celticman's blog

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/p0535lq5/billy-connolly-portrait-of-a-lifetime Billy Connolly might well be Scotland’s greatest export after whisky. Both ITV and BBC are competing to squeeze the last dregs of life out of The Big Yin. I’ve checked, he’s not dead yet. But he does have motor- neurone disease and he’s coming up for seventy-five. He said it himself, other people’s success tend to form an inverted U-shaped curve. His success is...

Exposed: The Church’s Darkest Secret, BBC 2, BBC iPlayer, Director Ben Steele. https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m000dbq7/exposed-the-churchs-darkest-secret-series-1-episode-1 https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m000dbjd/exposed-the-churchs-darkest-secret-series-1-episode-2 But whoso shall offend one of these little ones which believe in me, it were better for him that a millstone were hanged about his neck, and that he were drowned in the...

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m000dbcf/louis-theroux-selling-sex Louis Theroux is repeating himself. He’s done this before, tackling the sex industry, but now he’s looking the British model. Nudge, nudge, wink, wink, in a Carry On kinda way. Sex sells even if it’s documentary sex and Theroux has pretty much a free hand with the BBC who buy any old muck he wants to sell. Selling sex is legal in Britain as long as it doesn’t involve...

I’m a bit stupid. I wasn’t sure if this was fact of fiction or fictionalised fact. I’m still not sure. This short book had me thinking, which is often a good thing. But I don’t really get it, which is a bad thing – right? I’ve been to a few funerals this year and I wrote in memorial that ‘Grief was too small a word’. Setting the tone in Max Porter’s book, split into three short chapters –beginning, middle and end—is not so much a prologue as an...

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m000d27r/storyville-jonestown-terror-in-the-jungle-episode-1 https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m000d28j/storyville-jonestown-terror-in-the-jungle-episode-2 Most news stories start their pitch with the headline and in an inverted triangular shape begins to tell the rest of the story in terms of cause and effect. I’ll modify this a little here. Jim Jones was born in rural Indiana at the height of the...

History doesn’t run in straight lines. Robert A. Caro has focussed on a fixed point to talk about power. What it is? How it comes about. Who wields it? And how do they use that power? And in his biography of Lyndon B. Johnson (LBJ), in this first of four volumes, we follow not only the tale of LBJ, who becomes 36 th President of the United States, but the story of the United States, a modern history. Novels begin with flawed characters that need...

Seventy-five years since the end of the Second World War. We’ve had a few close calls. The Cuban Missile Crisis, for example. Like an old Corporation bus running late the apocalypse rumbles into view. All writers are prophets for hire, waiting for the Virgin Mary to make an appearance before we take the fare. Here we have a Vision of Geronda Ephraim Addressing the Ukrainian Situation and casually flinging in his bombshell, don’t worry about that...

Reading is my religion. This book is billed as a true story, marked down as a genre somewhere between The Tattooist of Auschwitz a nd The Choice . The latter was a life-affirming, marvellous book, beautifully written with a clear moral message. The former – I only read the first fifty pages. I find myself in the same misgivings with The Librarian of Auschwitz as I did with The Tattooist Here are a few examples. A black shadow, darker than all...

I’d a gut feeling Celtic would lose today and a gut feeling they’ll lose the Championship. Hope I’m wrong, of course. Last year we were behind Rangers and went on to win it comfortably. I remember being 13 points behind Hearts a few years ago. No need to go overboard and get bogged down in hype and hysteria. Rangers not if, when, they win their game in hand will be a point ahead in the league. In terms of performance this was on par with the...

Peter (Barra) McGachy died on Friday 13 th December. I’m sure there’s a joke in there somewhere. Barra was a bit of a bard, one of life’s storytellers. He would be saying, ‘C’mon, Friday the 13 th for fuck sake’. He’d one of those gritty voices that came from a mineshaft below his feet and echoed up through his body. His throaty laugh was a bit like that, an invitation to stop fucking about, get a drink and enjoy your life. And his moustache,...