My beliefs

I believe that journalism can change the world. I believe in moral integrity. I believe that in these times, more than ever we need strong opinions, questioning minds and daring writing. It is imperative that writers stand up for their values and put pen to paper with no regard for word counts or paycheques. That is why I have written a piece that no one else had the gall to write. This is the story the world needed to hear. Read it now.

Instant Messenger conversation

Hit It and Quit It says:
How's your French?

Sir Tim Berners Lee says:
Il y a assez bientot

Sir Tim Berners Lee says:
J'ai dire le Frencais tres peu

Hit It and Quit It says:
Wanna move to Paris and share an apartment? France Today TV are recruiting

Sir Tim Berners Lee says:
Yeah okay. Meet me outside the Louvre on Friday afternoon

Sir Tim Berners Lee says:
Bring a beret

Hit It and Quit It says:
C'est vraiment!

Hot Fuzz

This will be phat.

Bolt Action 5 / Dan Sartain / Back to the Future 3

On Saturday I went to see the band Angry Tom manages, Bolt Action 5. There are, of course, only four of them. They are all ridiculously young, look amazing, and have a healthy love of drum machines. A good sign: when they finished, there were girls queuing up to speak to them. That's not a metaphor: they were literally queuing. Their first single's going to be released on Tom's new label, the excellently-named No Pain in Pop (tagline: "I'm not going to lie to you, we're kind of a big deal"). Have a listen here.

This afternoon housemate Jamie, who I have unfairly maligned in this very weblog for the outrageous work perks he gets, got us guestlisted for Dan 'bring your gun and I'll bring my knife' Sartain at the Barfly. I can't be bothered writing an overlong encomium describing how ace it was, so I'll just say 'that man totally rocks'.

He has something of the Steve Buscemi about him,
don't you think? Check out the bassist, what a beard.

Excited drinking boys standing behind us: "This is amazing. It's only 3.30 in the afternoon and we're well on the way."

Dan loves his snakes. Turn round and face me Sartain!

On the way home I bought some t-shirts from Camden market. I couldn't resist them, I'm sorry.

As we neared home, I suggested to Jamie we watch Back to the Future. We'd both seen the first film the other week, but as we were both exhausted and needed something light, we went for number three in the series as I thought the second film would probably be too complicated.

I've said before that re-watching the Back to the Future films is great, as there's always something new to spot. This time was no exception. When Doc's about to send Marty back to the 1885 Wild West, he says, "And remember, where you're going, there are no roads." A clever echo of the final line of the first film ("Roads? Where we're going, we don't need roads"). Fantastic.

Lessons learned from... The Departed

Mobile phones are pretty useful.


More lessons learnt

Watch us wreck the Nike

Great stuff from my friend Angry Tom who writes, in an email:

Went to a Nike focus group last night. Heads of Nike Europe watched us from a balcony. They were not impressed with me. Rich's brother organised it. Afterwards he told me: "They wanted some rocawear-loving rude men. Instead they got you clowns. If I ran Nike Europe and I flew in from Amsterdam to listen to you tell him that his new sportswear range looked like Alan Partridge in Flashdance and I'd paid couple of grand for the privilege, I'd be pissed off too."

Headline of the week

Story about how the Daily Mail newspaper ended up looking silly after publishing two contradictory stories on Romania in the same issue:

Mail impaled on its mania for Romania

Full story

Hazy Sunday afternoon

My memories of Saturday night are dreamlike and muddled, and still – even this late in the game - dripping back into my head. I got to a house party at around midnight. And after that, I'm remember these things happening:

• Sitting on the stairs while a slightly distressed looking girl told me over and over again about the time she saw a UFO. "It looked very much like a black binbag, but it was flying above the height that black binbags can fly – and it was moving with real purpose."
• Telling all and sundry that Rachel Steven's Sweet Dreams My LA-Ex was "the best pop song of the past ten years"
• Asking a bespectacled hippy what 'life story version B' was and being told he worked for the cheese mafia in Switzerland. Asking if he was Swiss. "No, I'm Australian." Then telling him that I didn't like Australians
• Lying on Chris's bed listening to songs from Tamil movies and smoking Royals
• Shouting about the special fuchsia t-shirt range
• The whole house party stopping for two New Zealanders to do the Haka in the centre of the lounge
• Getting home around 3.30am and finding the front door of our house wide open
• Eating a pork pie and switching on the TV to see John McCririck lying in bed drinking champagne and being berated by Edwina Currie

Actually, scratch that last one, it seems far too unlikely. But what's going on? Whenever I go out properly these days, I have nights that turn weird. It's great! Here's one. And here's another (from an email to housemate Jamie):

My Akira the Don interview all went a bit gonzo, and turned into a surreal Shoreditch drinking session. I can remember joining him behind the decks to tell him that Meatloaf's Bat out of Hell made me cry once, and some girl asking me what my star-sign was, and a band whose singer looked like Garth Marenghi, and the guy who ran the record label drawling "there's free tequila at the bar". Oh, and someone smacking me with some mini bondage whip as I left. But there's still much haziness. And Akira kept introducing me to people as 'William' because I’d said I had a special affinity to the Smiths' song William, It Was Really Nothing.

Stockwell Flats: Beckett House

"Then I went back into the house and wrote, It is midnight. The rain is beating on the windows. It was not midnight. It was not raining."
Samuel Beckett, Molloy

Stockwell flats slideshow

Blair flair

The scene: Prime Minister's Questions this afternoon. Tory leader David Cameron reads out comments the PM made in January in which Tony Blair said he was happy for Gordon Brown to succeed him.

"Do you still think that today?" Cameron asks.

Blair hesitates, then - waiting for the wild jeering from Conservative MPs to die down - eventually says: "I don't resile from anything I've said."

[re‧sile  /rɪˈzaɪl/
–verb (used without object), -siled, -sil‧ing.
1. to spring back; rebound; resume the original form or position, as an elastic body.
2. to shrink back; recoil.]

There is a school of thought that says Blair is a complete legend. Today they will be rejoicing. Resile!