I know this will probably sound totally surreal – but I wasn’t interested in soul music until I went on a placement at the BBC GMR back in February 2005. Yes, I heard names like Aretha Fra...
The text that you’re about to read was written in late December 2005. It was literally inspired by a TV news report about Prince Charles considering to take on the name George when he eventually...
As I am still new to the world of creating and sharing the media online, I am very puzzled at one thing about YouTube. I know some videos are disabled for embedding, with which I have got no issue. Th...
I remembered listening to a short talk by Slavoj Žižek on Channel 4 last year, in which he discussed (very briefly) Charlie Chaplin’s film, The Great Dictator. Although the image of a dictator w...
As you might have noticed from the Links section in my side bar, as well as from my profile, I’m a fan of Serge Gainsbourg. The first time I heard him, I was just as innocent as France Gall (who...
There must be some curse that doesn’t let me see La Belle et la Bête by Jean Cocteau. Every time it’s on TV I either forget or cannot find time to watch it. Naturally, when I received an e...
This text I wrote recently on the train, in Russian. It is a chapter in my reflections on Manchester, which I provisionally call ‘The City of Optimists’. Some of them I published in Russia...
Like many other people in Manchester tonight, I’ve just returned from the BBC Blogging Workshop. No winds could stop us this time, but no winds were blowing, anyway. The goal of the workshop was...
Hans Christian Andersen wrote about the storm that shifted the signboards. It looks like the winter frosts have left England more or less unscathed, whereby all signboards remained in their places. Ho...
When I went to Bolton a week ago, I didn’t manage to take any decent shots of Ye Olde Man & Scythe, one of Britain’s oldest pubs. (Don’t tell me anybody that North West of Englan...