Jools Holland is on BBC2 at 11:15.

I don't know who is on it. I shall have to make enquiries.

Craig David Rocks Big Ben is on BBC1 at 12:10.

Was that suggested in the same meeting where they rejected Monkey Tennis?

These are Jools Holland's guests:

Alabama Shakes' Brittany Howard
Stormzy
Stereophonics
Rick Astley
Tom Walker
YolanDa Brown
Melanie, La Roux
Eddi Reader
Pauline Black and Arthur `Gaps' Hendrickson
Joseph
Ruby Turner
the Pipes and Drums of the 1st Battalion Scots Guards

The Call of the Wendigo wrote:

The Wolves of Willoughby Chase is on TalkingPicturesTV at 7:10.

The Call of the Wendigo wrote:

Have I seen that? I'm not sure. I think I always get it mixed up with The Company of Wolves.

The Call of the Wendigo wrote:

I wonder if they have any elements in common? I shall have to ask Wikipedia.

Both seem to involve a young girl going to stay with a relative, in wolf-infested territory.

The Call of the Wendigo wrote:

Have I seen that? I'm not sure. I think I always get it mixed up with The Company of Wolves.

I always mix the Wolves of Willoughby Chase up with Wolf Hall.

I loved Wolf Hall. I wish she'd hurry up and write the sequel so it too can be televised. We've been waiting for years now.

The other night I saw Little Women with a friend (fab, worth seeing*). Outside we discussed being women in a different era. I have long thought I'd be Anne Boleyn or Mary Stuart - too overt, too liberal, too political, too whatever to survive until a natural end. She had a more positive take on how her life would've panned out and why. We both did agree it would be hell to live in an age without paracetamol. Imagine waking up with a headache in 1720.

*my friend and I were both moved by the observation that nobody is really interested in women unless the story ends in a picturesque early death or a great sweeping love. Either way, neutralized instead of realized.

Read the books.

Our 'Ilary is the best living British writer.

Nightjar wrote:

Read the books.

Our 'Ilary is the best living British writer.

I have. But I loved the television adaption of Wolf Hall. I found it very skillful - I don't think I ever realized the lighting in 'period' drama was wrong until Wolf Hall got it so right. I contend that Olivia Coleman only got her Oscar because that particular lesson was so well learned by everyone who worked on or watched Wolf Hall.

Billy Elliott always makes me cry.

They've just chopped up the piano to keep warm while they have Christmas dinner and the dad sobs. We'll all be there soon, in the brave new world Britain has plunged itself into with glee.

'Two grand but there's a good chance the council will pay...'. Not hopeful words that talented kids in the North East (or anywhere else) will be able to rely on this coming decade.

Stop all your crying.

I will once I get through to my erstwhile mother in law. 'The English can't pronounce my name so just call me angel' were her very first words to me. It bore little resemblance to angel but regardless, I could pronounce it fine well. Her second sentence was 'can I borrow a cigarette?'.

Apart from calling me names, that's about all she ever said, and she asked repeatedly. Considering the obvious hatred we shared for one another, a normal person might've thought it cheap at the price to pop down to the kiosk and buy her own.

I don't think I've ever known anyone so skilled at scrounging cigarettes or pulling onto petrol station forecourts and remembering she'd forgot her purse - after she'd made you physically get out and fill her tank due to a sore hip/twisted ankle/sudden migraine.

Did I ever tell you that when I was about 9 I shoplifted the entire series of Elizabeth R from Virgin Megastores?

Three videos, two episodes on each. I chainsmoked 7 cigarettes during the 'Enterprise of England' episode (the one about the Armada for those not in the know), and had to press pause while I went to throw up.

Wolf Hall chat reminded me of that. I see that Glenda Jackson has made a recent return to the screen. Par excellence save the lighting.

I did all those things but with cigars, shoplifting Cannibal Holocaust, The Onedin Line and Sandra Sarah Bernhardt.

My mother has left her freedom pass here and she looks really quite sweet in it. Normally she looks rather showy and a bit too sexy in photos - I have one of her in a frame on my dressing table, at a slimming club in the early 90's. It makes me laugh. It has a couple of fat women, a couple of medium bodied women - and on the end of the group, this very tanned and slender woman in pale Levi's and a skintight Breton style top (off one shoulder), a long menthol cigarette just lit, smiling with a hand on one hip. God knows why she went to a slimming club, the others must've hated her or thought she was taking the p*ss out of them.

I suppose it was the thing to do at the time, socially. I think I'll stay up to call her rather than my ex mother in law.

Nightjar wrote:

I did all those things but with cigars, shoplifting Cannibal Holocaust, The Onedin Line and Sandra Sarah Bernhardt.

Isn't it Onegin? I thought it was - I'm sure someone laughed at me for pronouncing it as 'one gin' - it may have been part of the adverts on my Elizabeth R videos. The Duchess of Duke Street was, but I can't say it drew me in. Maybe it was on my House of Eliott videos instead.

Memories, like the corners of my mind...



Misty water coloured memories, of the way we were.

What's Melanie C doing on Graham Norton? She was always the least interesting of the Spice Girls (aside from Emma Bunton who was so dull she didn't count as an actual person). What a voice. If that came on the radio you'd turn it off.

Anthony Joshua! What a man. Got a double take from me - in the dying days of my relationship with my sons father I was seeing a guy from Shepherds Bush who looked just like that.

We met in a cafe in the West End. He said I'd sailed past him in the street with a look of disgust just a few days before, casting such a withering look of disregard upon him that he'd discussed with a friend whether it had been racially motivated or whether I was just a cow...

I'm actually short sighted but never wear my glasses unless driving/in the cinema/theatre, and I don't get on well with contacts. My default look while out and about happens to be withering, and that itself enhanced by the fact I can't see more than a couple of feet away in any detail. He found that acceptable as an explanation and we had a lovely time.

I remember doing my roots in his bathroom one evening while he was working on the tube. He liked babies. He was very cute with my son - feeding him speciality breads with exotic oils, diverting traffic signs to close the street off for football matches, etc.

All these avenues not taken...



Bit late now.

I think he was the nicest man I've ever been out with. Charming, decent, kind, honourable, genuinely enjoyed Sex & The City, looked more like Anthony Joshua than Anthony Joshua does.

What a shame for him that he got involved with me at that particular time in my life. He deserved so much more and I hope he's found it.