Podcasts, Radio, TV, Books, Cycling, Photography and More
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RAJAR Q3 2026
This post is brought to you in association with RALF from DP Software and Services. I’ve used RALF for the many years, and it’s my favourite RAJAR analysis tool. So I am delighted that I continue to be able to bring you this RAJAR analysis in association with RALF. For more details on the product, contact Deryck Pritchard via…
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Top Drivers To This Site
There’s something terribly dispiriting about consulting your server logs – not something I do very often – to discover exactly why people are visiting your site. Here, then, are the top three search terms that lead people to my site in the last few months: 1) Ultimate Force – And this was by a long…
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Daily Mail
OK – I’ve been tempted away from the straight and narrow again. The Daily Mail is running a free DVD promotion at the moment, and it’s just too easy to stop off at the WH Smith in the tube station each morning and pick up The Ladykillers for 45p. I’ve already had other Ealing classics…
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BBC Programme Catalogue Now Open
I’m loving access to the BBC’s Experimental Archive. Find out when all those programmes you remember were first broadcast nice and easily (and yes, I know that Bird of Prey has just been released on DVD. I’d completely forgotten until ten minutes ago that it was coming out. Now I have to rush off to…
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Another Channel Caves in to “Quizzes”
One of the few strengths of Channel Five when it launched was its coverage of US sport. If you were a night owl, there was something to watch, with live baseball, ice hockey (at least before they all went on strike for a year or so) and basketball. There were various random other sports bought…
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Upgrading to MT3.2
Well I had a very scary experience over the last 24 hours. No, not going through the pain that is watching Arsenal scrape through a very tricky tie to go through to the Champions’ League Final in Paris on May 17 (any offers of tickets most welcome). I went through an upgrade process to get…
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Poor TV Reviews
Maybe I’m just getting grumpier in my old age, but is The Guardian’s TV reviewer, Sam Wollaston, getting worse. Read today’s review. Now I didn’t see any of the reviewed programmes – wild horses couldn’t make me watch something called “Extraordinary People: Identical Quads”. Similarly anything called “The Real…” immediately drops off my radar as…
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Waterstone to Buy Back Waterstone’s?
First off, I must admit that I don’t think I’d ever before noticed the apostraphe in Waterstone’s name. I certainly don’t believe I used it before. My mistake. Anyhow, Tim Waterstone has launched a bid to buy back the book chain from parent company HMV. HMV, of course, had been thinking about a buyout of…
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Various TV Musings
It was very strange to see the credits at the end of Sharpe last night. This quintissentially ITV show (that I only ever caught up with on DVD) has returned for one-off seven or eight years after it last graced our screens. It’s a sign of the times that whereas before Sharpe was always made…
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ITV Play
So ITV Play has launched today, and you can watch it online! Seemingly, there’s no end to these channels, and I’d expect that at least one other channel on Freeview is likely to convert fully to this format – FTN is practically there already with only four hours a day of non-quiz programming. Even repeats…
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Never Let Me Go
First of all, it’s probably worth pointing out that this book is Science Fiction. It’s not immediately obvious from the cover that it is, but publishers are nervous of “condemning” a novel by a mainstream author into the ghetto that is genre fiction. The story is narrated by Kathy from some time in the future,…
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Scary Scary Scary
Very scary.
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Premiership Football Rights
As we get closer and closer to the next TV deal for football, it’s interesting to read this story from today’s Times about the price that ITV or the BBC would have to pay should they bid for one of the six packages that have to be offered seperately. Of those six packages, no single…
Hadrian’s Wall
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