The Girl Who Was Death

Young Woman Being Harassed by a Man

This is Judith Leyster's amazing 1631 painting ‘Young Woman Being Harassed by a Man’.

She was well known in her day but SURPRISE! her works were later misattributed either to Frans Hals, her local contemporary, or her husband, Jan Miense Molenaer.
www.thetimes.com/article/f41d...

"Good job they've got rid of the woman who killed her own d.....

Oh."

Yeah, sure, she made up the quote, but as the man himself said...

America's Next Top Mullah

Old b/w photo of Lucile Bogan. Image shows a Black woman with a bandana in her hair and beads round her neck. She is looking off to one side, and smiling

Praise be! It’s the 91st anniversary of Lucile Bogan recording surely the filthiest song in history: Shave ’Em Dry. She worked in the ‘dirty blues’ genre, known for innuendo-heavy lyrics, but Lucile was the sort of person who knew writers who used innuendo, and thought they were all cowards 🧵

I was single handedly responsible for the prize in a competition on Mark Radcliffe's late night Radio 1 show going to one of the three people who entered who got the answer wrong.

Very.

I once won a BBC Radio 2 quiz on the subject of the comedian Jack Docherty’s 1979 diary. My opponent had general knowledge questions.

I was converted to Christianity by MC Hammer in front of a full congregation of churchgoers on an otherwise dull Friday night in Eugene, Oregon.

Seriously.

And, sorry Mr. Hammer, but it didn’t really take.

The first track on the first album from one the biggest bands in the world was written about my father's goddaughter who was, for a while, my nanny.

I once got a day off work for being noticeably bigger than General Stormin’ Norman Schwarzkopf.

A ★★★★ review of Apaches (1977) Watched as a companion piece to The Long Good Friday, which John Mackenzie also directed, it's perhaps difficult for this to live up its nasty reputation. But that isn't fair. I'm coming to it as an a...

My review of Apaches (1977).

letterboxd.com/dirtyfeed/fi...

such a power move to start the hymn Jerusalem with "and". All these other hymns are like "ooh hallelujah" and "ahh almighty" but Jerusalem's just like "WE'RE MIDWAY THROUGH A CONVERSATION ABOUT ANCIENT FEET. GET ON BOARD"

The New Iran War First impressions

I found this extremely helpful by @markurban.bsky.social markurban.substack.com/p/the-new-ir...

It's time to act Ask your MP to help change the law today.

🚨 The House of Lords have STILL not passed abortion decriminalisation AND many are trying to repeal telemedicine that allows patients to end a pregnancy at home in peace and privacy. Please use this BPAS link to email, I promise it takes seconds!

Please share 🙏 bpas-campaigns.org/time-to-act/...

Thankyou @greavesian.bsky.social for a thoughtful tribute to the brave and brilliant Kenith Trodd.

Used to spend time as a trainee lawyer watching This Life and switching off when something unfeasible in the legal profession would happen.
Longest we lasted in an episode was about 3 minutes

"Marge, I would appreciate it if you didn't tell anybody about my busy hands."

Lyle Conway sculpting Aughra from The Dark Crystal

RIP Lyle Conway

The sculptor of Audrey II in Little Shop of Horrors,

Aughra, Skeksis, and Urskeks from The Dark Crystal,

Jack Pumpkinhead, Gump, and Billina and Return to Oz,

The monsters from Where the Wild Things Are and the remake of The Blob

As Reeves went on, our eyes were caught by her Tory opposite number, Mel Stride, who was going through his speech notes. Where Reeves had gone with a traditional typescript that she followed with her finger, Stride’s approach is more impressionistic. He scrawls ideas and lines in thick black pen, and then goes over them with multi-coloured highlighters. Sometimes he draws round words, sometimes he writes things out in large letters and then colours them in. It looked, from afar, like they had been produced by a ten-year-old, as if Stride might ask Kemi Badenoch to pass Vicky Atkins a note asking if she liked him during Home Office Questions. The chancellor’s message was that things are working well, and election-winning growth is coming our way. “Every pound that we have secured in this forecast today can be wiped out by a change of course,” she said. Not by the changes of course she’s already executed, you understand, but by other changes of course yet to come.

Mel Stride's Marvellous Multicoloured Messaging. My SKETCH... thecritic.co.uk/what...

Sign saying ‘our bartenders are so light fingered they could be concert pianists’ Why, are they going to rob me?

I feel they have misunderstood this expression:

Confirmation of receipt of the script of Brimstone and Treacle at the BBC. Both title and description are in red ink. "The devil arrives in a suburban home."

Reflecting on Kenith Trodd's death (my online obit will follow at some point tomorrow), I realised that he left us just one day shy of the 50th anniversary of the studio recording of Brimstone and Treacle - that wild stylistic challenge to the senses, full of provocation and unease.

I miss a lot about Screenwipe and Newswipe. To pick one thing at random - the music. I still instinctively hear Beethoven’s Symphony No. 7 playing in the background of any ominously awful news footage.

There’s a playlist of it all here.

open.spotify.com/playlist/1cb...

Greetings Sitcom Clubbers! Gary is running the London Marathon - yes, really - in support of Alzheimer’s Society, who fund vital research and support people living with dementia. If you’re able to donate, we'll be hugely grateful - thank you! www.justgiving.com/page/gary-ro...

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has now achieved the impressive accolade of becoming the first ever presenter of Channel 4's Alternative Christmas Message to have been taken out by an Israeli airstrike.

I always benefit from reading @ldfreedman.bsky.social

Explaining the concept of VHS to today’s children is difficult enough, this would just tip them over the edge.

That looks well worth turning up for!

SYMpToMs OF OVARIAN CANCER FEELING FULL QUICKLY AND/OR LOSS OF APPETITE 1 2 PERSISTENT BLOATING (NOT BLOATING THAT COMES AND GOES) 3 NEEDING TO WEE MORE URGENTLY OR MORE OFTEN THAN USUAL 4 PAIN IN YOUR TUMMY OR PELVIS (THE AREA BETWEEN YOUR HIP BONES) Target Ovarian Cancer

It’s Ovarian Cancer Awareness Month, everyone. There’s no routine screening for ovarian cancer, and it isn’t picked up by other gynaecological screening (such as smear tests). But if you do think it might be a possibility, you can ask your GP for a blood test and/or a scan.

Hang on, I thought Denis Norden presented this??