Tom Sutcliffe

I sometimes wish The Studio would calm down and realise that it’s funny enough to underplay the occasional scene. But then it comes up with something really funny and I think “Well, ignore my notes.”

Caught up late with the Golden Globes episode of The Studio and I will never watch an awards ceremony in the same way again.*

*I never watched awards ceremonies before. So, to be pedantic, “In the same way, I will not watch awards ceremonies again”.

Oh. And you definitely shouldn’t miss this. A terrific novel.

If you’ve been thinking “You know I really should read David Foster Wallace’s ‘Infinite Jest’ one day” you might want to know that it’s currently available on Kindle for 99p.

Why a NASA satellite that scientists and farmers rely on may be destroyed on purpose The Trump administration has asked NASA staffers to draw up plans to end at least two satellite missions that measure carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, according to current and former NASA employees.

Is there any precedent for the current American administration’s hostility to scientific inquiry? Other than Phnom Penh in 1975?

www.npr.org/2025/08/04/n...

Probably doesn’t mean what O think it means. Got it from all those docs about OxyContin.

Chocolate bar wrapper: M&S Salted Blond Chocolate, Pistachios, Shortbread & Cornflakes.

This stuff should be illegal. I’ve only had two squares and I’m already thinking of titrating the dose.

Pleased to see Sean Hayes getting good reviews for Goodnight Oscar. Really enjoyed talking to him about it for Front Row this week. (Full interview on BBC Sounds)

www.instagram.com/reel/DM-1PQ3...

The mink truthers will turn up next.

Gotta make a living…

Wow. Is it carrying a baby mink? Or its lunch?

The service was terrible last time I went too….

Trump in the White House roof.

Fretful Whitehouse aides leaning out of a window with a cheeseburger on a stick. “He’ll come in when he gets hungry.”

Well that makes sense.

Series of six, Netflix, Autumn 2026.

Found it fascinating. And what a form for nemesis to take.

Not the main point obviously, but someone should tell them that Ghislaine isn’t pronounced Jizz-lane…

This isn't justice. This is one monster helping out another.

Photograph: two dead logs, blackened by rot, one of which has been given a glowing tip, like a hot poker, by applying to it leaves that range from bright yellow to dark orange.

And this — one of his subtler uses of leaves found on site to create painterly effects overlaid on the landscape.

Photograph, one of a series in which the artist thrashes a river with a big stick, creating a rain arcing away from him.

Two photographs, part of a series. 1/ a figure leans at an angle of 30 degrees against a dry stone wall, his head entirely invisible inside it and body rigid as an ironing board . 2/ A ramrod figure in the middle of a moorland road, leaning at a 45 degree angle, supported only by a strand of barbed wire.

Here’s two that (I think) are *unintentionally* comic, and yet also mesmerising and lovely.

Oak Passage: dead oak branches, arranged to create a ruler straight geometrical aisle on the inside and a wild tangle externally.

A dead hawthorn tree in a Yorkshire valley, coated with locally sourced iron oxide so that it glows against the green grass and trees of the background.

Fallen elm, with a vertical bar of dark shadow, created by applying blackened leaves to the bark.

Hugely enjoyed the Andy Goldsworthy retrospective in Edinburgh, partly because my reactions varied so much. Absolutely *loved* some pieces, found a few inadvertently comic, some too tricksy. And some are both inadvertently comic *and* beautiful. Or a bit tricksy but undeniably potent.

I went to London today and it's unrecognisable. Gone are the cheerful Cockney chimneysweeps and flying nannies of my youth, replaced by terrifying people of different ethnicities and women wearing trousers. Roaming cannibal suffragettes. Giant bears. Tigers. Is it time for my medication?

I’d honestly put it at 50:50 that I could score a penalty if there was nobody in goal at all.

Haven’t gone yet. But I won’t go for a pizza.

Trump in his New York penthouse, which gilds the gilding on the plastic lily.

Lot of people dunking on Simon Jenkins this morning but surely Trump’s “eye for beauty” speaks for itself?

Pretty sure that’s the Queensboro Bridge.

Superheroes without capes: whoever it is on that trailer for SAS: Who Dares Wins who says “I don’t think this is my cup of tea”.

Just seen someone describe an increase in difficultly level as “upping the Auntie”

Is the villain a writer with an original movie idea who must be stopped at all costs?

Mariah Carey: Ageing doesn’t happen to me and I won’t allow it The US pop star and self-confessed diva, who has a career stretching back over three decades, has never publicly acknowledged her age and says ‘I don’t know time’

Proven to work. For a while.

www.thetimes.com/article/82d5...