If you follow me on Twitter, you’ll know how much I dig Villanelle from Killing Eve. Barely a day passes without my using one of the several thousand epic gifs that exist to express feeling or emotion. If your defaults are boredom and sarcasm, you probably do the same.
Continue reading “Killing Eve: Good Mourning?”
It was the summer of 2009 and the biggest transfer in football history was about to be announced. The gangly eighteen-year-old with crooked teeth, greasy hair and dodgy trousers, that arrived at Old Trafford four years before was about to take the next step on his journey towards becoming a global icon. 70,000 people would turn up to see Real Madrid present Cristiano Ronaldo as their new player.
Continue reading “Cristiano Ronaldo: What we do in the shadows”Embed from Getty Images
Thirty-six hours before a ball is kicked, the narrative is taking shape. In the vernacular of the British tabloid press, England’s plucky Lionesses are now pitted in an ideological battle against the arrogant US Women’s National Team (USWNT). Not for goals, victories or honours, although one can assume that a game of football will break out at some point, but for the title of most dignified.
Megan Rapinoe won’t be winning that. She and her trophy hoovering cohorts’ behaviour on and off the pitch have been endlessly scrutinised and critiqued since this latest incarnation emerged onto the world stage, consistently failing to impress despite winning a World Cup, Olympic Gold, two CONCACAF Gold Cups and two SheBelieves Cups. They’re arrogant, apparently.
Never a good look on a lady.
Do you remember what you were doing when you first saw This Life? Did you discover it when they did the reboot in 2007? Find the DVD box set in a charity shop? An 8mm film in your Nan’s attic?
Or like me, were you drunk on life (and copious amounts of cider) in 1996, distractedly tapping your fingers on the night bus bell as it might somehow speed up your journey to your room in your parents’ house where the latest episode would be waiting for you on VHS, probably with the beginning or end missing?
Or both.
JK Rowling broke her silence (and her website) yesterday afternoon by making a statement about the casting of Johnny Depp as Gellert Grindelwald in Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald.
I cut and pasted that description because I literally couldn’t be arsed to write it all out, but don’t take my laziness as an indicator of the importance I place on the matter, I just wanted to get straight to the point rather than faffing about with Gellerts and Grindelwalds. It’s hugely important.
Here’s why.
Do you like what you see?
Selected essays from The Baggy Trousered Misanthropist are now available on the Kindle Store for the ecstatically accessible price of £2.26.
Order yours now, before it becomes really popular and you risk being accused of bandwagon jumping.
I’ve never been particularly comfortable with Caitlyn Jenner’s transition.
That bothered me.
You could say that drawing attention to this sort of thing is giving the trolls what they want.
That Toby Young will be reclining on his chaise longue this morning, clad in smoking jacket and dragging on the big old Cuban parked between his educated lips while he cackles at the outrage his Daily Mail article provoked.
At this point it’s just a rumour, but that didn’t stop me from recoiling in terror at a headline as it rolled by my eyes this morning.
“News and sport station could follow BBC3 in going off air, or even face closure to save its £66m budget?” it whispered in a beguiling, yet ominous tone. The story has since been dismissed by 5Live controller Jonathan Wall, but the damage is done.
The notion I might have to move through my life without the tones of BBC 5Live accompanying my every step has been introduced into my consciousness. The damage has been done.
Continue reading “BBC Radio 5Live: I can’t live, if living is without you”
Kelly Welles 