvel at the research that went into aping teenage slang of the day.
“Greet him dressed for gallivanting; if only to the local Cokery.”
“Tain’t fittin’, kitten!”
Click the images from Are You In The Know? to make them bigger:
Posted: 1st, November 2012 | In: Flashback, Key Posts | Comment
The Sun gives free boat with news of Superstorm Sandy
THE Sun produces the juxtaposition that reports on Superstorm Sandy – the weather event that happened where big media live (so overshadowing every other news event on planet Earth, including the death of more than 50 people in Haiti from Hurricane Sandy). Above the headline, the Sun thought it apposite to offer readers a “City Police Boat” made of Lego.
The best ever juxtaposed headlines are here.
David Bowie was right: freed by Hurricane Sandy rats attack New York
HURRICANE Sandy was bad. Can it be made worse? Watch out for the…
RATS!
Lynne Peeples spots rats:
…storm waters from Hurricane Sandy flood rats out of their underground residences, according to Rick Ostfeld of the Cary Institute of Ecosystem Studies in Milbrook, N.Y.
“Rats are incredibly good swimmers,” said Ostfeld. “And they can climb.” In other words, Sandy is unlikely to knock off the resilient rodents, but rather displace them.
According to Ostfeld, this could result in increased risk of infectious diseases carried by urban rats, including leptospirosis, hantavirus, typhus, salmonella, and even the plague. “One of things we know can exacerbate disease is massive dispersal,” he added. “Rats are highly social individuals and live in a fairly stable social structure. If this storm disturbs that, rats could start infesting areas they never did before.”
Read the rest of this entry »
Did David Essex never meet Jimmy Savile, as he claims?
DAVID Essex recalls the Jimmy Savile he never knew. The singer talks to BBC radio DJ Nicky Campbell:
“I never met Jimmy Savile actually…I always thought he was kind of a strange person, but I never met him.”
You might have potted them in the Top of the Pops annual of 1977:
Selected Features:
1) “How Real Is David Bowie?”
2) “David Essex – The Star Success Will Never Change”
3) “Steve Harley – The Toughest Cockney Rebel In Town”
4) “So You Want To Be A Disc Jockey? Well, Here’s How…Says Jimmy Savile”
5) “If You’ve Got It, Then Flaunt It…Says Rod Stewart”
Read the rest of this entry »
Posted: 31st, October 2012 | In: Reviews | Comments (6)
Farewell Ceefax: How Internet killed the television star
FAREWELL then, Ceefax; your Legoland graphics will delight and inform us no more. You were called Ceefax, because you enabled viewers “see the facts” with no messing about, and you became a national institution. But your birth was a happy accident.
As BBC engineers searched for a way to provide programme subtitles, they realised the same technology could be used to send other information.
Colin McIntyre led a team of eight at Television Centre in Shepherd’s Bush, monitoring the news wires. They typed up the stories, then produced a punched tape which was “read” by a machine into a “core store” with a maximum capacity of just 24 pages.
Read the rest of this entry »
Posted: 31st, October 2012 | In: Flashback, Key Posts, TV & Radio | Comment
Anti-pregnancy poster from 1970
FLASHBACK to MArch 1970: The pregnant man poster was issued by the Health Education Council. Such posters were distributed in their thousands to persuade men to seek advice on contraception. Dr Bill Jones, Director General of the Health Education Council said: “We want to make any ignorant or unthinking man stop and consider the suffering and problems he can cause through an unplanned pregnancy.”
Hurricane Sandy is here because of those awful gays
THE weather is not something anyone can control, not that religious people understand. They’re like those people who wear lucky underpants, thinking it has any discernible effect on an upcoming football match (your pants/god has about as much influence as the lifeless mop in your kitchen).
Read the rest of this entry »
Posted: 30th, October 2012 | In: Reviews | Comment (1)
Does Herefordshire Council support anti-gay evangelists in Uganda?
IT’S dangerous to be gay in Uganda, where homosexuality is illegal. The country’s anti-homosexuality bill goes further. It will mean life imprisonment and death for gays.
In 2011, BBC 3 invited us to watch The World’s Worst Place to Be Gay?. The show featured DJ Scott Mills interrupting a travelogue to show us that gays in Uganda are marginalised and persecuted. Homosexuality is likened to witchcraft. Feelings are antagonised by US evangelicals and Western donors, like Scott Lively.
In June 2012, Uganda banned 38 NGOs for promoting homosexuality:
Ethics Minister Simon Lokodo told Reuters the organisations being targeted were receiving support from abroad for Uganda’s homosexuals and accused gays and lesbians of “recruiting” young children in the country into homosexuality. The NGOs are channels through which monies are channelled to (homosexuals) to recruit,” the minister, a former Catholic priest, said.
Read the rest of this entry »
