From the early Sixties until the rise of John Thaw as Regan of The Sweeney in the Seventies, Stratford Johns as Charlie Barlow was the most famous police officer on television. The character began in Z-Cars, then appeared in the spin-off series Softly Softly and was finally employed by the Home Office in Barlow. Which makes this story about him from Stan Collins - I was on the Liberal Democrats' federal policy with him years ago - all the more impressive: I met Stratford Johns once in the gents outfitters where I worked after school and hols. He knew the ...
What is the meaning of LadBaby's Christmas hegemony? Stuart Whomsley investigates. It is a good marker of where the UK is at now, that each year, we have a groundhog day of waking up to find that Christmas number one is a novelty record about sausage rolls, for food banks. The five LadBaby Christmas number one records so far, have done harm to three noble things: the Christmas number one record, the comedy novelty record, and the charity record. Being the Christmas number used to be something special. The Sixties, Seventies and Eighties saw some fantastic songs make number one: ...
I like to think that the royal Carol Service in Westminster Abbey on Christmas Eve and the King's broadcast on Christmas Day itself gave a clear message as to who we really are , or at least should be aiming to be. These were in sharp contrast the nastiness of this article in one of the Sunday Papers, complaining of an alleged shift of the Tories to the centre(stress on the "alleged") and treats from one of their chief donors and other supporters to pull their funding unless they put a stop to migrants crossing the Channel and sent those ...
The Independent reports that Rishi Sunak has appointed a new ethics adviser, a post that has been allowed to remain vacant for six months, but has refused to relinquish the power to veto any investigation into ministers. The paper says that Historic England chairman Sir Laurie Magnus was announced as the adviser on ministers' interests, but the prime minister ignored calls from the Committee on Standards in Public Life and others to give his top adviser the power to start their own investigation without his permission: Labour accused Mr Sunak of having chosen to "preserve the rotten ethics regime" that ...
Think staircases are just a burden to use when the lifts are broken? Think again as you look at these ten amazing staircases from around the world, including one of the most photographed staircases ever built. Just sometimes staircases are given their proper place in buildings that also come with lifts. But far too often they're still treated, despite growing awareness of the benefits of encouraging people who can to take the stairs, as if an embarrassing cousin at Christmas, to be hidden around the back, pass the toilets and through the door marked 'emergency exit'. One I would add ...
