Most viewed...

This story is several months old but is still one of the most viewed on the BBC website. I guess it's easy to see why...


An 18-year-old has secretly painted a 60ft drawing of a phallus on the roof of his parents' £1million mansion in Berkshire. It was there for a year before his parents found out. They say he'll have to scrub it off when he gets back from travelling.

Happy Birthday Mr President

I am normally a great fan of the bottom up communications revolution -- after all this blog is a part of it --but it does have its downside. Sometimes I yearn for proper fact-checked journalism as a source of information. Perhaps in that world we wouldn't find ourselves in the crazy situation where a significant -- and worse of all growing -- proportion of the American people believe a crazy lie. A lie that is easily disproved by fact, common sense and circumstance. I mean the "birther"conspiracy that the USA is suffering right now. The theory is that President Obama was born in Kenya not the USA and is therefore ineligible to be president. It's the sort of daft rumour that demands evidence and as soon as that evidence comes it is dismissed as a conspiracy. The US right wing -- so stung by its crushing defeat in 2008 -- has bought into birtherism to the extent that even senior republicans will associate themselves with the lies. The rumour has been disproved again and again and yet -- fueled by today's incredible communications netowrks -- it continues to gather momentum. I don't really want to add to the buzz except to express my bemusement that the most informed society in history can continue to believe patent untruths. But they do, faked moon landings, Area 51, 9-11, 7-7...and all.

"Evidence" that President Obama was born in Kenya

Award Triumph

My nephew Stanley has won third prize in the Trewennach Horticultural Show (Minature Garden category) for his work "Spooky Island Garden"

Alice at 96

This is my grandmother Alice celebrating her 96th birthday this week.

Another rainy evening...

A lovely weekend but August has been naughty on weekdays, so far. Last night was wet so no walk in the woods. Instead down in the cellar to the dusty DVDs and I chose a Columbo box set. I watched a couple of episodes which I thoroughly enjoyed. Of course they were 1970s ones. It is such a delight to luxuriate in the costumes, interior decor and cars. Wow.

In some ways Columbo was a showcase for LA-style gracious living in the early 70s. Each episode unveiled a lifestyle UK viewers in their small, crowded and damp homes could barely dream about -- swimming pools, views from the Hollywood Hills, butlers, mock stately homes, ultra modernist apartments, fine dining. It was lifestyle almost before lifestyle had been invented.

But I think the king of the cop shows was also remarkably subversive. Firstly, and most obviously, the rich, clever, socially successful were the villains and they were outwitted by the scruffy low paid cop. Then underlying all this is a series of derogatory messages about the then super rich. They are unpatriotic. They always seem to drive foreign cars -- Mercedes, Jaguars, Rolls Royces, Ferraris. Remember this is the time of the first real attack from foreigners on blue collar Detroit. The baddies compound this by eating -- and obsessing about -- foreign gourmet food. That is arch and un-American. Worst of all they always drink brandy. Get this always, check it out. Brandy of course being an imported imposter unlike honest old bourbon.

A further folly of the super-rich is their reliance on up to the minute show-off gadgetry. Audiences saw, for the first time, telephone answering machines, home cinemas, remote control TVs, car phones and a myriad of home automations. But this conspicuous consumerism is also their undoing. Many a Columbo plot turns on one of these supposedly foolproof gadgets not fooling the dear old Lieutenant. The dear old Lieutenant who keeps his old car and even older raincoat.

Sitting here in 2009 we are learning painfully about the unbalancing effect of super wealth on the economy and society. It is more serious even than murders in the Hollywood Hills. Columbo now seems both prescient and quaint. Quaint because its underlying egalitarian message is a belief of the past. Now we have legions of pushy PRs telling us how much we should respect and worship their wealthy and famous clients. A detective and social subversive like Lieutenant Columbo wouldn't get past the electric gates before the slick private lawyers had him taken off the case.

The other way that Columbo subverts is in its narrative construction. It is a whodunnit where we actually know from the very beginning who did it. The pleasure in the storytelling here comes from watching Columbo snare his victim. Despite breaking all the rules it works. It is a real pity TV executives today don't have the guts to depart from their one-track formats and take such risks.

Talkin Blue

Apparently David Cameron doesn’t know what a tw*t is. At last, an explanation for George Osborne’s career.

Hopi Sen

My favourite villain

A rainy evening last night and I watched a couple of episodes on DVD of Granada's Jewel in the Crown. Despite the mega cast and faithful adaptation it's still not a patch on Paul Scott's quartet of novels. However it is nice to be reminded what TV with ambition and scope was like. Best of all Tim Pigott-Smith's rendition of one of the finest villains in post-war literature - Ronald Merrick. His suburban vowels, repressed campness and all-pervading chippiness are delicious and unforgettable.

Scott managed to come up with something fresh in the footsteps of Forster and Orwell and no-one has ever bettered his portrayal of the brittleness of the British Raj in situ. The social divisions within the ruling class are as acute as the racial ones between the rulers and ruled. It is so well drawn that it is as painful as it is perfect. Scott created his Indian colonial landscape knowing that the original had come to an end. That's what allows us to wallow a little -- it is historical so we need feel no guilt.

Guilt is not an emotion I want to encourage but sadly Scott was wrong in consigning all those colonial attitudes to the past. I am off to Zanzibar in a couple of weeks and could, should I so choose, spend my time being as Merricky as I like. White expat society in Zanzibar, and many other outposts of the poverty and development industry, is as far divorced from local culture and local people as anything in British India . These neo-colonialists will be snooty and condescendingly uncomprehending with me because I choose to spend my time with Africans in Africa. I have "gone native" and that's simply not "pukka". The language may have been tempered but the underlying attitudes are as raw as they ever were. The Neo-Cols really do seem to despise those they lord over. They just wrap it all up in ghastly management speak and KPIs. Whatever the dressing there are still, as Kipling said over a century ago, two worlds which shall never meet. Nonetheless I think I get a better deal with the locals than I ever would with the earnest sahibs and desiccated memsahibs of the poverty industry.

Thought for the Day

"There are more important things than being cool"

David Mitchell

A Great Discovery

A fabulous local discovery has been the mountains known as the Carmarthen Vans. Have no idea why I have not found them before but only half an hour away and now one of the Kili Team's training spots. You can get several hours of good striding in with enough ascent and descent to feel you have done something, not to mention great views and a lot of nothing and nobody.

False Dentistry

A barrister friend is currently representing an Iraqi dentist from Merthyr Tydfil. It turns out that the client was a senior figure in Sadam Hussein's Baath Party. At home in Wales he had pictures of himself with Sadam and other members of the Axis of Evil. Somehow he escaped justice or retribution in Iraq and washed up in Merthyr. That's quite an achievement but he then managed to set up as a dentist -- entirely bogusly -- and fool the good people of Mid Glamorgan for years. I can imagine a Baath Party sadist ripping teeth out but repairing them...! What can the mouths of Merthyr be like? It is a bit like Radovan Karadic the healer!

Popularity

"On the ratemyteachers website, Mr Harvey from All Saints, Mansfield, had enjoyed a top rated 5.0 from pupils at his school. After being charged by police for hitting one of his students on the head with a heavy object, his score only went down to 3.7. By today, his reputation has rallied, Harvey is back up to 4.6. Which means even though he's up on an attempted murder charge against a fifteen year old pupil, Mr Harvey is significantly more popular with his students than most of the other teachers, average rating 3.6."

Who do I have to hit to get popular round here?

I wrote a little while ago about the complete losers that are white supremacists. I see from the news that one of their number, Neil Lewington, has been convicted of plotting to cause explosions in pursuit of his sick beliefs.


He fits the mould perfectly. It is difficult to find anything"supreme" about him

Age 43 and still living with his mum and dad

Alcoholic
No girlfriend
No friends
Lives in a fantasy world
Arrested for urinating on a station
Makes bombs with a child's chemistry set
If that's not enough listen to how his own lawyer described him: "a silly, immature, alcoholic, dysfunctional twit, fantasising to make up for a rather sad life".

Long live the master race!

Comment of the Month

From Will Self...
"The only way you will catch me twittering is if a live songbird lands in my mouth."

Willard White in Llandeilo

Last night's performance was stunning. Sir Willard performed his "Paul Robeson Re-Explored" set -- songs and readings taking us through Robeson's remarkable life. He was accompanied by a fabulous group --Neal Thornton on piano, the superb Guy Barker on trumpet and the Pavao String Quartet. St Teilo's church rocked, reverberated and rejoiced.

Sitting at the front watching these incredibly skilled performers at work just makes me appreciate true professionals. There is a depth, an ease, a roundedness and above all a "music first" commitment that only comes with all the hard work, practice and experience of pros. Something we may be in danger of forgetting in the scramble for celebrity of our "Britain's got Talent" culture.

Music Week

Llandeilo is alive with the sound of music. Officially the Festival of Flowers and Music began on Saturday. Unofficially I went to see my friend Cush play an acoustic set in the White Horse on Saturday evening. It was a fantastic night, he really knows how to hold the room with just voice and guitar. Cush's band, The Men They Couldn't Hang, has just released a new album which is very good indeed. The title track, Devil on the Wind, will be a new anthem for them. It had us dancing on the tables on Saturday night.

Tomorrow, back on the official side of things, we welcome Sir Willard White to Llandeilo. Perhaps we won't be dancing on the tables (it is in church) but I am looking forward to it immensely. I love the contrast.