Its fantastic although I missed out on the second series

Up to episode 7 of Sons of Anarchy and I am quite enjoying it. Watched a couple of episodes of Arrested Development and I didn't hate it, but probably wouldn't be bothered if I never saw another one.

Watched the documentary on the great British war photojournalist Don McCullin last night on BBC1.

From Cyprus to Nam to Biafra to NI to the Lebanon.

This bloke has seen the horror of what man can do to other man, been there and seen it all.

Even so he spoke in a very moving, poignant and humanitarian way about the suffering he had personally witnessed.

Recommended viewing if available on Iplayer.



Just found a trailer for anyone interested.



[urlhttp://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2013/jan/06/mccullin-review-documentary-don-mccullin[/url

Oh wow - I want to watch that one, tonight, iPlayer, don't disturb me.

Lump in the throat job when he goes into Biafra and describes the effect the war had amongst the starving, dying children.

Especially the albino child.

Went to get us a drink in the kitchen so I could hide behind the fridge freezer to straighten myself out JC.

If anyone thought Mrs Brown's Boys was peurile sh[ii[/ite, be prepared for new levels of sh[ii[/itery when Count Arthur Strong transfers from Radio 4 to BBC2.



Where Mrs Brown is a poor man's version of Old Mother Riley, Arthur Strong just seems to have taken all the worst bits from Harry Worth and put them in a contemporary setting.



I'd love to know who commissions this crap

Arthur Strong is a great radio comedy, also looks good on Youtube as a stage show - not sure how it will convert to TV though.



And I used to be bored rigid by Harry Worth.

I've got this recorded and have only watched the opening ten minutes so far, I deliberately stopped watching because I reckon it deserves watching in a single sitting.

I've been a McCullin fan ever since I saw an exhibition of his work at the Museum of London back in the 1990's (not the more recent one at the Imperial War Museum which received great acclaim).

At most exhibitions there are pictures you can just pass by ... but not at that one, each one arrested your attention and really made you think.



I've never heard him talking about it before and I'll be watching it this weekend.

I think he must be a "Marmite" performer because whilst I loved his various Radio 4 series and would roar with laughter at them, La Senora would be looking at me totally mystified, she simply just didn't "get" him.



Harry Worth was just a gentle blunderer, whereas Arthur Strong has a snobbily inflated sense of self-importance.



I'll give the TV a go but, as with many other transfers, it might not work.

Never watched it, the trailers were enough to put me off.

Fantastic program, watched it last night on a tablet with headphones on, totally ignored the rest of the family in the room even though I could see them trying to talk to me





This documentary should be shown as part of the national history curriculum along with examples of his work - also highlighted Andrew Neil and Rupert Murdoch as destroyers of a fine tradition of sunday newspaper campaigning and informing in favour of pandering to frivolous advertisers who didn't want nasty foreign war, famine and death pictures in the same magazines as their products - so a double bonus.

Glad you enjoyed it JC, and that you are going to EB.

Not a great connoisseur of photography, although some of his photos definitely resonated.

None more so for me than the shell-shocked soldier in Vietnam which is particulary haunting.

He took several single shots of the same face- and the soldier never blinked or moved, when the documentary makers called the Major who is now well-retired and who was in charge of the marines that day he said that they have reunions every year and is still in contact with many of his soldiers but no-one has found any trace of that particular one since.

''Why are you doing this to me?''



[urlhttp://www.harpersbazaar.co.uk/going-out/who-what-where/best-of-don-mccullin-3#slide-9[/url

I once had to sit through a [iwhole episode[/i at my parents' house. Never again.

I always envisage him as the product of an unnatural relationship between Harry Worth and Nellie Pledge

Had the same experience two Xmas's ago.

Staying at my mates in Manchester and he insisted we watched the Xmas special ( managed to avoid the series).

What a load of fooking tripe.

Garbage!

It's not even that good.

Whoever is responsible for it must've thought no one was old enough to remember Old Mother Riley

I'm not.

Sounds like television was on a roll last night.



Prof Alice Roberts was in fine form on Horizon : What Makes Us Human?



Sadly BBC2 pitched it up against the squawking mob that is The Apprentice, so it won't have drawn anything like the audience it deserved.

I used to like her when she was on [iCoast[/i.

Unlike Nicholas Crane who has an amazing ability to dull even the most interesting of topics and always ended every sentence with a s l o w i n g EMPHASIS.

Don't get me started on his trademark umbrella sticking out of his rucksack ... big nancy.

Not available on iPlayer yet (possibly ever) but last night's In The Loop was classic Ianucci, Peter Capaldi as Malcolm Tucker and James Gandolfini as Lt Gen George Miller

Watched the Piper Alpha documentary, Fire In The Night, that I'd recorded from last week.

Very good if not seen.

The survivors interviewed (only 61 out of 22icon_cool.gif mainly Jocks and Geordies (industrial gypsies), talked movingly of the nights events about the friends and workmates who never made it through that night.

Admittedly, you'd never be the same again after an event such as that, would you?



Also watched last weeks, The Murder Trial on C4.

Found it very engrossing from a layperson's perspective although our resident lawyer will probably dispute this if he viewed it.

Working in electrical contracting in the north east in the late 70's you'd be lucky to hang onto a decent Approved Electrician and if you did you just knew it was because his wife wouldn't let him go on the rigs





From memory the rates they were paying, even for the on-shore work in places like Hartlepool was at least three times what the £5.70 (ish) we paid as the JIB hourly rate, I knew of several electricians who paid off their mortgages after a year or two of offshore shifts and the risk of death from helicopter or explosion or plain and simple falling off the bloody things was just par for the course - and I won't even mention the diver who used to stay at the pub I lived at when he was onshore, that bloke was convinced that his next trip would be his last.