celticman's blog

https://www.itv.com/hub/anne/2a5505a0001 Not many programmes can get away with a one-word titular introduction—Anne. I’d have had no idea of who it was referring unless I’d read the pre-publicity for the four-night drama starring Maxine Peake. Anne Williams, an unremarkable woman from Liverpool who worked in a shop, and who died in 2013. That might have been that. But if we throw in another word, Hillsborough, the unremarkable becomes remarkable...

https://www.channel5.com/show/ufos-the-proof-is-out-there/ A screenshot from USS Princeton released by US defence department, April 2020. Stare at the tic-tack long enough and the object will move. “Senior officials briefed on the intelligence conceded that the very ambiguity of the findings meant the government could not definitively rule out theories that the phenomena observed by military pilots might be alien spacecraft”, the New York Times...

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m000qt06/hector Peter Mullan always seems to snag the parts of the homeless alkie. Hector McAdam doesn’t even have to be an alkie, just grizzled looking as Peter Mullan in a beanie hat, and as if he’s just stepped out a cardboard box, washed up in a motorway café’s toilet and rustled up a quick snack. He’s left two pals and a dog still sleeping at the side of the building. He nips of the post office to pick...

I hadn’t heard of OxyContin, nor Purdue Pharmacy (Purdue Frederick) that manufactured the opioid drug. Nor had I seen Dopesick , a Disney backed television series based on the manufacture and sale of ‘hillbilly heroin’ that ravaged America, cost 450 000 American lives (and still counting) approximately $2 trillion of collateral damage at a conservative estimate. I hadn’t heard of the Sackler family, or the ‘Cadillac high’ of OxyContin and Valium...

I took Ewan Gault’s novel with me to get my Covid booster and flu jab. An hour-and-half waiting. It’s a pocket-sized book with the print a bit too wee for my liking. But I got stuck in and read most of the short twenty-six chapters in one long wheeze. I kept a few of the pages back to enjoy the denouement when my mind was a little clearer. Crime/Thriller category. Tartan Noir. Ian Rankin, who wrote William McIlvanney’s latest Laidlaw, knew...

I can’t remember very much about Derren Brown’s guide to practicing stoicism in an unhappy world, Happy . This is the follow up. Pretty good fun, more like a chapbook and diary (his father died during Covid). I’ll no doubt forget all the lessons learned here too. Stoics taught us fortitude comes from controlling our thoughts and actions. The common mistake we make is to try and manage things we cannot (serenity prayer). Derren suggests, You are...

I was vaguely aware who Alan Cumming is. For independent film consortiums, Miriam Margolyes seems to be the pensioner of choice to go on adventures and sell the results to BBC, ITV or Channel 4. She’s been sent to America a few times and to Australia. The latest wheeze is Scotland. Yes, Bonnie old Scotland. Who’d have thought of that? Monopoly money for old rope. They flung in Alan Cummings as a guide, and driver of their motorhome. He’s...

The cover of James Robertson’s latest novel, News of the Dead , has a blurb from Ali Smith: ‘A marvellous novelist’. I spend much of my time looking at marketing techniques, when I should be reading, or even writing. Get a big hitter, preferably Scottish, like Ali Smith to say something nice about your writing and copy and paste it to all of your other books. It doesn’t need to be a novelist or writer. Billy Connolly’s good press (Jane Godley...

I’m a reader. When I open a book magic happens. Or in Heather Morris’s case magic doesn’t happen. When God said to Moses, you cannot look—directly—at me, but when I pass you might see my glory. When I read a book if I don’t see God’s face, I’m not too disappointed. After all, even international and bestselling authors are only human. I’ll wait for the glory to pass. And I don’t go very many places. The best writers transport you. Where are we?...

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m0011pn4/ophelia Ophelia , based on a book by Lisa Klein, who is also a screenwriter here (my guess that gave her leverage to adapt her novel for cinema/television) tells the story of Shakespeare’s Hamlet from a woman’s perspective, in much the same way Tom Stoppard put centre stage other peripheral figures in the play, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead . I’m not read Lisa Klein’s novel. And I’m not a...