On the plus side, possibly the result is that people will no longer take any shiny powerpoint or excel presentation at face value?

God, i wish this were true!

I was relieved to find that switching my MS Office subscription back to "Classic" non-Copilot mode was very easy. But do they really need to send me quite so many emails telling me I've done it?

Drinking a mug of Dowland’s tears.

Hi Internet! I'm Drew and THIS IS MY FACE. If this GIF has ever brought you joy in the past, I humbly ask you to consider making a donation to the National MS Society. It would mean a lot to me and to those I know affected by the disease! Donate at blinkingguy.com

Doing 5Live in a minute on ID cards and I'm wracking my brain as to why anyone would need an ID card to report a pothole? Could people get some kind of gold star for reporting more than 10 potholes? Penalised for reporting too many? WHAT IS THE USE CASE?

It can only have been created out of pure energy while the skull was restructuring Thea's brain...

Cannot stress enough how it is already possible to report potholes www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/poli...

#RIP Danny Thompson youtu.be/s-ZY4j-9NwI?...

Call me an old fuddy-duddy but, regardless of the stupidity in the news, joking about necking large amounts of paracetamol seems dangerous in a world where people have eaten laundry detergent pods for a laugh. (also, fwiw, it was invented in the 1870s, just not widely marketed until the 1950s)

Just reposted this from January 2025 as something odd going on with my original Substack post ...

The thing about Reform's plan that our politicians are missing - it's not even being presented as solving a problem. It's an end in itself. It's not about jobs, or housing, or the economy, or the NHS. It's just "having less foreign-born people in the country is an implicitly desirable thing".

Brand new on Dirty Feed: to celebrate the 50th anniversary of Fawlty Towers, here's a look at all the various parodies of the show over the years. "Yes madam, I am frightfully tall." www.dirtyfeed.org/2025/09/herr...

Oh, this is impossible. Whoops Apocalypse Nightingales SOAP Larry Sanders Show Porridge Muppet Show Alexei Sayle's Stuff The Good Place The Fall and Rise of Reginald Perrin The Thick of It Chance in a Million Yes Minister Joking Apart Day Today Fist of Fun Fawlty Cheers Python Allo Allo Father Ted

One day late for the Fawlty Towers anniversary but here’s the opening for the pilot episode of Not the Nine O’Clock News, later reused in the series itself

And a pleasing penguin companion

I mean:

An actual quote from the Secretary of State for Business and Trade Too often people go to university to ‘explore research and knowledge’ Look forward to Wes S saying 'too often people go to hospital to have operations' or Heidi Alexander saying 'too often people go to the station to catch a train'

Say what you will about them but at least Change UK managed to have a Nando’s dinner first

Love this tidbit from Mojo’s fantastic oral history of Rocky Horror

GRAPHIC MEDIA warning just in case any Triffids are viewing.

Years ago I wrote this piece about national treasure and dreadful old c**t Peter Blake. Have just dredged it up for my new best friend @typetheclouds.bsky.social who had the good sense to buy my fucking book™ at the Hastings book fair. www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/amp/entry/ja...

Peter Dickinson tries to ride an enormously fat brick horse - and explains for the readers of Puffin Post some of the writing process behind The Changes.

Brigitte Helm could have seen Toy Story.

Right up there with...

Eva Marie Saint could be on Bluesky, for all we know.

Tried to arrange a Sainsbury's delivery in Bishop's Stortford. I wonder if they lose a lot of custom due to their address update form crapping out when the town name has an apostrophe, even though it was the postcode lookup in the same form that put the apostrophe there in the first place.

Adjusted for inflation Spirited Away cost $22 million to make. The Triplets of Belleville cost $16.5 million, Cartoon Saloon's Wolfwalkers cost $14.28 million, and Oscar winner Flow cost only $4 million. These critically acclaimed, made by real people films, cost less than this pile of actual vomit.

Brand new on Dirty Feed: today is the 50th anniversary of the studio recording of Fawlty Towers, "Gourmet Night". That episode's famous ending is pictured here. But it wasn't the originally intended finale. Instead, things were going to get rather more peculiar... www.dirtyfeed.org/2025/09/luck...

New on my blog: The Christopher H Bidmead/Douglas Adams dichotomy. underthreehundred.blogspot.com

Just sorting out some orders and I’m reminded what Pedro Pascal said, “I really like Graeme’s prints and I think you should buy some, oh and don’t bother looking this quote up. I definitely said it” marswasrubbish.etsy.com

Is it “slightly warmer clothes”?

I'm designing book covers, which means I'm looking at book covers. Bold pink is in. You've got to have ‘A Novel’ or ‘Stories’ in scribbly writing somewhere around the middle. The ‘old painting with modern typography’ trend, signalling literary weight, is beginning to feel worn out.

Fred Mumford!

Skyhooks

Concerned that we are losing the necessary ratio. 15% of teachers/faculty should be irretrievably strange eccentrics. Every learning experience should have some element where in later life you can reflect with former classmates about how bizarre at least one (1) class per year was.

I would be quite interested to know what point Palin was making, but that would involve subscribing to the Telegraph, so instead I am finding out what point people reckon he was making based on a headline.

I'm not saying they're bad people, I just want to see a flurry of articles titled 'CATLESS BY CHOICE' that demand they account for themselves

BBC Breakfast this morning had a long segment about the 30th anniversary of Windows 95. So what vintage computer did they put in the studio as a handy prop? #windows95

At about 4.10pm on this day 54 years ago, something weird started happening on Scottish Television. There was no announcement, and no credit was given to the person who had created them, but strange short films suddenly started popping up in the schedules youtu.be/AA9IdHtHk_0?...

Help us make Issue Four happen! www.indiegogo.com/projects/fro...

Our campaign for the continuation of independent access to the BBC Written Archive Centre is highlighted this morning by Vanessa Thorpe in The Observer. Her article, with excellent contributions from David Kynaston and Ian Greaves, outlines the issue with clarity. observer.co.uk/news/nationa...

Finished The Prisoner (first time I've watched it through in decades). Thought we might move on to Rumpole, but it turns out not to be a natural continuation of Fall Out. Maybe tomorrow.

FFS

having thought about this for three days, my current status is: what the FUCK are we doing trying to ban social media for kids and not banning AI use? we are literally telling them not to use the computer to talk to their real friends but instead to the imaginary technology monetisable 'friends'.

Sadly, I think the time has come for a complete halt on the use of Gnossiennes 1 in TV drama until we have appropriate internationally-agreed protocols for its safe use.

Labour MP's position is that refugees fleeing death, persecution and torture are here "on holiday". It's hard to see what Labour are trying to do apart from laying the groundwork for a Reform government.

Calling historians and researchers. The BBC Written Archives Centre has changed its access rules without consultation. This means an end to proper independent research into the BBC's rich history. 178 have already signed the open letter. Please join the campaign here: tinyurl.com/bbcwaccampaign