Harry's Blog

I've just played a part in the Danny Baker show¹ on BBC Radio London. This week Danny and friends are playing a mad game of birthday poker, and Danny has just played a hand against Amy using the four cards I emailed in.

My hand of Poker for my birthday, November 27th, was:

Anders Celcius
Jimi Hendrix
Bruce Lee
Ernie Wise

Amy seemed to think I'd beaten her hand. But Danny said that Ernie Wise didn't match her fourth card Charles Mingus².

So there we go, my backhand animal³ wasn't good enough - it was the flying cow from the movie Twister.

So there we go, I am Harry from Northolt.

_{¹The best show on the radio. Though the rest of BBC Radio London is crap.
²Which has now caused some controversy on the show.
³It would take way too long to explain.}

Radio One has decided to play a censored version of The Pogues and Kirsty MacColl's Fairytale of New York this year, editing out the words slut and faggot.

It seems totally ridiculous that the nation's pop music station is the most reactionary.

Radio 5Live has just spoken to Frankie Goes to Hollywood's Holly Johnson who said the editing of this "work of art" is totally "absurd" and although the words are offensive in many contexts, they are not in this case. As Johnson said, this is a song about two drunks arguing, you can't expect them to obey social niceties.

A spokesman for the Pogues said the band "found it amusing that a song that has been one of the best-loved Christmas tunes should suddenly have been deemed offensive".

Update: Seems all the furore over this today has caused Radio One to change its mind and play the track unedited in future.

Because on BBC Five Live it seems to be 1924. I could understand if the commentary from a match in Uganda sounded like it was being recorded with a Fisher Price "my first karaoke" kit, but not one from Moscow.

Can I direct you to Danny Baker's daily podcast? This is 45 minutes of comedy gold every weekday as Danny talks nonsense with the public and his regular guests Amy Lamé, Baylen Leonard and David Kuo.

It's financial analyst David Kuo that tends to have me in complete stitches. Muttly - as he's become known since yesterday's podcast, is rather unaware of his hilarity.

His stories on Chinese folklaw and some of his crazy adventures have me aching with laughter, and as poor old Danny said yesterday - it's like he's becoming a straight man to David.

Don't take my word for it, you'll find details of The All Day Breakfast podcast right here (open in a new window).

The actor Sylvester Stallone attended this afternoon's match between Everton and Reading today (honours even at 1-1). An entertainment journalist from BBC Five Live managed to have a few words with him and he struck me (as he did during his brilliant AICN Q&A series recently) as a funny and smart guy.

But my goodness, his visit to Goodison Park brought out the winging bitter side of Alan Green, well, his even more winging bitter side. I'm sure most listeners to Five Live's football coverage are familiar with the bloated old moan machine, but today he surpassed himself.

Towards the end of the match, spitting bile with every word, Green gave us his thoughts on Stallone's presence at today's match. It's bad enough having to hear Green whine about footballing matters, but he sounded so desperately pathetic going on and on about Sly and whether he was going to leave early, what he might know about football and his bodyguard.

Sad desperate stuff really.

Here’s an entertaining little piece I saw on the BBC earlier today. It happened during the Twenty20 Cup match between Glamorgan and Gloucestershire yesterday. The ball was hit for six and smashed through the commentary box window. Alas there’s no video footage, but you can hear the radio footage including “It’s coming towards us” here at BBC Online.

So Chris Moyles got in trouble for calling something gay. That’s really annoying. Why? Because it means I’m actually going to have to stick up for the talentless DJ.

What’s the problem? Well it seems that the BBC received many complaints about Moyles’ use of the word to mean rubbish rather than homosexual. The use of gay to denote something of low worth is pretty new but one I admit to using myself.

Now I can see the homosexualist point of view here. Using a word that belongs to them to mean something rubbish could be perceived as homophobic. Fair enough.

Read more »