Wordle 1,557 2/6 ⬜🟨⬜⬜🟨 🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩 Rome suits me. Night night.

If you, like me, are the parent of a neuro-atypical child dreading this autism press conference, please remember: These are the people hurting our kids. Not us. They are the ones stigmatizing and pathologizing them. They are the ones peddling untested science. And we should be very, very angry.

Read half of this on flight to Rome. Absolutely everyone in it is both insufferable and cool as fuck.

Recommend this. Its main target is the George W Bush administration, but along the way it takes in Rapture cultists. Apparently, those who don’t give up jobs or homes prior to the Rapture turn away from the cult when it doesn’t happen. Those who sacrifice everything become even more committed.

Flight delayed. Thinking about an airport Guinness.

Freelancer’s life: going on holiday with 1.5K invoiced but not yet received which would’ve really come in handy…

I love snippets into writer’s formative lives: here, that Alan Hollinghurst read Lord of the Rings six times successively.

Retrospectively removing indefinite leave to remain would be immoral and economically damaging. It would tear families apart. Attacking it as ‘potentially illegal’ is completely beside the point. Argue with the (awful) idea. Don’t try ’well, actually you can’t do that’.

Finally finished. It’s brilliant, of course, and the extra centenary stuff is worth reading too.

I’ll hand over to JCC: youtu.be/KZpa-tY8hzI?...

We’re going to Rome tomorrow. It’s in Italy. Anyone know if there’s anything worth seeing there?

Was going to do that "ten best sitcoms" meme, but then I remembered that about 90% of all sitcoms worth watching are just Hancock's Half Hour lightly reskinned.

If I do cancel my Disney subscription, as a protest, I just realised I can still watch all the Marvel and Star Wars and Alien and Simpsons I want. Good old physical media. The best way to not have to depend on the whims of corporate dicks. Pay once, and when they pivot fash, you don't have to.

'Ten TV Comedies You Like' - special boomer edition (plus a couple of later sitcoms I loved, but no one else did) The Phil Silvers Show The Rag Trade Hancock's Half Hour It's a Square World The Frost Report Q Marty 'Allo 'Allo! Hippies Paris

I absolutely adored Desperate Romantics (2009) and almost included it in the list, except it was supposed to be a drama series, not a comedy. Made me laugh, though. I mean, Aidan Turner as Dante Gabriel Rossetti? Tom Hollander as John Ruskin? How could you resist.

Copy by copy, every hard-earned sale of a poetry collection is an act of trust, a contract between the poet and the reader that reaches far beyond cash. This is why I refuse to shy away from reminding you about Whatever You Do, Just Don't. Drop me a DM and I'll sort out your signed copy for you...

Found out that this video is filmed on the building site of The Barbican, and I love that. www.youtube.com/watch?v=fsCc...

Whatever fashion dictates, I will never ever ever ever wear slim fit clothes (let alone skinny fit) as long as I live.

"Pessimism is a luxury for good times" @frankcottrellboyce.bsky.social at #CBIconf25 in conversation with Laureate na nÓg.

To make this brilliant Aitchison painting work for the cover for The Dad - a last minute change - I had to flip the image, so the dad’s face wouldn’t vanish under the Ladybird colophon. Which then meant cutting out and reversing the label on the custard tin. The things we’d do…

How are you? It's Alan (Partridge)

🌊 A historic day for our oceans! 🌍 With 60 ratifications, the High Seas Treaty will now come into force – a milestone for global ocean conservation. Let’s keep building momentum and turn 60 into global! #60toGlobal Discover more 👉 highseasalliance.org/treaty-ratif... @highseasalliance.bsky.social

Today, from 1pm, on the second floor!

There’s 250 pages left of Lewis writing about Sellers’s corpse.

Merle Haggard.

I promised myself 2025 would be a year of print. I obvs haven’t been pure. It’s not easy. I’m overriding the app locks on my phone to make this skeet. But I cannot recommend it highly enough. Printing presses are deliberate democracy. Subscribe to periodicals. Buy books. Literate yo self.

Right, you lot. PRESS PLAY! (But be careful; someone might be watching...) #TheFilmCrowd

Rosemary Harris is 98 Alfred Molina: ‘During Spider-Man 2, Rosemary & I were suspended in harnesses 40ft above the soundstage floor & we were left hanging there for ages & ran out of small talk. At one point, Rosemary said quietly ‘I’m classically trained, you know.’

A plagiarism on both your houses!

Floored to get this blurb (in two parts below) from someone with the pedigree and track record of @leebrackstone.bsky.social. Glad i was sitting down......I mean, Denis Johnson. The Great Denis Fucking Johnson, to give him his full title. Wow 💥💥

Still reading Roger Lewis’s Peter Sellers biography. It’s equal parts compelling and wearying. Obviously, Sellers was a monster, an abusive egomaniac at the very least. But also, Lewis is himself eccentric. Half the book (it seems) is about Sellers’s worst film, The Fiendish Plot of Dr Fu Manchu.

I’m the hapless hero of a mid-century comic novel that the Boulting Brothers would have a stab at making into a film. Ian Carmichael would be miscast as me.

In a recent cover letter, I oscillated between stating that my novel took place over “forty years” or “four decades”. I’ve just seen that I plumped for “forty decades”. My naturalistic novel is now a story about immortal beings. Honestly surprised I’ve survived this long without serious injury.

JOIN US! tonight at 9pm BST, as #TheFilmCrowd watch classic 70's spy film THREE DAYS OF THE CONDOR, starring Robert Redford. Link in post below👇

Just saw a clip of this common-or-garden BBC Question Time xenophobe and honestly thought for a minute that it was Trent Crimm of The Independent.

In all the hullabaloo of the morning, I still managed to buy this. It will be my holiday read next week. The blurb makes it sound not too dissimilar to the novel in my pinned tweet…

THE EX: a ghost story (kindle or ppbk) a delicious blend of spookiness, social satire, terrifying apparitions, binge drinking, sexy interludes & a fine cat... allusions to the likes of Night of the Demon & Dead of Night" "as if Harold Lloyd had strayed into The Omen" www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B07VN8P1RR

In a remarkable act of defiance and solidarity, "The Late Show with Stephen Colbert" played the clip from the monologue that led to the suspension of "Jimmy Kimmel Live" by ABC. It aired on CBS stations and affiliates across the country. [Video: CBS]

I may need to steer clear of Coventry Waterstones for a while. I was drinking an Americano in the cafe when my peace was broken the soft-brained pronouncements of a couple of old codgers convinced we are awash with immigrants, that Trump was right to give Starmer what-for about the ECHR…

Privately educated people (7%) still dominate the UK's most influential roles. #edchat #HigherEd #school

Reminder: The existence of these in most Scottish supermarkets and corner shops is proof that anyone shilling for the notion that multiculturalism can't work on this island is a charlatan

Just watched a bit of Piers Morgan on Question Time - whenever I see him (which is rare) - I remind myself that in his eulogy to Mohammed Al Fayed he described him as a “bit of a rascal” - another case of everyone gathering together to cover up what was in plain sight

Well, now we know what happens when you try and form a party in which every bloody member thinks they’re the messiah.

Assorted interval thoughts. Matt Hancock lookalike as Angelo, which is quite funny. No idea why the Duke’s friar’s habit consists of a bishop’s purple bib. Isabella is brilliant.

RSC programmes have gone from folio to quarto.

Lauren Bacall - BOTD in 1924

No, Monica, absolutely not. That image is meant for the cover of my book, thank you very much.

I’ve been miserable since finishing my novel. It’s very simple really: I prefer the worlds I create to the one I live in. This must be a common thing with writers.

Born #OTD 1709 in Lichfield, Dr Johnson came to London where he struggled to earn a living. But went on to write the dictionary that defined the English Language. Hear his life story in our podcast: tinyurl.com/r6x2d9m7 #history #English #literature

Jokes aside, this is precisely why Reform and Silicon Valley are so deeply in cahoots. They intend to steamroll the public interest to give the billionaire techbros what they want - and what they want is everything.