In the garden today: the Echinops is out, and the bees are mad for it.

Given that it’s approaching 30 years since he ballsed up the one decent film he ever made by splattering it with charmless and instantly dated CG effects, moviegoers might be forgiven for treating his opinions on filmmaking technology, and on filmmaking in general, with a degree of caution.

We had huge fun recording this Pointless Doctor Who quiz. Click away to see me battle it out with old friends and worthy opponents Gary Gillatt and Jac Rayner. I think it’s fair to say we all managed to display an alarming degree of nerdy knowledge, but who’s top nerd? Quiz lord Gav calls the shots!

We had huge fun recording this Pointless Doctor Who quiz. Click away to see me battle it out with old friends and worthy opponents Gary Gillatt and Jac Rayner. I think it’s fair to say we all managed to display an alarming degree of nerdy knowledge, but who’s top nerd? Quiz lord Gav calls the shots!

Ooh!

“tenureship”? #PMQs

I don't think I've ever seen a group of people take a joke quite as badly to heart as this lot have this week

If the story doing the rounds is true, we can stand by for Farage to seize it with both hands and weaponise the hell out of it.

Very much enjoying the desperation of the right-wing machine as it seeks to frame Farage vs Binface as 'the London elite laughing at the people of Clacton' rather than the more logical and factual 'absolutely everyone laughing at Farage'.

Quintessential Badenoch to build "a party of the future" by actively resisting the future. In the middle of a heatwave. She's the Liz Truss who hasn't had the opportunity to blow herself up yet

Raising a glass to the mighty Bonnie Tyler. Total Eclipse of the Heart is leading most of the tributes, and rightly so because it’s a gold-plated classic. But my personal Desert Island Bonnie will always be Lost in France. So beautifully sung, it captured my nine-year-old heart and has never let go.

Raising a glass to Ian Kennedy Martin, creator of The Sweeney and The Chinese Detective, and to my mind his masterpiece Juliet Bravo, a steadily brilliant Saturday night series about a female police inspector tackling crime and sexism up north, which later became a key inspiration for Happy Valley.

And to the astonishment of nobody, it now emerges that he clearly knew far worse headlines were about to break before he threw his desperate hissy fit.

Oh to be a fly on the wall in Farage HQ right now. This might just be the funniest thing that has ever happened in the history of politics.

So besides a few monster raving binface twits who will help make him look even more absurd, he’s now the sole candidate, showing the whole thing up for the desperate stunt that it is. And when the investigation finds against him, he faces a second by-election that he might lose. Well played, tosser.

This is quite outstanding.

In the garden today: I only want to see you underneath the purple clematis.

Assuming he’s not going to spend the entire by-election campaign in hiding (which is always a possibility), every journalist who comes into contact with him between now and polling day should ask him to confirm that he believes he has been more physically attacked than Jo Cox and David Amess.

Ah, that's what it reminds me of....

TLDR: Waaah waaah not fair and wow I have completely lost it

Whiny whiny whiny whine.

I think we sometimes forget how long it took - far too long, *years* too long - for the lies and depravities of Boris Johnson to bring him down. But they did, because eventually his serial misconduct reached a kind of critical mass. Nobody gets away with it forever. Awaiting 2pm with interest.

Corrupt US president + corrupt international sporting body = corruption visible from space.

Nor will anyone who has actually read the Declaration of Independence.

Greggs seem to be getting a lot of stick for this, but if I ran a high street business then I’d certainly be taking steps to minimise the likelihood of bricks being hurled through my windows by drunken idiot-holes up and down the land at 5 o’clock tomorrow morning.

Fans are said to be looking forward to seeing some impressive tackles, getting through to the semis, and something or other about keepie-uppies that I haven’t quite worked out yet.

Glenn Hoddle: I was England manager right up until I said that people with disabilities were being punished for sins in a former life.

Trailer for 2005 Pride and Prejudice film. ‘Hilarious’ bit where someone introduces ‘Miss Bennet, Miss Bennet, Miss Bennet, Miss Bennet and Miss Bennet.’ As if Regency society didn’t have that sorted. Miss Bennet is Jane, the eldest. The others are Miss Elizabeth, Miss Lydia, etc. Instant boycott.

The original three Dalek operators from Season One of new #DoctorWho: David Hankinson, Nicholas Pegg and me (pictured with a bronze friend at Aldbourne this Sunday). Those 21 years have flown by!

Beginning to wonder if Labour should just start campaigning for Kemi Badenoch to be Prime Minister, a policy to which she would then become instantly and implacably opposed, launching bilious personal attacks on anyone who thinks it’s a good idea, branding them traitors etc, god she’s exhausting.

All dressed up in my new #TipToe T-shirt and ready for action at tonight’s annual David Bowie London Event at the Water Rats in aid of the brilliant @tht.org.uk. Always a pleasure and an honour to compere this great evening of live music and Bowie love. 5.30pm until late if you’re in the vicinity!

From the garden today: gooseberries! (The ones that the blackbirds didn’t get first.)

Curious bit in Planet of Fire when the Doctor asks Turlough: “Why have you never mentioned your home planet before?” More like “Apart from in Enlightenment, and again in The King’s Demons, and again in Frontios when you never shut up about it, why have you never mentioned your home planet before?”

In the garden today: freshly hatched dragonflies are emerging from the pond in their numbers.

The always excellent @mrjohncrace.bsky.social absolutely on fire here, calling out that ill-mannered ruffian Kemi Badenoch for her disgraceful conduct during today’s PMQs.

Gosh, this photo is a remarkable discovery. Amid all those fascinating facts, the accompanying text neglects to mention that in addition to those roller skates, Bowie also appears to have disguised his close-cropped 1977 hair by donning a wig that looks remarkably like his 1987 hairstyle… 1/2

If your 80-year-old grandpa was insisting that the reason the backyard pool has algae in it is because terrorists are trying to make him look bad and demanding the police arrest somebody, you'd put him in a senior care facility before the end of the day.

The name's Bond... Young Bond. Finally! We can reveal the two young stars of SilverFin, a 16-episode full-cast audio adaptation of Charlie Higson's first #YoungBond novel (written & directed by me). Isaac Rouse is James Bond Charlotte McBurney is Wilder Lawless www.bigfinish.com/releases/v/y...

Raising a glass to that fine actor David Daker. With his roguish twinkle and Black Country brogue, he raised the game in everything from Z Cars to Porridge to Boon to Dick Turpin. His two turns in Doctor Who, as robber baron Irongron and hapless space captain Rigg, are up there with the very best.

Comparing coverage of the Belfast and Edinburgh attacks, it seems that if politicians politicise and racialise a crime, then it will get far more attention than a crime that is in itself political and racist but doesn’t serve a political agenda. That’s not a good message

Oh, hi mum. Setting aside the trifling facts that (a) you never had a mobile phone, (b) you unfailingly adhered to a quaint old habit of writing in sentences and using punctuation, (c) I never called you “mum”, and (d) you died 27 years ago, this seems entirely legit.

You might just want to stop and think before calling them the Ten Plagues. People living with swarms of locusts have to deal with enough stigma already without this unhelpful labelling etc etc etc

In the garden today: pinks on the patio.

Dear @theguardian.com, nice piece about the rise of octopus numbers in UK waters, but I’ve never heard of ‘conga eels’. Do they dance along in single file? Think you mean ‘conger eels’. Are subeditors even a thing any more?

Classic Trump projection

In the garden today: who doesn’t love a snapdragon? The bees certainly do.

Dear @theguardian.com, nice interview with Rufus Norris, but Istanbul is not ‘the Turkish capital’. That’d be Ankara. Are subeditors even a thing any more?

Just watched Monster on the Campus (1958). Outstanding. At one point it has Joanna Moore (mother of Tatum O’Neal) addressing Troy Donahue (immortalised in that song from Grease) with the amazing line “Jimmy, I know that Dr Blake has an illusion about a giant dragonfly but I’d rather not discuss it.”