Month: January 2025

Entertainment

‘Red Dwarf’ space comedy

One of the most successful British sitcoms is ‘Red Dwarf’, which had 52 episodes in 1988-99 on BBC2 television before reprising on […]

One of the most successful British sitcoms is ‘Red Dwarf’, which had 52 episodes in 1988-99 on BBC2 television before reprising on the Dave channel in 2009 with another 22 episodes to date. As always seems to happen for any space-related series, a cult following grew up around it.

The Lancastrian writers, Rob Grant (until 1995) and Doug Naylor, developed the story-line in 1983 from sketches they had written for a BBC radio comedy show and eventually BBC North gave them studio time. The plot concerns the adventures of the spaceship ‘Red Dwarf’ and, in later episodes, its launch, ‘Starbug’. The four crew members and ship’s computer could not be more wacky and incompatible on the face of it, a key element, since we also glimpse their occasional comradeship.

Craig Charles (1964-) plays Lister, the last human on board, who was saved from the initial deadly radiation leak by being in stasis; Chris Barrie (1960-) plays a hologram of his former self, Rimmer; Danny John-Jules (1960-) plays the Cat, evolved from Lister’s pet cat over the three million years that Red Dwarf has been adrift; and Robert Llewellyn (1956-) plays Kryten the robot. Both Norman Lovett (1946-) and Hattie Hayridge (1959-) have played Holly, the computer with a supposed IQ of 6,000.

(Top image: deviantart.com / CC BY-SA 3.0)

13/01/2025
3 min
2 days
214 words

Culture

London Fashion Week

The youngest of the ‘Big Four’ Fashion Weeks ~ the others being New York City (1943), Milan (1958) and Paris (1973) ~ […]

The youngest of the ‘Big Four’ Fashion Weeks ~ the others being New York City (1943), Milan (1958) and Paris (1973) ~ London Fashion Week began in a marquee in a car park on a winter’s day in 1984. Despite this distinctly unglamorous start, it did attract young, emerging designers with avant-garde ideas, including punk icon Vivienne Westwood (1941-2022), and continues to do so today.

The Weeks happen in February, June and September and, of course, the venues have taken a definite upturn, with spells at The Ritz, Natural History Museum and Somerset House, for instance. The current location is The Store Studios on The Strand. The British Fashion Council, founded in 1983, is the organiser and its aim is to showcase the creativity of British designers and promote London as a hub for innovation. Naturally, this leads to some ‘thinking outside of the box’ and there have been some extraordinary sights on the catwalk, including a coffee table turning into a completely impractical ‘skirt’!

The Queen, Princess Diana and Princess Margaret have separately attended London Fashion Week shows, which are invitation-only. There are some public events after the main schedule, but it is intended for fashion industry buyers whose job it is to spot commercially viable trends.

(Image: Farrukh at Flickr.com / CC BY-NC 2.0)

04/01/2025
3 min
2 weeks
209 words

Geography & Environment

Newcastle-upon-Tyne

Newcastle-upon-Tyne (as opposed to Staffordshire’s market town of Newcastle-under-Lyme) is England’s northernmost city by a tiny fraction of a degree from Carlisle […]

Newcastle-upon-Tyne (as opposed to Staffordshire’s market town of Newcastle-under-Lyme) is England’s northernmost city by a tiny fraction of a degree from Carlisle on the opposite, western coast. Newcastle (for short) has a population of 290,000 and lies 8.5 miles from the eastern coast. It sits on the north bank of the busy River Tyne in the county of Tyne and Wear.

Unsurprisingly, there is a medieval stone castle in Newcastle. It was built on the site of a Roman fort on Hadrian’s Wall and was used as a prison. The wool trade through to the heavy industrial era ensured Newcastle’s continued growth and importance as a North Sea port. In 1530 a law gave Newcastle the monopoly on exporting coal from the whole area and this led to the saying “carry coals to Newcastle”, meaning to supply something to a place where it is already in abundance!

Natives of Newcastle have the Geordie dialect, which many southerners find difficult to understand though the overall sound of it is friendly and pleasing to the ear. The words are more closely related to Old English, Norse and even Dutch, Scots and Romany than the ones used in the south, where Norman French had more influence.

(Top image of bridges over the Tyne: Chris Morgan at geograph.org.uk / CC BY-SA 2.0)

03/01/2025
3 min
2 weeks
219 words

Religion

Zoroastrianism

The originally Persian religion of Zoroastrianism does not easily take converts, so it has one of the smallest congregations in the UK, […]

The originally Persian religion of Zoroastrianism does not easily take converts, so it has one of the smallest congregations in the UK, at just 4,000 souls. Indeed, Mumbai in India probably has the largest proportion of the Zoroastrian community across the world. It is said to be an ancient religion which influenced Judaism, Christianity and Islam, with its ideas of judgement and good deeds, not riches, being important.

Zoroastrianism is named after its prophet, Zarathustra/Zoroaster, who had a vision of Ahura Mazda (God) and six lesser beings after wandering around Persia and despairing of the wickedness he had witnessed.

He subsequently proclaimed that: “Happiness comes to those who bring happiness to others” and “Good Thoughts, Good Words, Good Deeds”, undeniably splendid guidance for life. ‘Asha’ is the good, honest, lawful way and ‘Druj’ is the opposite, to be avoided if one does not want to suffer the consequences in the after-life.

In the UK we had a famous, well-loved and highly talented Zoroastrian on the pop-rock music scene, namely Queen‘s Freddie Mercury (1946-91), whose birth name was Farrokh Bulsara. His ancestors were ‘Parsi’ ~ Persian Zoroastrians who fled to India from persecution by the spread of Islam between the 7th and 10th centuries.

(Image of Zoroastrians in the West Midlands: Paresh Solanki at Flickr.com / CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)

02/01/2025
3 min
2 weeks
217 words

Politics

The Northern Irish Peace Process

The period of riots, protests and terrorism that began in the late 1960s in Northern Ireland and went on for three decades […]

The period of riots, protests and terrorism that began in the late 1960s in Northern Ireland and went on for three decades was known as ‘The Troubles’. They came to a much-needed end after a long series of covert discussions in the background and occasional public statements, together forming the Northern Irish Peace Process. The politicians involved made their contributions bravely, since any concessions to one side or the other were bound to be criticised. Thankfully, the para-military leadership eventually realised that negotiations were the only way forward and they could never ‘win’ through violence.

The most important agreements were the Downing Street Declaration of 1993 and the Belfast (or ‘Good Friday’) Agreement of 1998, the former opening up the possibility for the latter. The 5-year gap between them is evidence of the myriad of hurdles that had to be cleared. The 1993 Declaration stated that unification of N.Ireland with the Republic of Ireland could only be made with the people’s majority consent and the 1998 Agreement established institutions for co-operation between those two countries and between the UK and the Republic.

After sporadic terrorist bombings, the ceasefire finally held and the N.Ireland Assembly, the North-South Ministerial Council and the British-Irish Council all began operations.

(Image: Wikimedia Commons / CC BY-SA 3.0)

01/01/2025
3 min
2 weeks
209 words

Quoting Neil Oliver...

I love Britain more than anywhere else in the world. With all my heart I declare that those of us born here, or who have made a home here by choice, are the luckiest, most blessed of all people. I am British. I will always be British.