Apart from the early years when I’d not long been granted the right to vote, I’ve not really attended the election pantomime in the United Kingdom for the past 40 years having reached the conclusion long ago that politics is a rigged game across the globe. Generally speaking Labour or Conservative, Democrat or Republican the…
You know how it is sometimes, when you wake up from a dream and there’s this earworm wiggling around in your brain? Well, since last Saturday’s humanitarian crusade in Cardiff in solidarity with the people of Gaza suffering mercilessly at the hands of the Israel Defence Forces (IDF), I’ve had a slightly modified snippet of…
It’s probably a bit unrealistic to expect a Google search to conjure up much information about the leader of a UK satanic group, but to my amazement it did throw up more than I’d expected on the Global Order of Satan, an organisation that hit the headlines recently… not for anything more outlandish than the…
In December 2020 United States president-elect Joe Biden announced that Susan Rice was being appointed to a top policy position in his new administration. She was coming in as director of his Domestic Policy Council, which would give her broad influence over the incoming administration’s approach to immigration, health care and racial inequality. A woman…
On the 84th anniversary of his birth on 17 November 1937, it’s weird to think British comedian Peter Cook is looking down on us from above… but in a way he actually is. Out in the asteroid belt, somewhere between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter, among the numerous irregularly shaped bodies such as Ceres,…
MGM called her “the most beautiful woman in the world” but there was a lot more to the Austrian sex bomb who depicted the film world’s first female orgasm than mere good looks… Hedy Lamarr also had an incredible mind, making a major contribution to the later development of wifi, GPS and Bluetooth. Born 107…
An accomplished college basketball player and middle-distance runner with great potential, Doyle Brunson appeared to have a successful sporting career ahead of him until a summer job in a gypsum plant in the 1950s changed that trajectory immeasurably and ultimately gave rise to perhaps the greatest legend the world of professional poker has seen. With…
I don’t need a calculator, abacus or two hands to add up how many comedians I’ve watched live during my lifetime… I can count to five quite comfortably without the help of those devices. Four from the list have been in Cardiff during the last decade and include a very miffed Micky Flanagan at St…
Six days after screening the final cut of his last movie, Eyes Wide Shut, for family and stars of the film, one of the movie industry’s most acclaimed directors died in his sleep after suffering a heart attack. It was 22 years ago today, on 7 March 1999, that the curtain came down on the…
Today I learned three things about American actor Jackie Coogan… the fourth I already knew. I discovered he was one of the first child stars in the history of Hollywood cinema and that he gave his name to a law to protect child performers from exploitation, particularly by their parents. The third thing I found…
