Posts (page 2)

Originally published at A few words from Rob Mansfield. You can comment here or there.

The World's Greatest Books Retold Through Twitter, aka Twitterature, hit our doormat earlier this week.

A clever, yet bizarre little tome in which some of the most revered pieces of literature are cut up into 140-character chunks and spewed out at speed.

Thus, if you've never read, say Dante's Inferno, you 'may' be able to work out what the plot is through tweets like this...

'I'm being attacked by three theoretical beasts! I don't think I'm in Italy any more!'

Other greats retold include Beowulf, Romeo & Juliet, Crime and Punishment and Metamorphosis

Originally published at A few words from Rob Mansfield. You can comment here or there.

Really enjoyed the Reader's Editor column in Monday's Guardian about accents on foreign words.

As a linguist, writer and sub, this ticks so many boxes - the difficulty, but the importance of making sure that the correct accents are placed on foreign words.

The shout that often comes up, when writers, subs etc miss the odd grave, tilde or umlaut, is, 'oh, it doesn't really matter'.

But clearly it does. Missing accents is just plain ignorance. You may roll your eyes at the grave accent in Arsène Wenger, but if you were called Paul Smith and someone spelled your name Paul Smoth, you'd be mightily peeved, wouldn't you?

Sweeping generalisation, obviously, but it all goes back to the English notion that everyone should speak their language, rather than learn a new one.

If only tilde, umlaut, cedilla and diaresis were everyday words, we'd all be a little bit better informed!

Originally published at A few words from Rob Mansfield. You can comment here or there.

So last night was David Lean tribute night on BBC4 - except it wasn't really, was it?

Tribute nights have become popular currency on TV in recent years. Whether it's a way to bulk out the schedules or a genuine homage to a feted TV show/celebrity/music act, they crop up with increasing regularity on the terrestrial channels, at least.

The David Lean night was a classic case of much puff and not enough substance. There was a very interesting documentary from Jonathan Ross is his film critic mode, followed by the classic Lean movie In Which We Serve - and that was it. That was the sum total of the David Lean night.

You'd have thought the BBC might have been able to stretch to showing two of Lean's movies, but no. Just the one.

To make matters worse, the night was sandwiched between a repeated Mark Lawson interview with Richard Wilson. Oh, the shame!

Originally published at A few words from Rob Mansfield. You can comment here or there.

In the middle of yesterday's show, while talking to Terry Wogan and Sue Carroll, alan Titchmarsh took a tumble

Originally published at A few words from Rob Mansfield. You can comment here or there.

I never thought I'd hear myself say this, but this year I'm already suffering from SCDF - that is, Stricly Come Dancing fatigue.

I love the show and enjoy the 'journey' (ugh!) many of the Strictly celebs go through, but I haven't been able to get into it at all yet this year.

The problem, as I see it, is that the BBC - in their eternal quest for ratings and freshening it up - has gone a step too far.

The introduction of a Strictly show on Friday is unnecessary, even if they have ditched the Sunday results show. It feels too early in the week.

My other big gripe is with the number of contestants. They've split them into two groups for while, but unfortunately, as the Strictly budget has been cut, so has the calibre of celebs.

Think back to the early years and every single participant was a household name - even Quentin Wilson, bless his cotton socks.

Now, you need to be the king or queen of trash TV 'and' an avid sports fan to have any idea of who they all are. Let's face it, how many Crimewatch-loving, Hollyoaks-goggling, horseracing and tennis fans do you know?

Ricky Whittall may be a darned good dancer, but I don't give a monkey's about him at the moment.

Proof that I'm not feeling Strictly yet, either, is to be had because I haven't set the series link for Strictly: It Takes Two. Love Claudia Winkleman, but not this early in the 'season'.

Of course, I can guarantee that by the end of the series, I'll be glued and desperately hoping Ricky Groves wins - C'mon Ricky!

Originally published at A few words from Rob Mansfield. You can comment here or there.

Seems as if a local school is worried about its pupils drink intake.

Forget alcohol and drugs, it's too much Red Bull and the like that seems to be the problem.

Personally, I can't stand the stuff, but I'd love to believe there's a black market in the school, with some enterprising pupils doing a roaring trade in selling cans of the liquid to those who can't get enough!

Originally published at A few words from Rob Mansfield. You can comment here or there.

I was catching up with the weekend's football last night and revelling in the enjoyment of the Manchester derby.

As Mike Phelan was being interviewed after the match, I took a proper look at the hoarding behind his head and was astounded.

I think we all know that the BBC's policy on advertising has slipped a little in the past few years, but just how blatant is it on MoTD.

I looked closely at the screen (pic as you can see on the left) and realised there were none other than 7 different brands/companies being plugged. And that's not forgetting the BBC Sport logo.

OK, so football is a different animal anyway because of the hoardings on the side of the pitch and on-shirt sponsorship, but the post-match interview is completely separate from that part of the game, isn't it?

I get annoyed with the constant plugging of their own programmes in between other shows, but this is a step too far, surely.

Originally published at A few words from Rob Mansfield. You can comment here or there.

It was inevitable, but yesterday Keisha Buchanan, the sole original member of the Sugababes, quit the girl group after 11 years, to concentrate on her own music.

She follows Siobhan Donaghy (who left in 2001) and Mutya Buena (said bye in 2005) - both of who have attempted solo careers with less than spectacular results.

What's more bewildering is that Heidi Range and Amelle Berribah are going to continue as the Sugababes, seamlessly replacing Keisha with Jade Ewen, last year's failed UK Eurovision entrant.

Am I the only one who finds this just a little bit strange? How can a group that has none of its original members honestly pretend that they're the real thing?

Some time last year, The Temptations appeared on Jonathan Ross' Friday night show and, as fantastic as they were, it was a shock to discover that only one of the five was an original member - at least one was there, though.

There are numerous versions of the Drifters in existence on the tour circuit and surely they can't all contain an original member, while the Beach Boys play in about three different incarnations, although not all by the proper name.

I suppose there will be money for the Sugababes in around 10 years when the original three decide to reunite and warble some of their early hits, but in the meantime this latest chapter in their history sums up how deceptive the music industry really is.

Anyway, here's a video of the original line-up performing Overload, back in 2000

Originally published at A few words from Rob Mansfield. You can comment here or there.

Following the outbreak of E.coli on a variety of farms around the UK, there are a number of calls to introduce specific petting farm rules to reduce these risks.

While I'm not suggesting we shouldn't wash our hands after we've been to the farm, it strikes me that we've been getting ever more obsessed with 'cleanliness' as a society over the past decade.

Most parents and their parents will tell you that eating a bit of dirt 'never did me/you any harm' and I remember being a particularly messy child, always fond of falling into rivers and muddy puddles.

But when I was a kid, there was only one child who suffered from eczema and very few of us who had asthma.

Now ever other person seems to suffer. Allergies are on the rise, regardless of how careful expectant and new parents are, and it's become the norm to not be able to eat certain foods, rather than scoff everything.

But what's contributed to it? There seem to be a number of different factors which, lumped together, make a lot sense. They include:
- Air conditioning: more and more offices use it, but does a detrimental effect on employees' health?
- Stress: most of us suffer and I, for one, know that it produces unwelcome side-effects
- Washing and showering: I didn't shower every day as a kid and it wasn't such a big deal before the mid-80s. Has this had an effect?
- Pollution: a bit of a given
- Diet: many of us eat more processed food than ever
- Chemicals: even though there's a move to reduce packaging, ever more chemicals are used in today's society. I for one have always been baffled by the use of something called Microban in plastic containers. I'm sure it does a fine job as an anti-bacterial agent, but can't plastic containers just rely on being properly washed and dried?

I'm sure we'll probably never know for sure whether you can be 'too clean', but I for one would like to return to those more innocent times of being a kid, when worrying about an allergy was the furthest thing from my mind.

Originally published at A few words from Rob Mansfield. You can comment here or there.

So Keith Floyd has passed onto the great vineyard in the sky.

It often seems to be the way that two famous people die on the same day: and so it is that Floyd turns up his toes on the same day as Patrick Swayze.

Maybe it's the parochial nature of Floyd being British, maybe it's because I've barely seen more that 2 films that star Swayze (I have never seen Dirty Dancing, just for the record), but I feel far more affected by the chef's death than the Hollywood star.

It's fair to say that Keith Floyd played a massive part in revolutionising TV cookery - in the UK at least. Before he came along, it was all standing behind a counter, staring at a camera and playing a straight bat.

Floyd changed it completely. For starters, there was the wine. The glass of red became his sidekick, if you like, along with his bow tie - always the mark of a real individual.

But more than that - it wasn't all about the fixed camera. On Floyd's shows, the camera went right into the dish, the saucepan or the ingredients.

And then there was him. A great chef, a mesmerising personality and a true one-off - he loved words and he loved food: what a fantastic combination.

I first recall Keith Floyd because my Dad and step-mum were always going on about him. I was barely a teeanger and was more interested in Top of The Pops than cooking programmes, but there was something about him, even to me at that age, that made TV compelling.

Enjoy this clip which is actually about Marco Pierre White at Harveys, but Keith Floyd makes an entertaining, as always, appearance.