Ceri Radford

Never mind that David Aaronovitch column pointing out exactly how the BBC should hold Nick Griffin to account for his holocaust-denying, racist, homophobic views; my favourite piece of criticism on the BNP leader this week comes from no other than his wife.

“I worked my a*** off trying to keep us going,” Mrs Griffin has moaned, according to the Mail. “I’ve been … working to keep us going financially and bring up four children while he’s spent his time playing at stupid politics.” She added that she “though he would grow out of it”.

Understandably, if a crossword competition entry you had posted was returned to you, in a plastic bag, latticed with slime and nibbled to the point of illegibility, you would be a little peeved. But I think the note of apology that the Torquay resident involved  ultimately received would ultimately make up for it:
“I am very sorry that the letter enclosed has been damaged and subsequently delayed. This item was found during a scheduled collection from a posting box and has been eaten by snails.
“Unfortunately, despite regular cleaning and placing pellets in the boxes, we find that snails and slugs still occasionally manage to creep into the apertures.

“They fall down into the box and start eating the glue or adhesive on the stamps and envelopes.

“I am very sorry for any problems caused by this unusual tampering – and while I am pleased to be able to return your letter,… Read More

“Is this the world’s worst beard?” runs the headline on the Telegraph website at the moment. There can only be one answer. Beckham’s beard is a bristly aberration, a follicular horror, a facial fungus. And what’s with the two bald bits? They look a bit like a pair of pendulous breasts superimposed on dog hide.

David Beckham: is there a barber in the stadium?

I don’t know if anyone else has strong views on this, but to my mind a beard is only attractive if it has been grown accidentally, because the beard-owner has been too busy chopping wood, downing whisky, wrestling bears or engaging in some other robust, masculine activity to shave. You just know that none of these things apply to Beckham. There is something cultivated in the shape, the… Read More

When I saw a picture of the new 50 pence coin, designed especially for the Olympics in 2012, I was all set to rant and rage about how it looked like it had been drawn by a nine-year-old. Then I read the caption: it was drawn by a nine-year-old, which distinguishes it from the Olympics logo, which looks like it was designed by a nine-year-old but was in fact concocted by a professional design team at a cost of £400,000.

Top or flop? The new 50 pence piece

But back to the 50p piece. For the winner of a Blue Peter children’s art competition, it’s lovely and expressive, which means I shouldn’t write any of the unkind things that immediately ran through my head about it looking a bit like Mr Potato Head, or… Read More

Far be it for me to argue that Carla is not, as James puts it, a singing, drawing (those sketches have a certain stark, Japanese aesthetic, don’t you think?) fox with perfectly-spaced eyes, but there is one thing that is wrenchingly awful about her new website: the portrait section.

In her defence, it’s not written by her, and French as a language tends to be more high-flown than English, and my clunky translation could be doing her a terrible disservice, and she does have perfectly spaced eyes and nice arms, but still. I quote.
 In another life, when asked about the events which had put her on the level of a destiny which already appeared novel-like, Carla Bruni remembered that she had been elected class prefect seven times. She also remembered appearing in a primary school play dressed as a boy, with her hair plastered down under a cap…. Read More

It’s raining, it’s autumn, there are no bank holidays for as far as the miserable, strained eye can see, Britain has dropped out of the best 20 countries to live in list, we almost definitely won’t get a say on the future of Europe, the nights are drawing in – and yet, lest you despair, there is a small glimmer of hope in this dark, dark world.

Bookshops have indicated that they will not be stocking Jordan’s latest autobiography. Yes, a spokesman for Blackwells has announced with impeccable logic that “She has done three already”, and therefore its customers will be spared the sight of a further volume of insights from the glamour model/reality TV exhibitionist/professional pink jodphur wearer. Waterstones is apparently adopting the same policy.

Now all they have to do is abandon all books written by people who have never read a book, and we can enjoy some kind… Read More

Does it make me some sort of knuckle-dragging reactionary if I think the police have a point in confiscating the Brooke Shields image from the Tate? She’s 10 years old, she’s naked, smeared in oil, and wearing more make-up than Dolly Parton. At that age she cannot possibly have consented to her mother selling the original photograph; in 1981, she tried to buy back the negatives, suggesting that she wasn’t entirely happy with the exploitation of her pre-pubescent self.

I get the fact that the art work – a picture of the photograph – is a critique of that exploitation, or in the artist’s words a commentary on Shields as “abstract entity”. I get the fact that the title, Spiritual America, is ironic. If it was being shown 100 years from now, when Shields will not be alive to care about it, fine. I don’t for a moment buy into… Read More

Gordon Brown may be pounding home his points to enthusiastic applause at the Labour party conference, but I am personally still cringing and horror-struck by the mawkish introduction he got from his wife. Was that really the usually savvy Sarah Brown taking the podium and describing his tenderness and “the reason why I love him as much as I do”? Did she really call him “my husband, my hero”? What is this Oprah-style bleating doing at a political conference? I don’t care if he forgets their anniversary every year and burns her toast.

Sarah Brown: 'He fights poverty, and brings me breakfast in bed!'

And was that really a video montage of swooning tributes to the dear leader, including – someone please tell me I was hallucinating – Bono with… Read More

As I was drinking my coffee this morning, this story informed me that rather than just waking myself up (and emptying my wallet) I was in fact helping to kill community feeling and erode the very foundations of democracy. And all this before 8am – I’m even making Gordon Brown look good.

According to the academic Bryan Simon, Starbucks chains encourage isolation because of their small and widely-spaced tables, free wireless access and focus on take-away drinks – making them the antithesis of the grand British coffee houses of the 18th and nineteenth centuries which hosted freewheeling debates and were “cornerstones of democracy with a small ‘d’”.

Well, some people may want to go to a café to exchange verbal repartee and reinvigorate the body politic; others just want to drink coffee and catch up on their emails. Sometimes you want to be social. Other times – on a night bus,… Read More

Inevitably, Hollywood has signed a deal to make a movie about Barbie. She has already been transformed from simple figurine into what Mattel describe, without irony, as “an intellectual property”, complete with a blindingly pink website and “live stage shows”, so it was only a matter of time. And it’s not as if casting directors should struggle to find a blond, plastic shopping addict with anatomically impossible proportions in LA.

Barbie just needs to work on her goth credentials (Photo: Clara Molden)

What I want to know, though, is why European art-house cinema didn’t get there first. We could have had Ken Loach on Barbie’s origins as a German sex doll called Bild Lilli, a victim of the throwaway capitalist culture of post-war West Berlin who finally escapes to the workers’ paradise over the Wall…. Read More