Tom Sutcliffe

This morning I turned on my phone only to find that it had changed my user name to Shirley, and when I tried to enter a simple Google query it came out as "Do you like gladiator movies?"

Then I realised it was in Airplane! mode.

Peruvian bishop accused of having 17 lovers exposed by cleaning lady Ciro Quispe López has handed in his notice to Pope Leo after an investigation by the Vatican over claims he had a string of lovers including a nun

The details in this story are magnificent.
www.thetimes.com/article/3dc7...

People are laughing. But I for one am proud to be Britiash….

On tonight's BBC Front Row: Oscar winning director Kathryn Bigelow on A House Of Dynamite and the strange days of modern America, Kiran Desai, the decline in university humanities course & we remember Jilly Cooper 715PM R4 or link after: www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m...

Can’t help with the picture I’m afraid.

I haven't read any Jilly Cooper novels, but I honour her for her elaboration of the Curtain Theory of British Social Class -- which divides society into the Haves and Have Nets.

Start the Week - Yanis Varoufakis on Greece’s civil war - BBC Sounds Greek economist Yanis Varoufakis and historians Paul Cartledge and Mary Vincent.

Really enjoyed talking to Yanis Varoufakis, Mary Vincent and Paul Cartledge about civil war this morning. (Also, if you want some historical perspective on where the USA finds itself right now, I'd recommend Adam Goodheart's excellent 1861: The Civil War Awakening).
www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/...

Did you attach the photograph? Or am I missing a joke?

Yes. I need to know.

Took me quite a bit longer -- and I still can't parse Danio. Or should it be Danit?

Ah. I’ll have to go and buy the paper.

By the way, I for one will welcome the inauguration of your benign despotism. Cruciverbalism is the future.

Where do you find Azed now? Hasn’t the Observer changed to a different setter?

Does more dogs make it easier. Train the alpha dog and the rest will follow?

Given that ‘deliberately getting arrested’ is the tactic Palestine Action protestors have settled on I can’t quite see how giving them something slightly different to be arrested for is likely to relieve the pressure on the police.

Was curious about JFK’s health so I asked google. TIL he was pregnant in 1960 but only put on 15-20lbs

oh wow. this finally happened to me. a piece I wrote lifted wholesale by the Daily Mail, lightly rewritten and without any links back to my original piece of writing.

most amazingly, a weird use of the word 'pacing' suggests to me that they did it with ChatGPT.

archive.ph/LFmzR

This man’s a dog magician…

You’re halfway there.

What I’m bringing to the Dragons Den today is a Shazam for that little widget or screw you find on the kitchen floor and you have no idea where it’s come from and the moment you throw it away you discover that it’s crucial. £1,000,000 for a 25% stake.

Oh wow, that's really something.

I didn't know until we buried my mother, so probably most people here don't know: Jewish cemeteries strongly recommend that you get insurance for the headstone.

Because the cemeteries are so often desecrated, the gravestones smashed.

You sort it?

What a grim day. Whoever destroys a single life destroys a whole world.

Mad Max was a documentary…

A critique of pure stupidity: understanding Trump 2.0 If the first term of Donald Trump provoked anxiety over the fate of objective knowledge, the second has led to claims we live in a world-historical age of stupid, accelerated by big tech. But might th...

Interesting long read about the deep hole we’re in. All we have to do now is dig up.
www.theguardian.com/news/2025/oc...

Are you secretly Snow White?

Sitcom idea: ventriloquist couple living together, relationship frosty, discussing divorce, but their dolls are deeply in love and do what they can to keep the couple together.

Doubt it. Everyone’s sitting it out and waiting for biology to solve the problem I think.

No. I may have accidentally demoted him.