In 1969 - and I am so old I remember watching it - the Queen agreed to be the subject of a fly-on-the-wall television documentary - Royal Family,
It has never been aired since, and the first extract in this look back on it surely explains why.
"And there was a gorilla!" Why Royal Family has never been broadcast again
In 1969 - and I am so old I remember watching it - the Queen agreed to be the subject of a fly-on-the-wall television documentary - Royal Family,
It has never been aired since, and the first extract in this look back on it surely explains why.
Absurd claim from the Labour deputy leader of Croydon Council
More evidence that the Labour Party is in a strange place at the moment comes from Croydon (hitherto best known as the land of inflammable trousers).
There, says the Croydon Advertiser:
A Labour politician claims the Liberal Democrats sabotaged his party's election chances - by selecting a candidate with the same surname.
Stuart Collins, deputy leader of Croydon Council, claims the Lib Dems helped the Conservatives beat Labour hopeful Marina Ahmad in Croydon and Sutton by selecting Amna Ahmad to stand in the constituency.
Ms Ahmad is less than impressed with the conspiracy theory and has called on Cllr Collins to apologise.Given how low the Lib Dem base vote is at the moment, any confusion between our candidate and the one from the Conservatives is likely to harm the Tories not help them. It is an absurd claim
Remember how the Literal Democrat candidate robbed the Liberal Democrat Adrian Sanders of victory in the 1994 Euro elections.
Croydon Court Hotel in Thornton Heath evacuated after guest's trousers catch fire in room
Congratulations to Your Local Guardian for winning our Headline of the Day Award.
And thanks to the reader who nominated it.
And thanks to the reader who nominated it.
A radio play on the dark side of Leicestershire village life
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| Photo of Hallaton © Colin Smith |
These is a dramatised ghost story on the BBC iPlayer at the moment called The Parson.
What interested me at once is that it is clearly based on the traditional bottle-kicking and hare-pie scrambling that takes place in the Leicestershire village of Hallaton every Easter Monday.
Sure enough, the dramatist David Varela confirms that the play was:
inspired by the ancient pagan tradition of Bottlekicking in my parents’ home village of Hallaton. The reality is pretty horrific, so turning it into a horror story was easy.I have not heard the end of it yet, but I do not fancy the chances of the meddling new vicar.
Police investigating alleged 'electoral malpractice' in Leicestershire PCC poll
After the Liberal Democrat and Ukip candidates had been eliminated, he beat his Conservative opponent by 78,188 votes to 58,305.
This represented quite a turnaround on the result in 2012. Then the Conservative Clive Loader (who stood down at this election) won at the second stage by 64,661 votes to Labour's 51,835.
Over the weekend there was gossip about irregularities in the postal votes cast. Today's Leicester Mercury quotes a spokeswoman for Leicestershire police:
"We have received an allegation of electoral malpractice which is believed to have taken place during the Police and Crime Commissioner elections.
"Inquiries are ongoing into the report and we are liaising with the Electoral Commission and the local authority."The Mercury says this allegation has been made by the Ukip agent, but adds:
An East Midlands Conservative Party spokesman declined to comment but a number of activists left Friday's election count talking about 'anomalies'.
Six of the Best 595
Lenore Skenazy condemns the use of parents' fears for their children as a marketing tool.
Tony Broadbent rediscovers a murder that scandalised postwar London: the shooting of Alec de Antiquis in 1947.
Hope you enjoy this article by Katy Waldman on why we omit initial pronouns.
Kelefa Sanneh explores the benign ruthlessness of Paul Simon.
Jethro Tull: Cup of Wonder
I should have chosen this Beltane anthem last week, but I saw so taken with my discovery of Billy Fury singing David Bowie that I used that straight away.
This comes from Jethro Tull's 1977 LP Songs from the Wood. As I once blogged, when it came out I thought it was just about the best one there had ever been.
The Battlefield line in West Leicestershire
Yesterday I visited the Battlefield Line in the west of Leicestershire. Some heritage lines are preserved and polished to within an inch of their lives: this one is not like that.
Its slightly homely nature gives you an idea of what branch lines must have been like in the last days of their operation.There were no steam locomotives running yesterday - just a couple of ill-matched diesel multiple unit cars.
It was good to see the building from Leicester Humberstone Road station in its new home.
And it was sad to see 45015, which I remember hauling St Pancras expresses through Market Harborough, mouldering away beside the line at Shackerstone. (It is not owned by the Battlefield Line people themselves.)
J.W. Logan's grave at Church Langton
I was in the Langtons this afternoon, so I visited the grave of my hero J.W. Logan. You can find it in the churchyard at St Peter's, Church Langton.
His son Hugh, who died from pneumonia in a casualty clearing station in Belgium in 1919, is remembered on the war memorial there.
Note that, like many such memorials, it gives the dates of the First World War as 1914-19. This is because an Allied expeditionary force intervened on the anti-Bolshevik side in the Russian Civil War.
