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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Freakonomics
This is the breakthrough “business” book of the moment. Economist Steven Levitt and New York Times writer Stephen J. Dubner, take us through a very strange selection of essentially interesting facts and stories. At the outset of the book, they explain that there’s no real “theme” to this book. Instead they jump around the place.…
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Set-Up Joke, Set-Up Joke
A few years ago Rob Long, sometime writer on Cheers and several [less succesful] US sitcoms, used to write a very entertaining column about the industry in The Observer. These either came from, or made up (I forget) a book called Conversations With My Agent which is now seemingly out of print. It was very…
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Darwin and Einstein
This news sounds quite interesting – the BBC are int eh process of putting together a pair of single dramas about Charles Darwin and Albert Einstein. I wonder if they have a US co-production partner for the Darwin film yet? It’s strange that the Einstein film should come this year (assuming it’s not next), since…
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The Master and Margarita
Russia has just finished airing a dramatisation of The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov, which sounds really interesting. According to this story in Variety and this story from BBC News, it’s been a massive hit. While there are often stories about how many programmes we export around the world – you know, 123 different…
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Travel
I’ll try not to sound smug here, because I know it can happen to any of us, but why do so many people leave it until this morning, the first day fully back at work after the break, to buy their train tickets? This morning at my local station, where there’s one assistant and one…
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Explosives
I think I must have either have accidentally woken up in Bagdhad or WWIII has just kicked off. It’s only a couple of months since Fireworks night, so does everyone in my neighbourhood have to let off fireworks again? Bah humbug. New Year? Pah. Still, there’s the New Year’s Day Concert from Vienna to look…
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Happy New Year From The RMT’s Bob Crow
Yes, while Crow suns himself in Egypt, anyone who has to cross London to get to or from a New Year’s Party is out of luck. You might be able to use a train, and there are always buses, but the strike goes on. I’m pretty reasonable about strikes. If I think the union’s have…
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Dinner For One
Thanks to Slate for another story on the strangest televisual New Year’s tradition I’ve yet to hear about. Dinner For One is a sketch performed in English by two English actors that, since its first broadcast in 1963, has been repeated as part of the festivities pretty much every year across Germany and much of…
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Studio 69
This is the fist Annika Bengtzon book published in the UK, but might actually be the second or third in publishing order in Sweden. Whichever way around, it’s the first in chronological order. Anyway, junior reporter Annikia is introduced in this book working for a fictional Stockholm evening newspaper. She gets randomly assigned to a…
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Snow
Well the snow did arrive. Just not enough. And I’ve got to say that I’ve been a bit diasppointed by the sales this year. I think the best bargain I’ve had was picking up number 1 of Movie Musicals to get West Side Story for £2.99. And note that it is in full anamorphic widescreen…
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Where’s the Snow
I feel like a kid, but I’m just sitting here waiting for the much promised snow. Where is it? (Free registration reqd)
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Ed Reardon’s Week
First of all, if you haven’t already heard it, dash over right now to the BBC Radio Player and listen to last Wednesday’s first episode of the second series of Ed Reardon’s Week. Ed Reardon is quite the funniest creation I’ve heard (or seen) in some time; a writer by trade, although he has trouble…
Hadrian’s Wall
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