Holy hell. The description of death row in apartheid South Africa was one of the most harrowing things I've ever read. Also. This guy wasn't fucking around.

“If your Warriors have Gate/Then buddy that’s great/If your Warriors be Deep/ Then quite frankly eeep”

Does this news about this man deserve more than a cheap gag which I’ve brought out many, many times before? No, it absolutely doesn’t.

Life lessons: if the parish priest is a former actor, maybe don’t look him up on IMDB* before mass. *The Wrong Mans. With Emilia Fox. Yes, *that* bit.

slightly diminish a game: Grand Theft Aero

No new pictures where are you mentally

Lysistrata

All my new followers go to another school.

buttondown.com/cooray_smith... For paid subscribers, but why not join them and find out why I think The Space Museum is good, actually?

Possibly the widest ever gulf between the talent of the author and the talent of the illustrator.

I know it’s already a tough January, but I wasn’t expecting a cookware company newsletter to have a full blown existential crisis.

“Yond Cassius has a lean and hungry look; He has not had his Weetabix this morning”

OFAH: the way it ties into the first episode when Rodney’s trying to keep receipts. The joy we feel for the Trotters when they walk off into the sunset as millionaires.

Related: I think we’ve reached the point where we need an official Harry Beck diagrammatic representation of the Doctors. The placement and proportions of the Doctors here are upsetting.

The humiliation conga of (1) giving myself food poisoning from vegetable soup, (2) passing out in the bathroom while dealing with the consequences and hitting my head and (3) arriving at A&E in an ambulance to be met by my friend who was the attending physician.

Persuasive evidence that Pertwee would have crushed it on the Hot Ones Challenge.

The BFI screening *is* Warriors of the Deep. I do not intend to add to today’s grimness by failing to honour gambling debts so both @lewisbaston.bsky.social and @jonarnold.bsky.social will get a shiny 10 pence piece.

We're calling for submissions to the Black Archive from disabled authors and authors of colour, who we know have been underrepresented in the range. Please spread this as widely as you can, as we want it to reach as many eligible authors as possible. Thank you. obversebooks.co.uk/blackarchive...

TIL that Tom Baker’s reading of the Gremlins novelisation has an extra line not present in the book or the film, basically “frozen water doesn’t affect mogwai”. I like to think that Tom read the rules, saw the subsequent pages of snow scenes, and withdrew labour until there was an explanation.

As January will have a lot of guff about wellness and clean eating, it’s good to know that Sri Lankan cookery books don’t muck around when it comes to nutritional advice.

Happy New Year everyone! May you start 2026 like the Swedes- scoffing pizza as you argue about the work of Douglas Camfield.

Your occasional reminder that Angelica Houston and Brendan O'Carroll are playing the *same* character.

My brother’s sitting with a friend at a window table in a pub in Oxford. Friend says “Was that Brian Blessed in the street?” And then, right by the window: “YES IT’S ME, BRIAN BLESSED! BWAH HA HA HA!”. And then RAN away.

A story demonstrating that Brigitte Bardot’s animal rights activism was entirely consistent with her racism. She felt fully entitled to brutalise interlopers for spurious threats. Poor Charley 🫏

Update: Brother RedBubbled 8 yo’s dictator flag for our Christmas presents, in a transparent bid to curry favour with his future overlord.

What’s everyone’s favourite Avatar quote?

“Not you. You’re one of the good ones.”

Make a Bond film casual. BrassEye

Free for all. A Christmas Wishlist. @ Psychic Paper. buttondown.com/cooray_smith...

Tiny Tim was dead to begin with. Marley did NOT die. No one learned anything.

Drink responsibly this Christmas.

A festive mystery from 1978, over at Psychic Paper. buttondown.com/cooray_smith...

Timeline cleanse: Ke Huy Quan being shown his 1984 appearance on Blue Peter.

The Poirot novel Mrs McGinty’s Dead has key characters called Craig and Bentley (who is wrongly accused of murder). I assumed Christie named them after the defendants in the infamous miscarriage of justice. I just checked the dates and the novel comes out 9 months *before* the shooting 🤯.

Now looking up the other versions of Ghosts and getting FOMO.

buttondown.com/cooray_smith... New on Psychic Paper, for paid subscribers only, but you could always become one and get access to the whole archive as well.

Brother said they were trying to remember “that shop in Chelsea” from the 80s. I said it was probably Hard Core Leather. “How do you know that?” “Blake’s 7 Series B Production Diary.”

Brother went to a Silver screening of Pillion. The only other attendees were two couples. Couple 1 walked out. Couple 2 loved it and gave occasional commentary on how the scene had evolved since they’d got together.

Trump’s vile post shows how Rob Reiner was the ultimate refutation of the egocentric ‘Great Man’ theory. Rob Reiner produced great art through collaboration with Christopher Guest, Nora Ephron, William Goldman et al as equal participants. Because he viewed what he did as dialogue, not diatribe.

This ‘Marty DiBergi’ interview for This is Spinal Tap 2 encapsulates Rob Reiner’s talent as a director and a performer. He talks in character about his experiences with the band, his directing choices and that movie with Count Rugen. (Warning: intrusive ad breaks, but it’s worth persisting)

Dishwasher’s been emptied.

Getting barred from the USA because I said I was encouraging my son to be a Gooner.

You will be visited by three spirits.

actual bluesky challenge: post your favorite work of art from fifty years before you were born.

I have a joke about Damocles but it went over everyone’s heads

Also includes the option to retroactively replace the winner of the Season 21 DWAS story poll* with Caves.

Movie you've watched more than six times with a gif. Hard mode: no Star (Wars or Trek), LOTR, or Marvel. Even harder mode: a film from before 1970 that you can find a gif of. Sublime. Love Lemmon’s eyebrow raise and moue.

My brother’s 1984 letter to Father Christmas, another bittersweet highlight of clearing house. I can confirm that he is still big hearted* and obsessed with dinosaurs 🦖 (* although I didn’t get the 10 foot teddy)