The Joy of Six 1603

"More than 74,000 people have been killed in Gaza according to the Palestinian Ministry of Health, and up to ten thousand are missing under the rubble. More than a hundred thousand Palestinians have managed to leave. The survivors are corralled into a concentration area along the coast, living in dense tent encampments among ruined buildings, mountains of rubbish and rivers of sewage, under the constant hum of drones." Eyal Weizman reviews Yuval Abraham and Rachel Szor's film Naza.

Gaby Hinsliff says the Russell Brand verdict is a landmark in the history of the judicial system's understanding of consent: "For too long, cases involving young women alleging rape after going initially willingly to the bedrooms of rich or famous men have ended in sour, uneasy acquittals. Well, not any more. This verdict upholds the vital principle that consent to one thing is not consent to absolutely everything; that women still absolutely have the right to say no, even if they have in the past said yes."

Victoria Collins, Liberal Democrat MP for Harpenden and Berkhamsted, on the future of public service broadcasting: "It is crucial that trusted UK public service broadcasters and trusted news providers remain visible and easily discoverable. We must ensure that audiences can continue to have easy access to the range of original content that public service broadcasters provide."

"For some people with disabilities, going swimming or attending an exercise class comes with a worry that many others would never consider: could being seen to be physically active lead to their disability benefits being stopped?" Toni Williams uncovers the 'activity trap' that is stopping some disabled people from exercising.

"Munro constructed a glittering, savage milieu, where the drawing-room hypocrisies of the upper-middle-classes are mercilessly exposed. His agents of chaos are manifold: some are elegant young men who admire buttonholes and cufflinks, and bear romantic names like Reginald and Clovis Sangrail. More often than not, the disruptors are young children or animals, ruthlessly unsentimental, and devoted to the remorseless logic of truth." Philip Womack has read a new biography of H.H. Munro, better known as Saki.

The Silver Locket introduces us to the joys of collecting early Penguins.

Fortean Times nods on yoghurt and the Stiperstones

I went into Leicester today to see Pawel Pawlowski's new film Fatherland and also to buy the new issue of Fortean Times at the T.G. Jones on Leicester station.

Fatherland is well worth seeing, but here are a couple of minor quibbles occasioned by my flick through the magazine on the bus home.

David Hambling writes in his regular science column about some regions' claims to have lots of inhabitants who have lived well past the age of 100 – and about how they generally prove to be unfounded upon investigation.

One region that made such a claim was Abkhazia in the Caucasus, which used to be part of the Soviet Union. Today it is recognised by most countries as part of Georgia, but it is occupied by, or at least economically dominated by, by Russia.

Hambling says of Abkhazia:

A 1970 census showed that 40 per cent of the population claim to be over 90, but were remarkably youthful looking. This was partly attributed to yoghurt, a novelty in the West at the time, and Danone used the claims in a successful yoghurt advertising campaign.

But yoghurt was not a novelty in the England by 1970. I can remember regularly choosing a pot for breakfast from the milkman's float as a small boy several years before that.

A BBC News story confirms my memory:

In 1963, Swiss-invented Ski was launched in the UK. With added sugar and real fruit it was an instant hit and launched a yoghurt revolution on our supermarket shelves.

And the Ski television commercial above dates from 1967.

Danone, I suspect, were behind the Chambourcy brand, which I also remember from childhood. Maybe they were launching it in 1970?

And then Alan Murdie's Ghostwatch column refers to:

Wild Edric, an Anglo-Saxon noble who resisted the Normans between 1067-70, appearing on the jagged Stiper Stones, Shropshire, on the longest night.

"Stiperstones" as two words? The term describes a five-mile ridge, not just the outcrops at its highest point.

Still, I am happily reminded of the young son of a fellow Liberator collective member who was delighted that we had found "the stiper stones" when we reached those outcrops in the rain, much as Christopher Robin was convinced Pooh had found the North Pole.

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"In a sacred ceremony dating back to time immemorial, a researcher from a poverty charity or housing campaign group raises their mournful head from the Budget small print and confirms to their line manager that no, there is no money assigned to raising Local Housing Allowance in line with rents and yes, that means housing benefit for private sector tenants in all but the cheapest homes is being cut. Again." Chaminda Jayanetti says John Healey's "breathing space" Budget has ensured the noose around the neck of the poorest private renters gets ever tighter.

Daniella Shreir reports on the unrest in France: "Despite three weeks of blockades and protests that had already led to more than six thousand arrests (most of them of minors), Macron claimed to have been surprised by the scale of the protests on 17 October."

Shem Law argues that the BBC's decision to close Radio 4 Extra is a terrible mistake.

"Illich’s censure of industrialized society originated in his criticisms of the Catholic Church. As a young priest of formidable intellect, Illich was known in the Vatican and seemed clearly destined to become a prince of the church. But his experience of missionary attitudes, first in Puerto Rico and then in Brazil and Mexico, turned him into a vociferous critic of what he saw as a corporate-religious developmentalism that paved over Indigenous customs and encouraged dependency." Justin McGuirk looks at the ideas of Ivan Illich in his centenary year.

Malin Hay visits the Inside Aardman: Wallace & Gromit and Friends exhibition at the Young V&A: "Of late, a note of techno-optimism has crept into the Aardman canon. The most recent Wallace and Gromit film, Vengeance Most Fowl, feints towards a Luddite message, as Wallace’s obsession with gadgets threatens Gromit’s peace and the simplicity of their lives."

"The history of an organisation's change programmes can tell you a lot about what is behind its current initiatives. Sometimes they are a reaction to what went before, other times they are an attempt to do the same again, only with different language. Often, there is little understanding of why the last change attempt failed. People want to bury the embarrassment of previous projects and move on." Flip Chart Fairy Tales undertakes some workplace archaeology among the ruins of past change programmes.

Two early screen appearances by Patrick Stewart (1940-2026)

The actor Patrick Stewart died yesterday. This story from the Hollywood Reporter concentrates on his appearances in Star Trek and X-Men, while some of us will think first of his appearances in Smiley's People and I, Claudius. In both he was a uniquely powerful presence.

Over the years I have posted a couple of clips of him from even earlier in his career. Here he is in Joby from 1975. 

This was an adaptation of the Stan Barstow's 1964 novel of the same name. It was filmed  in and around Horbury, the village near Wakefield where Barstow himself grew up. We lost so much with the demise of the regional ITV companies.

And from 1969, here he is acting a scene from Hamlet with Ian Richardson and Ronald Lacey. This is an extract from one of the episodes of Kenneth Clark's series Civilisation.

David Hemmings film of David Bowie concert tour to be seen at last

Embed from Getty Images

Here's some good news from the Guardian. David Hemmings' film of David Bowie’s 1978 Isolar II tour will be seen next year, thanks to the present-day director Brett Morgen’s painstaking remastering of the footage.

As the paper explains: 

Bowie intended for the footage to be released as a concert film that could, according to his associates, play in nontraditional venues such as concert venues in lieu of him touring himself. After the Isolar II tour, Bowie would not tour again until the 1983 Serious Moonlight run.

But the always fast-evolving musician soon became busy with other projects: recording and releasing Lodger, working with John Cale on music that was never released and Scary Monsters (and Super Creeps).

While an acclaimed live album of the tour, Stage (recorded at US dates that spring), was released in autumn 1978, the footage never saw the light of day. 

"I simply didn't like the way it had been shot," Bowie said in 2000. "Now, of course, it looks pretty good and I would suspect that it would make it out some time in the future."

The photo above shows Hemmings on the set of Just a Gigolo with Kim Novak, Maria Schell and Bowie. This film proved a notorious flop and more or less put an end to his promising career as a director for the big screen.

As Hemmings later said of the Eighties: "People thought I was dead, but I was just directing The A-Team."

What we want now is to see his all-but-lost first film Running Scared (1972), which was shot largely on the Grand Union Canal at Braunston in Northamptonshire.

Turning Point UK chief executive suspended by Tories over contract killing claims

Headline of the Day has already been won by a penis-biting dog from Rutland, but this Guardian story is still worth your attention:

Former Tory election candidate suspended over contract killing claims 

A former Conservative election candidate has been suspended from the party after he was seemingly filmed discussing the cost of hiring contract killers and offering to "broker" the services of a far-right activist with alleged paramilitary links.

Jack Ross was filmed apparently asking an undercover reporter "What do you want done?" before listing the type of violent options that could be bought.

Ross appeared to tell the Al Jazeera journalist: "They can just kick the fuck out of someone. That’s a certain amount. They can start cutting people’s faces up, that’s another amount. And they can stab someone. They can shoot someone. They can kill someone."

Police in Scotland say they will be reviewing and assessing the Al Jazeera documentary – Contract Killers and the Far Right – for any criminality. 

You can watch the full documentary above.

Ross is the chief executive of Turning Point UK. The Guardian says he has been a Conservative local election candidate but doesn't say where.

Gophers! – The strange strange show that no one remembers

As I have long been convinced that I am the only person who remembers Gophers!, a bizarre comedy series screened by Channel 4 in 1990, I'm pleased to see that some of it has reappeared on YouTube recently. You can see the whole of the second episode above.

Wikipedia does its best to explain what the series was about:

Gophers! is a Channel 4 children's programme about a family of American gophers who move into a new neighbourhood, called Sycamore Heights, living next door to a family of uptight but well-intentioned rabbits, The Burrows.

There were many recurring jokes within this short-lived show such as Arthur Burrows' vegetables planning a rebellion to escape his garden, a mad scientist ferret called Dr Wince, whose ambition was to conquer the world by obtaining a crystal buried in the Gophers' garden with the help of his reptilian servant Sly, and an alien in love with a zucchini determined to get home. 

Also there were stereotypical "Mexican" cockroaches (dressed in costumes of Mexican peasant revolutionaries of the Mexican Revolution of 1910) who lived in the Gophers' house or trailer park mobile home always trying to steal their food.

I'm pleased but surprised to see that Gophers! was sold to 67 countries and won the 1990 WorldFest Houston Gold Award for Outstanding Comedy Series.

"A little heaven here on earth": Launde Abbey in Leicestershire

Remember Thomas Cromwell's final words in the wonderful Wolf Hall: The Mirror and the Light?

"There is an abbey, Launde, in the heart of England. The air is always sweet there and it's quiet. A little heaven here on earth. And I think to myself: 'I'll live here one day, when all my work is done.'"

Launde Abbey is in Leicestershire – in Harborough District, indeed – and though Cromwell didn't get to live there, his son did and is buried in the chapel. Today it is a Church of England retreat and conference centre.

The BBC Radio Leicester's Secret Leicestershire series has two short programmes on Launde:

• History in the making
• The Cromwell connection

Crash! (1971): An experimental television film with J.G. Ballard and Gabrielle Drake

This film, made for BBC2 and broadcast in 1971, features J.G. Ballard and Gabrielle Drake. 

It must have been inspired by one of the linked stories – also called Crash! – from Ballard's novel The Atrocity Exhibition, which was published in 1970.

Ballard's novel Crash did not appear until 1973. It was adapted by David Cronenberg for a 1996 film that caused great controversy when it was released.

Matt Brittin and Manon Dave need a traditional BBC arse-booting

Many have spent the day unsure whether to be outraged by BBC senior management or point at it and roar with laugher.

Here's director general Matt Brittin, quoted by Deadline:

"I love the BBC. It’s full of words and discussion and slide decks and framing and reframing and reconstituting, and going around the houses, and actually, I'd like us to celebrate activity less, and outcomes more. And getting faster to outcomes that make a difference to an audience.

"Not [just], 'We did this great marketing campaign,' but actually, 'It drove up watch time usage and active accounts,' right? Or, 'We did this piece of journalism, and it changed the law, and it landed with these audiences.'"

And here's Manon Dave, "head of future world design in the corporation’s Media Tech unit", from the same report:

Dave told colleagues that he spent time on holiday redesigning iPlayer without any internal limitations. He wants the streaming service to become a place where audience members say, "I want to iPlayer and chill," though it is not clear if this means retaining the sexual connotations of the original "and chill" internet slang.

Dave’s vision for iPlayer included an AI agent called Iggy, which helps recommend and summarize iPlayer content, and can speak to audiences in different languages. Other ideas Dave presented to staff included a personalized "hero" picture at the top of iPlayer's home screen, which picks out algorithm-led content recommendations based on past viewing habits. He also demonstrated "Vegas mode," allowing viewers to "roll the dice" and see what iPlayer selects for them.

At one point, we are told, Dave referred to the director-general as "my big homie".

What to do with this pair?

Fortunately, my alter ego has the answer. In the last Liberator of 2025, Lord Bonkers described a traditional BBC arse-booting:

I don’t suppose you’ve had the pleasure of being present at this ceremony, where a bad hat who has evaded the stern eye of Sir John Reith and talked his way into the corporation, is ejected forthwith, but the way of it is this. 

The Chief Commissionaire, traditionally a former RSM from one of the Guards regiments, boots the miscreant the length of the longest corridor at Broadcasting House and out through the revolving doors. That corridor is lined with BBC luminaries, who tut and look disappointed in the bootee. 

You might spot, for instance, John Snagge, Grace Wyndham Goldie, Alvar Lidell, Franklin Engelmann, Katie Boyle, Moira Anderson, William Woollard, Angela Rippon, Lauren Laverne, Richard Osman, the Frazer Hayes Four, the more senior Teletubbies and several generations of Dimblebys in the throng.

The Joy of Six 1588

"Tony Blair once observed that the first step from opposition to government is an honest analysis of why you are in opposition. Kemi Badenoch and the people around her don't seem to have done that - or if they have, they’ve come up with the wrong answer." Andrew Cooper goes to the Conservative Party conference.

Samantha Asumadu reports that Times Higher Education has given no coverage to the allegations against James Orr, the  Cambridge academic and former Reform UK policy chief whose foundation receives Hungary-linked funding. By coincidence, THE signed a partnership with Viktor Orbán’s government.

Achim Hildebrandt et al. examine David Goodhart's claim that a split between Somewheres and Anywheres lies at the heart of many contemporary political conflicts. They find little evidence to support it.

"Creepy. That’s the word for the rising right-wing interest in family policy, exemplified by a recent administration proposal to pay $9,000 each year per child for women to stay at home with their children. The money would come from, and deplete, an existing federal programme that helps working parents pay for childcare." Mitchell Zimmerman says the Trump-Vance family policy reeks of white supremacy and misogyny.

"With their bold transpositions of anachronistic elements, both works can be seen as unconscious, pre-bellum statements against the soon to emerge behemoth of post modernity which would come to be an all-encompassing cultural filter." Corse Present considers Geoffrey Hill's Mercian Hymns and David Rudkin's Penda's Fen.

Geoff Lemon says cricket won't stop taking about the 2018 sandpaper scandal until the Australian authorities give a full account of what happened.

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"Burnham’s speech was, in some ways, an exercise in calling the electorate’s bluff. 'I have given you what you often say is missing from politics,' Burnham concluded. “Honesty, ideas and a clear direction for the country we all love.' The message was thus: You say you want change and are sick of politicians who dodge difficult decisions and offer little beyond managerialism. So here are some difficult decisions — will you back me?" Zoe Grunewald was in Liverpool for Andy Burnham's speech.

Chris Grey looks at the the speech's effect on the Brexit debate: "In personal life, we rarely regard terrible decisions we have made as being unalterable, or at least not for long. We may, moralistically, tell ourselves that we have 'made our bed and must lie in it'. We may, stoically, insist that we 'mustn’t grumble' and 'have to make the best of it'. But few of us are so moralistic, or so stoic, as to deny ourselves the chance to revisit our bad decisions, if it is possible. With Brexit, that has not, in the sense of realistic politics, been possible until now. Burnham’s speech this week has made it so."

Ruth Bright has some questions for Burnham (and the Liberal Democrats) on what a 'National Care Service' would look like.

"In November 1749 John London walked from his home to vote in the Westminster constituency parliamentary by-election at St Paul’s, Covent Garden. He was probably with a group of his near neighbours from Hungerford Market, just south of the Strand (where Charing Cross railway station stands today). He cast his vote for the government candidate, Lord Trentham, then presumably returned home to continue his day’s business."  Gillian Williamson explores the earliest known record of a Black person voting in a British parliamentary election.

Finlay McLaren suggests I, Claudius as a model for out beleaguered television industry: "I, Claudius is also a reminder that costume drama doesn’t need armies of extras, CGI palaces or international location shoots. It needs good scripts, good actors and directors who know how to use them. As the television industry struggles with budgets and commissioners become increasingly frightened of expensive productions, perhaps the future lies not in trying to compete with multi-million-pound streaming hits, but in cheap, writerly drama like I, Claudius."

"Without wine’s prestige, and with relatively minimal transport costs and, at those ABVs, considerably lower UK alcohol duty than wine, some of the bottles in today’s picks are nothing short of a giveaway." Mina Holland on the appeal of perries

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The New World warns that Rupert Lowe is coming for your parents: "Lowe’s success exemplifies how Facebook has weaponised the anxieties and concerns of millions of Britons to drive its increasingly older, isolated users into unreality."

"Monday’s judgment ... means that unless the client agrees to release the material, those private conversations are now beyond the regulator’s reach. This is particularly bad news for the SRA’s ongoing attempts to tackle SLAPPs, the abusive legal actions used by the rich and powerful to shut down scrutiny." Nathaniel Peutherer analyses a judicial ruling that threatens efforts to curb Strategic Lawsuits Against Public Participation.

"He has no visible tattoos, no shaven head, no black overcoat or jackboots. No hood, no Confederate flag and no Nazi images appear in the background as he sits in front of a screen for a recent Zoom interview. Instead, the soft-spoken Christian school teacher and pastor of ... sporting a neatly trimmed beard, was dressed in a charcoal suit and sat in front of a fish tank that seemed straight off the set of Pixar’s Finding Nemo. Then he began talking about Jews." Bob Smietana watches the rise of America's Jim Crow theobros.

Sarah Ward explains trauma-informed care in schools: "Strict zero-tolerance approaches to behaviour are not in line with the ethos of trauma-informed care and practice. It can encourage the interpretation of certain behaviour as defiance rather than distress."

"We also have another appearance by James Wentworth Day, who was quite appalling on the previous release and doesn't really add much beyond being a handy reactionary-for-hire to add 'balance', a broadcasting illusion we can now see in action 70 years ago." Discontinued Notes reviews a selection of TV programmes presented by Daniel Farson in the late 50s and early 60s that focuses on social change.

Katherine Alejandra Cross watches Network (1976). Are we all mad as hell now?

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"Watching him involved engaging a kind of cognitive dissonance: this desperate, thin man was the same person as a sweet 6-year-old saying he wanted to learn about the moon; a handsome 20-year-old studying Physics in Oxford flirting with the camera; a 48-year-old who had realised that the research he was still passionate about had hit a dead end." Jude Rogers on 70 Up.

Ferdinand Mount has no truck with the idea that Britain has always welcomed refugees: "The usual narrative of the Peasants' Revolt describes John Ball and Wat Tyler's march to London, Ball's sermon at Blackheath ('When Adam delved and Eve span, who was then the gentleman?') and the brave conduct of the young Richard II. We don’t often hear about the massacre of the Flemings in Cheapside on 14 June, though it was at the heart of the revolt and an episode of frenzied violence. According to a contemporary chronicle, the rebels 'beheaded without judgment or trial all the Flemings they found, so that mounds of corpses were to be seen in the streets'."

Norman Baker looks at why politicians deny climate change and champion fossil fuels.

"The more I encountered these stories where political and emotional commitments seemed irreconcilable, the more I began to ask: what was life like for those who found themselves inescapably drawn to someone they shouldn’t be?" Alison Garden leads a project building an archive of oral histories documenting mixed marriage in Ireland.

"If you believe he was an imposter, then you believe he was the son of a “boatman” from Tournai, forced to play the role of Richard, Duke of York. If you believe he was Richard, Duke of York, then he was actually the rightful heir to the English throne." Sophie Bacchus-Waterman is writing a biography of Perkin Warbeck.

Animation Obsessive takes us behind the scenes of the classic Bugs Bunny cartoon 'What's Opera, Doc?': "At a cost of $35,510 (almost $430,000 today), it was spendier than most Warner cartoons. It took seven weeks compared to the standard five. To get the extra work done, Jones and his crew secretly shaved a couple weeks off other, easier films and faked their time cards." 

Violet Bonham Carter and Mary Stocks remember the struggle for women's suffrage

I thought I had finished blogging for today, but this video is too good not to share with you tonight.

It's a BBC2 discussion from 1968 with Lady Asquith (better known as Violet Bonham Carter) and Lady Stocks. A young Joan Bakewell is in the chair.

They are talking about a television film about how women got the vote, and both take the view that it exaggerated the importance of the militant tactics of the Suffragettes at the expense of the role played by the wider Suffrage movement. 

And Lady Asquith remembers defending her father, the Liberal prime minister, from attack by Suffragettes.

Lady Stocks was the cousin of Tim Brinton, a Conservative MP in the Thatcher era and the father of Sal Brinton, the former president of the Liberal Democrats.

I've also discovered that Lady Stocks's husband, a little-remembered philosopher called John Leofric Stocks, was the son of John Edward Stocks, who was vicar of Market Harborough from 1871 to 1884 and then of the fascinating St Saviour's in Leicester.

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Sam Bright says the government's indecision on how to meet the threat of Nigel Farage has cost us all: "Labour has been dismally slow at protecting politics from these predators – rebuffing calls in recent weeks for a cap on all donations, even from domestic sources. And now Reform’s war chest is bursting at the seams."

"In 2024 then mayor of Manchester Andy Burnham argued that net zero was 'the best chance we will ever have to reindustrialise the North of England, reduce inequality and close the North-South divide'." The mayor has had a promotion since then but what of his prediction?" Zachary Leader finds the reality has not lived up to the hype, but there are things his government can do to help.

"When the rain came, the earth in its baked state, was indifferent. Beyond thirst. Shut up from growing. Sculptural towers of cumulous cloud sailed north, into mute and tantalising lightning. The rain, and the return of the heat after, reanimated the only thing to wet the ground all summer: sheep’s urine. Undiluted and remaining on the surface, the smell of ammonia was sudden, heady and strong." Nicola Chester looks back on the extraordinary summer of 2026.

Rhian Jones on the pressure that the need to maintain an online presence puts on musicians.

Benjamin Riley investigates a "profoundly weird and concerning" American private school network: "As part of boot camp, Alpha School students apparently have their heart rates monitored as they watch recorded videos of their parents critiquing them. This activity takes place in front of their classmates, and students must keep their heart rates within 10 percent of their baseline to pass."

"It’s a pretty rotten old country on display here, with no end of respectable, well-spoken pillars of society turning out to be cheap little fakers and drug peddlers, using contemptible tricks such as pretending to be wheelchair-bound as part of a phoney persona." Discontinued Notes reviews Francis Durbridge's television thrillers.

A website on Alec Guinness's two BBC series as George Smiley

Here's what we need: a website devoted to the BBC productions of John le Carré’s Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy and Smiley's People.

Guinness is Smiley explains:

The aim of this website is to publish fresh material about both series, identify some of the filming locations and signpost visitors to the wonderful content that is already out there. This website is not a commercial endeavour and will hopefully be of interest to fans of both productions.

I have my dad to thank for my love of these series.  He watched each episode beside me when they were first broadcast, but I understood only a little of what I saw back then. As an adult I have seen them many times and find them endlessly compelling and fascinating. The intricacies of the plot and the quality of the acting keep me coming back time after time.

Lord Bonkers had a similar reaction:

Yes, I miss Paddy Ashdown. I miss his correspondence – those envelopes marked "Top Secret: Burn Before Reading" that arrived by every post – and I miss his company. Despite Ashdown's best efforts, I never could quite get my head around Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy. "What exactly was Toby Esterhase up to?" I would ask him, and "So did old Smiley do right by Ricki Tarr in the end?" 

Now Paddy is gone there is no one in the party to explain this to me. I tried asking Ming Campbell the other day, but he just told me Sir Percy Alleline was a fine upstanding fellow and that he wouldn’t listen to a word against him.

Joan Littlewood on Brian Murphy's This is Your Life

I've written several times about Joan Littlewood and her extraordinary influence on British theatre. Here is a short clip of her, recorded for Brian Murphy's This is Your Life.

In the run up to it, you hear what an extraordinary struggle it was for someone from the working class, like Murphy, to get training as an actor.

And after it, there's confirmation that Joan Littlewood didn't just have connections with ITV comedy (half the cast of On the Buses came from her Stratford East company), she had them with BBC comedy too.

I've written about the 30 years of slog Nigel Hawthorne experienced before he became famous overnight in Yes Minister. As I say in that post, he once said he owed his career to Joan Littlewood – she had cast him as Field Marshall Haig in a touring production of Oh! What a Lovely War.

I'd also read that Jimmy Perry, one of the writers of Dad's Army, had spent time at Stratford East, and here he is confirming it.

Richard O'Sullivan's This is Your Life from 1974

The actor Richard O'Sullivan has died at the age of 82. He was never out of the studio as child star in the Fifties and early Sixties, and became a sitcom heartthrob of the Seventies.

Talking Pictures TV is currently running the children's show Dick Turpin that he made at the start of the Eighties. O'Sullivan retired from acting after suffering a stroke in 2003.

This edition of This is Your Life was filmed just as O'Sullivan's adult career had taken off because of his starring role in ITV's Man About the House.

Look out for an appearance by a barking mad Trevor Howard.

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Tom Perry links to a review of the duty to report child sexual abuse brought in by the Crime and Policing Act 2026. It finds that because of the way the law is framed, this new duty will have little effect.

Anand Kumar is part of the team writing the next edition of psychiatry's bible, the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. This edition will, for the first time, attempt to draw on findings from neurobiology – a reminder of how little we currently know about the biology of mental health and neurodevelopment.

"In Idaho, parents who say their faith prohibits lifesaving medical care for their children can’t be charged with child neglect or manslaughter. Supporters of this protection over the years have included lawmakers who voiced support for 'traditional' Idaho values." But, as Audrey Dutton shows, between the 1880s through the early 1970s it was illegal for parents in in the state to choose prayer over medical care when a child’s life was at stake."

Florence Sutcliffe-Braithwaite reviews four books on the General Strike of 1926: "The miners said that if some pits really were uneconomic, they should shut. The owners wanted to make all pits profitable again by squeezing the workers. The president of the owners' association freely acknowledged that in mines producing for export, wages would fall to levels that he did not shrink from describing as miserable'."

"Eaton was keen on a different director and format for each film. It meant each had its own reference points. I thought about Chinatown a lot with 1974. The design and costumes were all smoky and brown, like the 70s. The cast went for the material big time. David Morrissey really did his research and Sean Harris is nothing if not method. It’s a very masculine story but we wanted strong female characters too – we had Maxine Peake and Rebecca Hall. I kept the most horrendous violence off-screen. Violence you imagine is much worse than anything you’ll see. Your mind does the work." Michael Hogan talks to people involved in the making of the trilogy of television plays Red Riding.

"Sounds fascinated Joe from an early age. He would build circuit boards and take radios and record players to pieces, even creating his own recording equipment (there’s a tale that he put speakers up trees so that the local cherry pickers could listen to the radio whilst they worked, which is brilliant if true). Signing up for his National Service, he became a Radar Technician which also helped nurture another of his fascinations – outer space." Samantha Veal discovers the mercurial Joe Meek.