'A lot of women became very interested in the Universe lately'

In a 2011 clip, Dylan Moran discusses the correlation between camera-friendly physicist Brian Cox (who, it is mandatory to mention, used to play keyboards in D:Ream, of Things Can Only Get Better 'fame') appearing on telly and women exhibiting unprecedented levels of interest in the Universe (NSFW-L).


Dylan Moran Discusses Brian Cox by anonymouscoward382

On the occasion of my sisters' 30th birthday

May 1988

Zoe and Gabrielle, my sisters - you were born in Auckland on this day 30 years ago, or if you prefer a little more precision, 10,957 days ago. The moon waxed gibbous on the day they entered the world. The same day you were joined (on the other side of the world) by the daughter of Igor and Nataliya Zvonareva, who was born in Moscow in the then USSR. Vera Zvonareva would go on to become the world's second-highest ranked women's tennis player in 2010. And to balance things out, on your birthday the distinguished Irish writer Liam O'Flaherty drew his last breath. One of O'Flaherty's novels had the distinction of being made into a film not once but twice, including in 1935 by the legendary director John Ford. The Informer, a gritty tale of life in Ireland during the war of independence, won four Oscars at the 1935 Academy Awards, including Best Director for Ford. In the music world, and slightly less auspiciously, on the day you were born the 18-year-old Janet Jackson married the 21-year-old fellow singer James DeBarge. (The marriage was annulled the following year). And the number one chart single in New Zealand was One Love / People Get Ready, a re-release of a 1977 single from the album Exodus, which had also topped the charts here. (The 1984 video features cameos from Paul McCartney and a host of other 80s UK popsters). The single was in its final week of seven at the top of the charts, and would be replaced the following week with Two Tribes by Frankie Goes to Hollywood. Of course, none of this other ephemera has anything to do with your own entry onto the global stage. Just thought I'd mention it.

Apart from visiting you, the swaddled and wriggling twins, in the birthing unit at the hospital, one of my earliest memories of you was a trip to the Auckland War Memorial Museum, when for some reason I was tasked with pushing your double pram through the highly crowded entry hall, down the flight of steps from the wings. Quite a task if you're not used to handling an unwieldy pram. At the first sign of difficulty you both very sensibly bailed out and proceeded to the exit under their own steam, thereby affording me an early glimpse of the precocious development of your good sense of judgement.

Don't worry about turning 30. Turning thirty is fine. As David O'Doherty says:

'35 is the first disappointing age. Even marketing people realise this, because they've divided our lives into three bits. There's zero to 18, and they're kids and they like brightly coloured things. And then there's 18 to 34, and they're the key demographic that people are supposed to care about. They're the people who feel emotion and fall in love, and take risks and appreciate technology. And then there's just 35 to death. And we like Michael Buble and driving gloves'.

You've got five years to work out a strategy to avoid that terrible fate. Happy birthday!

April 2006, with Nada

Down at the Kebab & Calculator

Suggs: 'You hum it... and I'll smash your face in'.

From the third episode of season one of the BBC's The Young Ones in 1982, it's Madness performing their 12th top 40 single, and their first and only UK chart-topper, House of Fun. The group would go on to rack up 30 UK chart entries, and the compilation album this single appeared on later in 1982, Complete Madness, was their first number one album in the UK. (Divine Madness, another best of, would also top the charts a decade later in 1992). Madness are still performing live - you can catch them at their House of Fun festival over a long weekend at Butlins Minehead in November.

75 years on - New Zealand declares war on Germany

At 11.30pm tonight it will be exactly 75 years since the New Zealand declaration of war against Germany in 1939, in response to the expiry of Britain's ultimatum for German withdrawal from its invasion of Poland, which had commenced two days earlier. Half an hour before midnight, the acting Prime Minister Peter Fraser issued the declaration with the following grim statement:

This is not an occasion for many words; it is a dark day in the history of the world ... It is with deep regret and sadness that I make this announcement on behalf of the Government, and the people will receive it with similar feelings. That will not, however, affect the determination of both Government and people to play their part.

Fraser himself had been directly affected by the last world war: he served 12 months imprisonment from December 1916 for the politicised charge of sedition, having opposed the introduction of wartime conscription.

New Zealand's newspapers recorded the outbreak of war the following day. The tiny Bay of Plenty Beacon, a slender eight-pager, contained the usual archaic format of a newsless front page dominated by print advertisements, several pages of rural news and adverts of interest to farmers ('Take care of your cows with Wallace super milking machines'), and turf news from the horse-racing scene. Not until page 4 did the hastily-composed but elegant editorial address the declaration, with the headline 'The Empire at war':

A humble news organisation serving a small rural community in one of the last outposts of Empire the BEACON hesitates to express an opinion on the subject that has already shaken the fabric of civilisation and filled the press of the world with forboding [sic]. Yet we feel that we have something to reflect in the way of local opinion in this tiny unit of Empire which in common with the whole of the Dominion is proud of its loyalty to the crown. In every Whakatane home over the momentous week-end just past, the apprehension felt at the possibility of armed conflict was offset by whole-hearted endorsement of the nations' desperate bid for peace and final decision to lay the bully of Europe low. This opinion is typical of the spirit of Empire in all parts of the globe. Britishers the world over will realise the task which lies ahead and can be relied upon to meet the call to arms in the same spontaneous manner as they have in the past.
- Bay of Plenty Beacon, Monday 4 September 1939

Wellington's Evening Post of the same day was twice the length of the Beacon, but even more back-to-front from a modern perspective, in that the humdrum adverts, Humphrey Bogart and Basil Rathbone cinema listings and non-war news occupies the first seven pages, and it's not until page eight that the full text of Mr Fraser's Monday morning follow-up statement is printed, with headings illustrating the martial motif: 'New Zealand's support - Britain ready - An appeal to all - Friendship rejected - Intentions disbelieved - Firm determination'.

Page nine is devoted to British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain's declaration address, the statement of George VI, and Germany's response to Britain's Polish ultimatum: 'Germany did not seek to destroy Poland but merely sought to rectify the frontiers'. 'Herr Hitler' was also quoted saying 'The British Government has let its mask fall and has proclaimed war on a threadbare pretext. Britain, driven on by those warmongers whom we knew in the last war, has done this despite the fact that Germany made no demands against any State to the west of the Reich, and despite Germany's offer of cordial understanding, and even of friendship'. A brief paragraph also noted the keen interest of the deposed former Kaiser Wilhelm II from his exile in Doorn, the Netherlands: 'the ex-Kaiser is following the war before a gigantic map of Poland, hanging in the great hall of the palace. He is methodically placing little coloured pins to indicate the army positions'. Finally, an official notice on page 11 reads:

The NEW ZEALAND GAZETTE Extraordinary
Published by Authority
Wellington, Monday, September 4, 1939 

HIS Excellency the Governor-General has it in command from His Majesty the King to declare a state of war exists between His Majesty and the Government of the German Reich, and that such state of war has existed from 9.30pm, New Zealand standard time, on the third day of September, 1939. 

Given at Wellington this third day of September, 1939 

GALWAY,
Governor-General 

P. FRASER
Acting Prime Minister

In a sign of things to come, the final page of the Post also contains a hastily-inserted column advising that 'numerous aeroplanes of unidentified nationality, believed to be part of a tremendous air fleet, skirted Holland shortly after midnight flying towards Germany'. New Zealand would go on to serve in many theatres of World War 2, and would suffer the loss of 11,928 lives in military action. Victory over Germany would not be declared until VE Day, 8 May 1945, nearly six years later.

See also:
History: 75 years on - Paddy the Wanderer, 17 July 2014
History: 100 years on - the Battle of Featherston St, 5 November 2013
History: 95 years on - Passchendaele, 12 October 2012

Emily Dickinson's book group

Emily Dickinson, via Wikimedia

[T]here is one ... epistolary feature that makes Dickinson original: from her teenage years onwards she conducted a postal - and virtual - book group. If it wasn't the first it was certainly one of the strongest: a huge amount (perhaps even half) of her letters contained at least some reference to her current reading material or an oblique literary reference her middle-class friends would be sure to recognise. It is highly likely that she also attended what she may have called a 'corporeal' real-life book club in her early twenties (in one letter she writes to her brother how 'Our Reading Club still is, and becomes now very pleasant'), but when she saw less of the real world she seemed happy to keep in touch with it through books and letters about books. Her first tentative steps towards this occurred in 1848 at the age of 18, writing to a friend 'What are you reading now?' before launching into her own list, and her regular book circle soon expanded to include her brother Austin and his wife Sue, her cousins Louise and Frances Norcross, and at least three friends. The Dickinson scholar Eleanor Heginbotham has observed that her 'book club manners' in her letters are still reflected in book club behaviour today: a sociability, a boastfulness, a competitiveness, a delight. Present-day book club members may well exhibit all of these in discussing the work and life of Emily Dickinson.

- Simon Garfield, To the Letter, Edinburgh, 2013, p.252-3.

See also:
Books: Mark Twain on knowing nothing about New Zealand, 31 July 2014
Books: Mr Pooter puts his foot in it, 28 June 2014
Books: Satan amongst the sofa cushions, 29 May 2014

Favourite scene from Lindsay Anderson's 'If...'

The Headmaster (Peter Jeffrey): 'I take this seriously. Very seriously indeed. Reverend Woods might've been quite badly hurt. Do you realise that? Now I want you to apologise to him, is that clear?'



'If...', the title referencing the hoary old Rudyard Kipling poem, was Malcolm McDowell's first film role. The film received an X certificate on release in Britain in 1968 due to its subversive content and won the Palme D'Or in 1969. Most of it was filmed at Cheltenham College, Gloucester, but I love the fact that it turns out I've actually been to one of the other filming scenes. The Wikipedia entry states that 'the motorbike shop was filmed at the Broadway Motor Company on Gladstone Rd, Merton, London SW19. The garage is now a Wetherspoons pub'. I had a drink there with friends at some point around 1998. (Clearly we weren't all that fussy when it comes to atmosphere). This is also the pub that Pamela Anderson popped into for a swift pub meal following her panto appearance at the nearby New Wimbledon Theatre in 2009. (Apologies for the illiterate Standard hack).

Interestingly, two supporting actors from the film were offered the role of Doctor Who but reportedly turned it down: Peter Jeffrey before Patrick Troughton took the role in 1966, and the History Master Graham Crowden before Tom Baker took the part in 1974. Crowden would later become best known for his five years in a lead role in the sitcom Waiting For God. Both eventually featured in Doctor Who playing other guest roles, but then so did nearly everyone else in British acting circles.