Last Saturday I stayed up late watching “The Chase”. For once “The Chase” in question was not the ITV quiz show hosted by Bradley Walsh, which has had plenty of mentions on these pages this year (starting with this piece), but a movie from 1966, starring Marlon Brando. Brando has also had plenty of mentions… Continue reading “The Chase” (1966)
Most of the words published on this Blog have been drafted on a Mac Book Pro which, all being well, will celebrate its fifth birthday early next year. It has had its troubles, mostly related to hard drives, documented in this piece from last year. In September the charger started playing up. The thin white… Continue reading The price of things (November 2017)
If pop trivia is not your thing then read no further. If pop trivia is your thing, here are a few facts and challenges for the weekend about songs that have made it to #1 in the UK charts. Same Artist and Song Name at #1 We’re not looking here for an artist releasing a… Continue reading More #1 Pop Trivia: Same artist and song name, same title different song
Earlier this week I took several bags of small change to the bank, the contents of each one counted carefully so that there was exactly £1 in 1p or 2p coins, £5 in 5p’s or £10 in 20p pieces. Having never worked in a shop, or been involved in any business that uses slot machines,… Continue reading Things we might never do again
Back in August, in this piece, I wrote about some dialogue from a couple of Debra Winger films that I first saw in the 1980s, “Black Widow” and “Terms of Endearment”. Recently I watched both movies again, as planned, to check if I’d remembered them correctly. I can report that the scene that originally prompted… Continue reading A Debra Winger Double Bill
Back in February I wrote this piece about Breakonium, a non-existent element described by Nicholas Lezard in the New Statesman as “the most fragile substance on Earth”. I noted that a search for the word on The World’s Most Popular Search Engine yielded “about 19 results”. At the time the World’s Most Popular Search Engine… Continue reading More about Breakonium, and Search Engines
The word “Pass” has been a feature of quizzes and quiz shows since the 1970s at least, popularized by the BBC show “Mastermind”. There is a point to it in “Mastermind”. If a contestant doesn’t know the answer to a question they can say “Pass”. The show’s presenter (currently John Humphrys; it was Magnus Magnusson… Continue reading Word of the week: pass
Some teenage kid walking down the road, a can of fizzy drink in his hand, swinging it back and forth, and he’s not even sipping it. What do you think of that? It’s the kind of thing that would really wind up my father. It was something about the can of drink specifically. You’re driving… Continue reading Minor irritations
Last week, after the final show in the current season of “Upstart Crow”, my wife and I were having a conversation which led me to reflect on how good Jonathan Ross’s old radio programme was. For a few years, until around 2009, it occupied the Saturday late-morning slot (10am till 1pm) on BBC Radio 2,… Continue reading “Strictly 70s Crumpet”
A few weeks ago Susie Dent, in her Origin of Words slot on the Channel 4 show “Countdown”, featured the word “malaphor”. It’s a cross between a malapropism and a metaphor, or series of metaphors. Malapropism is a word that I have been aware of since the age of 12 and, unlike zeugma or synecdoche,… Continue reading Word of the week: malaphor
The Compartments 