I was watching Monty Python's The Meaning of Life with my girlfriend the other day. When this bit popped up her 13 year old daughter said, 'Look! It's Lady Gaga!' She has a point.
Edit - looking at the Youtube comments it's actually Graham Chapman.

I went for a haircut today. Not an unusual event in itself, I do the same every couple of months, but this time was different. My barber is Turkish so I have the added treat of getting the hairs inside my ears singed off with a flaming metal wand and parts of my face near the hairline are shaved which I hadn't previously considered suitable zones for the razor, but this time was different. The barber who cut my hair was an elderly gent whose services I have used before; he's very deft with the cut-throat razor on the back of my neck, but this time was different.
This time, during that bit at the end where they show you the back of your head, as if you could say anything about it at that stage, my barber slapped what is now the undeniably thinning area around my crown and laughed, 'I didn't do that bit!'
Sigh I will be 43 years old in a couple of weeks time and had thought that the baldness fairy had chosen to give me a pass to luxuriantly coiffeured old-age. I didn't really believe it; I've been trying to avoid that reverse reflection of the top of my head for a couple of years now, but now it is undeniable. I am indeed drifting into the arena of the slappy. By next Christmas I expect to completely hairless except for two small tufts above my ears.
And for some reason I still gave the bastard a tip.

Apparently the three choice quotes from Rod 'monkeymfc' Liddle on a Millwall fansite, posted at the end of this article, were:
1) The result of a hacker
2) An 'Ironic' quotation
3) 'doen't read like me'
http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2010/jan/22/rod-liddle-quip-auschwitz-mi...
Though he did post the message which gives the piece its title as a protest against the cheapening of the memorial at Auschwitz, which important point he chose to dissemintate under a psuedonym on a Millwall FC fanbord.
I don't have trouble with the idea that he was trying to be clever and misjudged how literally some of his comments could have been taken, but is this man really the best choice to take charge of a newspaper, even a failing one?

For no other reason than that it always make me think of snowy winters, and that it's still lovely.

When this version was released I remember it playing in a shop, and overhearing one girl saying to another, 'You know there's no music in this, it's just them singing.'

I always try to find time to watch a few favourite old films over Christmas and here is my Christmas confession. I love the Carry On films and have Screaming, Spying and Cleo lined up for the holidays.
They may be ropey, dated, and sometimes offensive but they are generally a joy to re-watch. Not all of them obviously, as anyone who has had the misfortune to see Carry On England or Carry On Eammuelle will tell you, but how many men can honestly say that they didn't break into a grin and attempt a throaty 'hyah, hyah, hyah' laugh when they saw the photo of Sid above?
Let's be having you (as the actress etc ...) Favourite clips, lines, opinions for or against?

Charlie Brooker got more engaged in the Christmas number one story than I could manage by downloading RATM. His piece was written before the chart was announced of course, and I suspect it sayS a lot that Word readers would like to say if we could work up sufficiently articulate bile.

Even if the climactic repeated howls of "Fuck you, I won't do what you tell me!" put you in mind of a teenager loudly refusing to tidy his bedroom – as opposed to a masked anarchist hurling petrol bombs at the riot squad – there is at least an authentic human sentiment being expressed. Zack de la Rocha is audibly pissed off ...
But then nobody's buying The Climb in order to actually listen to it. They're buying it out of sedated confusion, pushing a button they've been told will make them feel better. It's the sound of the assisted suicide clinic...

The man who invented the Hokey Cokey has just died. It took them ten hours to get him into the coffin. Whenever they put his left foot in he put his left foot out.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/03/arts/music/03degen.html?_r=2&scp=1&sq=...

Here's something that made me smile this morning: David McKee based Mr Benn's Festive Road on Festing Road in Putney where he lived at the time. You can visit Mr Benn's house on Google Streetview, though the fancy dress shop is nowhere to be seen.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/8375309.stm

I'm sure that I'm not the only one who is finding this Friday more difficult than usual to endure because they are surrounded by colleagues determined to use the excuse of disadvantaged children to demonstrate how 'wacky' they are.
Some words of advice:

• I’ll make my charity donations anonymously and without the provocation of mass self-humiliation, if that’s alright with you.
• If you’re not funny for the other 364 days of the year then wearing a pink wig and dressing like Timmy Mallett is unlikely to render you so on the other day.
• I presume the idea of 'dress-down' days is that wearing a suit and tie is something you resent the rest of the time. I don't; I like my tie thanks, and while I'm on the subject I can't help but notice that the people who dress worst in 'office' clothes also dress worst in civvies.
• I have a horrible feeling that the singing is going to start soon. When you get to my desk and I say that I will give you some money if it makes you go away I mean it. Please do not make the mistake of assuming that I am joking for my wrath shall be terrible. I shall retrieve my money, and that will make the little kiddiwinks cry, and then you’ll be sorry.

Was this the final proof that no contemporary television programme, no matter what the subject matter, is complete without being given a celebrity spin? This applies to a would-be serious examination of the re-introduction of state killing in the UK to something as trite as Family Fortunes, which is apparently too trivial to broadcast these days unless you have 'celebrities' as the contestants.
Had the producers focussed on a fictional case it could have been a thought-provoking look at the various people involved in killing a prisoner and their roles in the procedings, but that clearly wasn't enough. I suppose using Paul Gadd as an example let the viewer consider a case which they believed they had an informed opinion of, though it meant that they had to stretch the viewers' credulity even further to make out that they were covering a capital crime.
Last night's programme was astoningishing in several ways - for the complicity of Anne Widdicombe, the stunning central performance from Hilton McRae, but mainly for the bizarreness of the entire enterprise.

(minor edit - 'complete' in the first sentence had been typed as 'incomplete')

Did anyone else hear Prince Edward on the Today programme this morning? I don't usually laugh out loud at 7am on a Friday as I'm making the coffee, but this, tragic though the orginal story is, had me howling. It benefits from his slightly baffled sounding delivery if you can find a recording. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/theroyalfamily/6462669/Prince...
While I'm doing a round up of the morning media, read Nancy Banks Smith on last night's programme Katie: My Beautiful Face. Even if you didn't see the programme, and really - you should, you can't help but admire NBS in full flow. That casually buried 'ironically' in the last paragagraph on Katie... has made me gasp the three times I have read this.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/tv-and-radio/2009/oct/30/katie-my-beautiful-fa...

Some time back on the Word podcast someone said in passing that you don't need to play your favourite records because you already know them. For some reason this came to mind as I was walking to work this morning. Whenever the question of favourite albums comes up I unhesitatingly reply with this one, and probably have done for the last 2 decades or longer, and it occurred to me that I hadn't played my favourite record for a couple of years.

In the time since I last played it I've fallen in and out of love with dozens of other albums, and there was only one way to be sure that I still love Rain Dogs. It's on the iPod, but that wouldn't do, so I've waited until I'm home and dinner is out of the way, and it's playing now as I type (I'm up to Walking Spanish Down the Hall). I'm delighted to say that it's still bloody marvellous, which comes as some relief. The lyrics of nursery rhymes and heartbreak, the variety of moods, the raucous clatter that stays just the right side of melodic and the seedy romanticism of it all. And above all, the impossibility of taking it as anything other than a whole collection.
It's a risky business, playing your favourite album. What if I suddenly realised that I just didn't enjoy it any more?
Try it. Get your favourite album off the shelf and give it a spin for the first time in, ooh, how long? Let us know about any epiphanies, good or bad.

Actually, the number of views and comments for this Youtube clip suggest I might be wrong about that, or perhaps it's the vid (which does get a bit saucy for work around the middle*) that's so popular.

*3:28 to spare you searching.

Unashamed blog rolling alert, but Daniel Finkelstein in the Times has linked and expanded on his colleague Caitlin Moran's blog about how Hang on Sloopy was drafted into law as Ohio's official state song, and it's rather wonderful. Take his advice and read the whole of the legislation:
http://timesonline.typepad.com/comment/2009/10/is-this-the-best-bit-of-l...