Love at first bite

I fell in love last night...with a chip, or in fact a whole portion. The cause of this potato epiphany, Mr Heston Blumentahl's celebrated thrice cooked version. Sublime. Not that the rest of the meal wasn't up to his "perfection" standards but the chips were something else. I have tried chips on five continents and to eat possibly the most familiar dish in the world and still be rewarded with such a sensation is a real achievement.

A blog for our times

I have been enjoying Redundant Public Servant's blog  if enjoying is quite the right word. He desribes it as "News from the front line of deficit reduction" and like all great blogs it merges the personal with the timely and the profound. He writes so well I cannot picture him as the author of anonymous government memos and disseminator of ghastly offcial gobbledegook. I feel we have a future Orwell prize winner. 

New Internationalism

I was in the USA on Sunday. I recieved a text message from a friend in Zanzibar. He told me that a Spanish footballer in Liverpool had played a blinder, scoring twice and bringing his team, owned by an American, a much needed victory over another English team, owned by a Russian, and populated mainly by Africans...

The Zanzibari friend -- who goes by the name Gerrardi after his favourite English player -- partied all night.

The Best Weather Service

We have launched the new weather service for S4C. It works. It is the UK's first service which uses 1km forecasting data -- that means the information you get is directly relevant to your actual location, not somewhere down the road or over the hill or in the next county.

This is most useful on the website -- here for the English language version, here for the Welsh. When you enter your postcode you get the forecasst for that exact postcode, so it gives a street or close neighbourhood picture. It works all over the UK. This is a huge improvement over the rather dishonest BBC weather website which asks you to enter the postcode and then gives you the forecast for somewhere miles away. Very little use in our highly localised climate.

Elections

With the world's eyes turned on the US Mid-terms it is hardly surpirsing that yesterday's election in Zanzibar has gone unnoticed.

We are still waiting for the result and the EU monitors report no violence or intimidation. Not quite what I am hearing. My contacts on the ground say this morning there is a very heavy troop build-up in the centre of the capital and the usual heavy handedness in terms of beatings and intimidation. People are very scared just now.

Future Weather

The new S4C weather service I have been working on goes live on Monday. We are just beginning to get some publicity. I hope it gets noticed becasue the web service really is something special. This is how Broadcast covered it today:

S4C brings Weather Central to UK

29 October, 2010

By Catherine Neilan

Welsh language channel S4C has signed a deal to become the first UK broadcaster to provide a weather service based on the technology of global forecasting group Weather Central.

Delivered through independent producer Tinopolis, S4C will provide the service both through the TV channel and a purpose-built website from 1 November, claiming it will be the UK’s “most sophisticated public weather information resource”.

Although the service will predominantly focus on the weather in Wales, the rest of the UK and Europe will also be covered. The website will be dual language, while the channel bulletins will continue to be in Welsh.

S4C’s established weather presenters – Chris Jones, Erin Roberts and Mari Grug – will continue to front bulletins, using Weather Central’s technology to zoom in to give a more precisely local picture of conditions.

Adam Salkeld, head of programmes at Tinopolis, said: “With the new S4C weather website you can enter any postcode in Wales and you will get a forecast for that exact street, neighbourhood, town or village… We believe this is the future of weather information services.”

The new service will be produced from Tinopolis’ Llanelli headquarters.

We have all the time in the world...

The web is a fantastic place to root out those who clearly have too much time on their hands. Thanks to Andrew Sullivan for spotting this site - Hot Guys on Judge Judy. Publicly admitting to watching daytime TV is bad enough but setting up a site devoted to its unwitting stars...?

Even more kudos to Mr Sullivan for admitting to the guilty pleasure of drooling over these specimens of American manhood.

A short tribute

Very sad news this week that Derry Wilkinson has died in a motorcycle accident. Whilst I can't claim to have known Derry very well we'd had a fair amount of contact over the past few years. He was one of those -- sadly uncommon -- altogether decent people you meet in the world of work sometimes. Honourable, generous, clever, funny and quietly very successful, Derry had it all in front of him. We shared a great interest in Africa as well as a "hood" in South London. I had always intended to get to know him better, sadly now that won't be possible.

Recommended Reading

Winston Smith's latest post is harrowing and thought-provoking reading. I realise that policy can't be made by anecdote but you do have to ask some big hows and whys about our care system when you read such a story followed by an even bigger who on Earth...?

The Pope's Little Helper

The British warmed a little to Pope Benedict last week, but by contrast they fell madly in love with his private secretary, Georg Ganswein. Even the Daily Telegraph has been drooling, offering pictures of gorgeous Georg where one would normally expect to see buxom sixth formers from a posh Catholic girls' school.

To lighten the load for all those who find Benedict a reactionary old hypocrite, or as Christopher Hitchens said in New York last week "an overdressed little ponce", an acquaintance tells me that Msg Ganswein's forename has been remodelled by friends as "gay.org"...

Mobile Maasai

After a long gap I get a call from Juma. He has been back on the mainland for a while. His father, an important Maasai elder, has been very sick but thankfully seems to be on the mend. Adding to the stresses of being a 21st century warrior and herdsman, the rains have failed this year. This means Juma has to take his and his father's cows further and further from the village to graze.

As Juma explains there is an upside. He gets to go far enough to find a patch of ultra rural Tanzania that gets a mobile signal. His village has none.  Now I wonder - is there a project for a terribly clever eco-geographer mapping Maasai grazing patterns against the footprints of East Africa's mobile networks? Is the place he is calling me from today over-grazed because of its Vodacom signal? As I have blogged before the Maasai hold most of the modern world in complete disdain but mobile phones...that's another matter. 

Tea Party Victory

After Christine O'Donnell's shock win in the Delaware primary last night Republicans move to an anti-masturbation stance ...they should be careful, there are a lot of wankers out there.

Inconvenience

We are all so sorry to hear that supermodel Naomi Campbell was "inconvenienced" by having to attend the war crimes tribunal in the Hague yesterday. After all she must have so many better and more important things to be doing than helping fight for justice for the hundreds of thousands of victims of her generous friend Mr Taylor.   

Another Coalition

Zanzibar had a referendum this weekend to vote on whether there should be a power sharing arrangement between the ruling party and the opposition.

Omari -- a strong oppostion supporter, as most actual Zanzibaris seem to be -- says he's in favour. He wants to "live in piss". I think he means "peace" but the text message does say "piss".

I am sceptical, allowing a few non-ruling-party bigwigs into the kleptocratic inner circle is unlikely to make a great difference.

A Grand Night Out

Saturday. To a packed Albert Hall for the Sondheim 80th Birthday spectacular. It was certainly the Prom to get to this year. We were lavishly hosted by Vaughan and Tony from a great box with supper in the Prince of Wales Room. The evening slid past on a wave of champagne.

But what music. The cast was, of course, starry but in the nicest possible way. Everyone was there to pay homage to the great man so silly performers' egos didn't get in the way. What we got instead were memorable performances of a range of SS's work, delivered with real panache and humour. Dame Judi got the 4995 non-straight members of the audience into all of a flutter. She was, naturally, fabulous, managing to balance the singing-speaking mix of Send on the Clowns perfectly.

Then there was the man himself. You have to admire someone who at age 80 sports a 23 year old boyfriend on his arm. He got a rare Albert Hall standing ovation and looked genuinely overwhelmed. Vaughan, who had to officially welcome him to the Hall, reported that this modesty continued behind the scenes. This was while, mind you, Dame Judi was declaring him to be a genius equal to Mozart. With a luvvy chorus like that maintaining a bashful air of surprise really is something.

Vaughan and Tony had arranged an interesting party including a former lover of Ivor Novello's which somehow made the evening even more poignant. We got back to Brighton around 2. Vaughan decalred it one of the most memorable Proms of his tenure at the Hall.