22May
After missing last week, it's a big old Wednesday Miscellany this week, and it's coming out on Tuesday. Tomorrow, we have what is possibly the worst pun ever seen on the face of the earth.
The top twelve teams from the 2007 rugby world cup will qualify for the 2011 edition. Alongside the regular eight quarter-finalists, it's expected that Italy, Argentina, Samoa, and Fiji should avoid the qualifying routine.
One from the file labelled Yougov questions we really don't understand
Which personal qualities do you think they prefer to see in a modern FEMALE novelist? [Please tick up to three options]
Emotional, warm, sympathetic
Knowledgeable about science, history and current affairs
Attractive, glamorous, good-looking
Good sense of humour
Romantic, sexy
Intelligent, clever, bright, smart
Tough, athletic, fit
Sophisticated, wealthy, jet-setting
Understands nature and the countryside
Well-travelled, experienced, worldly
The same list for male authors there. One thing completely missing: the ability to write for toffee.
A minister who was prepared to sign anything her husband put in front of her. Transdiffusion sums up ten years of running down British broadcasting.
An example? The only national children's radio station to close.
I waited three months for a reply from the Shakin' Stevens fan club. - the BBC's entertainment correspondent
Xfm to axe daytime DJs. Rather than some interesting speech, all that will air between 10am and 4pm is music, commercials, and the hourly news bulletins. The key question: will they play the same two hundred songs, day in, day out, or will they allow listeners to programme complete 20 minute chunks with whatever they like, no matter how uncommercial?
McDougal's Around the World, an incomplete list of the regional variations available from everyone's least favourite fast-food joint. Regrettably, we've not been able to find the companion article, Indigestion Remedies Around the World. In the comments, a link to a huge discussion on a company selling smoothies to McDougals. Readers will almost certainly be able to predict this conversation before they read it.
Instead, here's ten top veggie restaurants, with at least one from every area of the country. Except the north-west. We're saying nothing...
Over to D-Squared for discussion on the natural cap in support for the racist right. He compares and contrasts to the rise and fall of the Unitedkingdom Independence Party: UKIP exists as a party because the Europhobes have given up on mainstream politics; by leaving the Tory party they implicitly acknowledge that they have no hope of achieving their aim.
James Masterton waxes lyrical on the pleasures of eclecticism. Though we're generally concentrating on the big hits in the 1997 rewinds (posted each Monday since the beginning of February), there's space for those people like Horse and the Supernaturals who were never much more than a footnote in pop history. Besides, 1991 nostalgia is so next year...
Eszter at Crooked Timber opines that hearing White christmas
in May is wrong. We beg to differ; a spot play of a great track out of season is in order, but it's got to be a great track. Stop the cavalry
, yes; Christmas in Blobbyland
, no. We've heard I believe in Father Christmas
in September and it worked, in a way that Happy xmas (war is over)
on 24 December never does. Still can't top the day we went to Lichfield at the start of August, on a day when it was about 25 million degrees, and heard Fairytale of New Amsterdam
. The comments to the original article are another tangent worth exploring.
