The Two Astronomers

Goodevening, and in a packed program tonight I'll be sitting infront of a ground telescope photo of the Eagle Nebula - a diffuse emission nebula, or H II region, which is catalogued as IC 4703 discovered by Jean-Philippe de Cheseaux in 1745–46.  

And later on tonight light will be taking 7500 years to show us the remnants of an explosion that happened 1 to 2 million years ago, won't it, Ronnie?

Yes, indeed it will.  The titles will often involve some kind stars or are they just the studio lights through a starburst filter as well?

Yes, but unfortunately we can't tell you if it's because we were into stars of sci-fi or just a designer came up with it with little to no thought at all because most of us have passed on now to revert back to atoms that make up the Universe.  

What we can can tell you is that the cluster associated with the Eagle nebula has approximately 8100 stars which are mostly concentrated in a gap in the molecular cloud to the north-west of the Pillar... 

And now a sketch in which Mr Ronnie Corbett plays Seyfert's Sextet and I play Serpens Caput...

 

J D Vance & the nuclear suicide vest

Someone asked on X recently if any nuclear physicists knew if the Iranian nuclear suicide vest fears J D Vance was stoking recently were plausible.  As a physicist I said I think the short answer is no.  To the left is a Mk4 Trident reentry vehicle.  It is 130 cm long and 40 cm in diameter.  The dimensions of the W76 thermonuclear warhead inside are a state secret but it might be possible to get a bomb into a suitcase or a backpack.  A vest is pushing it ...

Somebody then chimed in that the Americans had built portable bombs in the 1950s and in a then secret program in the 60s trained a group of suicide cannon fodder called the Green Light Teams to parachute behind enemy lines and plant them...  The program ran from the mid 60s to the mid 80s.  Obviously the chances of these people making a fast getaway after they'd planted their "tactical nukes" were about as slim as Kamikaze pilot surviving by bailing out and the soldiers trained said the plan was very much ...if you can't take the heat stay out of the detonation zone.  Or perhaps find a fridge to hide in.  Incidentally I quite liked the nuke the fridge scene in Indiana Jones and didn't see why people got upset by it.  Apart from the way the fridge is thrown about it's quite plausible.  But then I've only got two degrees.  Some people with three beg to differ.

The Green Light Teams didn't really work very well though as although they could make the nuclear warheads physically smaller than Little Boy and Fat Man by the 1950s, they were still left with the problem that Uranium and Plutonium are amongst the heaviest elements.  After all, it's because their nuclei are so large that they are unstable enough to be capable of fission.  Even the smallest weapon weighed 56 lbs.  I'm not sure what would motivate the Green Light Teams to go on such a mission? A blue light card? I was reminded of the US Air force personnel who said they'd been scrambled to fly their planes directly into United Airlines Flight 93 on 9/11 to stop terrorists crashing it into a building and were somewhat relieved but also disappointed when the plane crashed before they could crash into it due to a fight between terrorists and passengers in the cockpit.

I used to kind of accept nuclear weapons and think CND we're a bit naive but I've changed my mind recently.  They are weapons of mass destruction and should be outlawed like poison gas.  Their use as a "deterrent" doesn't seem very plausible in the wake of the number of wars going on anyway.  Israel has had a nuclear weapon for ages but it hasn't deterred anyone from attacking it.  And what is the need for such untargeted weapons when the surveillance and missile technology now exists to assassinate people at long distance on the implausible grounds that they might in the future develop a nuclear bomb to plant on an ICBM that they haven't got yet ...which is how we end up with nonsense like "suicide vests"... There's a reason no one's used them since the end of WWII... They are so deadly both due to the initial blast and the long term radiation consequences that Indiana Jones was mysteriously immune from that domestic let alone international opinion would be deadly to any country that used them.... Assuming there'd be anyone left afterwards... Still, it's not like WWIII already started... so what's the worst that could happen?

Probably the smallest "tactical nuclear weapon" the US came up with was the Davy Crockett.  It was retired because it was thought it might by definition start a nuclear war...

Don't mention the Moors

Basil: Dont mention the Moors.  I mentioned them once but I think I got away with it.  Caesar Saladin, Qur'an Cocktail, Suet al-Tawbah and of course fillet of Infidel.  I mean, how can you be friendly to a religion that wants to behead everyone who isn't a Muslim.  Is this what we fought eight crusades for, Major?

Major Gowen: Dashed if I know, Fawlty.  Awfully good spin bowlers though some of those Muslims...

Sybil: Basil! As you well know like the whole of Surat al-Tawbah, the verse must be understood in the context in which it was revealed to the Prophet Muhammad ﷺ and his companions, and the passage must be read in a connected way, so it is clear to whom the verses are referring. This instruction was revealed to bring an end to a long struggle with the Makkan idolaters who had driven the Muslims out, and various battles which ensued over the following decade.

Basil: Oh, I'm wrong am I, my little Scheherazade?  I do apologise ladies and gentlemen.  There has been a gigantic cock up.  My wife Scheherazade ... Sorry Sibil is right and I am completely wrong about everything.  There have been a lot of cockups tonight and I'm glad to say that you all deserve an explanation and Manuel will give it to you.

Manuel : I know nothing.  I am from Barcelona like Mustafa and Elidenda ...

Ode to NCP

So farewell then to NCP

Your prices went up assiduously 

So everybody stayed away

The Whitgift Centre died each day

A little more, a little more

As rubbish built up on the floor

Your lifts began to smell of pee

And only worked irregularly

Your staff were replaced by ANR

Prices just went up some more

The punters left for Purley Way

Where it's free to park all day

The shops you served went belly up

Staircases often smelled of crap

Ratcheting prices higher and higher 

You milked your cash cows drier and drier

The shops you served all boarded up

Slowly you too went belly up

Sainsbury's shut and Superdry

Continental Cafe said goodbye

Poundland also shut its doors

Florists, Currys and Jewelers 

All buggered off to pastures new

Leaving nobody but you

Footfall became miniscule 

And no one would be such a fool

As to visit the Whitgift Centre 

You bled it dry till no one went there

Donald Trump cuts his Nose off to spite his Face.

Donald Trump today announced his new strategy for victory in the Iran War: "I'll be cutting my nose off to spite my face," he said.  "Why do we need a nose anyway?  It just gets in the way.  I've never seen the point of noses.  That's why I've decided to have mine removed.  Wake up and don't smell the roses or noses everybody.  A rhinotomy is the last thing the Iranian National Guard will be expecting.  I'd like to see the look on their faces when they see the look on my face.  I'll be having my dog's nose amputated too.  People will say "How does it smell?".  And I'll say "I don't know because I no longer have a nose either".  And that'll sure confuse the Ayatollah.  I won't be having plastic surgery either.  I'm just going to have a bleeding red patch in the middle of my face.  I'll be a literal bogeyman.  I'm going for a Skull and Crossbones thing like the SS did.  I think I may get JD to cut his nose off too.  "JD," I'll say, "your nose is always brown anyway... Why don't we save time and money by just cutting it off and shoving it between my beautiful buttocks.  Then you can have your nose up my arse permanently and look like me.  That said I've had some serious talks with the Iranians and they say I shouldn't cut my nose off because I have a lovely nose.  I know they say that I haven't spoken to them at all but that's because they want me to have my rhinotomy whether it's good for Making America Great Again or not.  Whatever.  I'll be putting Mucus First.  And Israel.  Even if it means a rhinotomy.  Thank you for your attention to this mucus membrane matter."

Doctor Who?

Googling to see how the Kurdistan Regional Government in Iraq is reacting to the Iran war, I came along the old news that my "flamboyant" ex-employer, the former Minister of the Natural Resources Ashti Hawrami passed away on Sunday October 20th, 2024. The Prime Minister of the Kurdistan Region Government, Masrour Barzani extended his condolence to Hawrami’s family.  Well, I say Ashti Hawrami... but actually his real name it turned out in his obituary was Abdullah Abdulrahman Tawelayi, although Wikipedia has him down as Abdullah Abdulrahman Abdullah.  When I knew him he went under the name of Dr Ashti Abdullah and drove around Henley-on-Thames in a Rolls Royce with a personalised numberplate that was suggestive of this alias... I wonder if when he gets to Jannah if they'll even know who he really was to decide whether they can let him in...

Ashti was very much involved in the 2003 invasion of Iraq and the removal of Saddam Hussein.  I don't know what deal he cut with the CIA but shortly after he bought the company I worked for and integrated it into Exploration Consultants Limited, he rang me up personally and told me that I needed to go to Henley immediately to see him to organise digitising the data from the huge Rumalia & Kirkuk fields.  As I was gigging that night I told him I couldn't get there as I had another job.  He became quite irate so I said "Well, we all have to learn to live with disappointment".  He then rang up the MD and tried to sack me but had to relent when he realised there wasn't anyone else who could immediately solve his problems.  Very soon the whole of the consultancy was transformed into an Iraqi oil digitising factory with me taking highly qualified geologists off analysis work to put them onto tedious data capture.  We could not send the data out because of political sensitivities and it was difficult to use auto tracing technology due to the poor quality of much of the archive data so eventually I got RSI and ended up having to have physiotherapy which Ashti had to pay for... Data capture jobs are very expensive and this one cost a bomb but whoever was paying there was no shortage of money.  Anyway, it was so successful that Dr Ashti immediately became the KRG's Minister for Natural Resources and sold us on to yet another consultancy which I left 10 years later.  I think two decades is a long enough time to wait before ...

Ashti and his merry band of mainly men were quite happy for the first few months after the war but later when "the helicopter gunships came in" things turned a bit sour.  At least for everyone else.  Dr Ashti continued his flamboyant lifestyle only mainly in Iraqi Kurdistan instead of Henley-on-Thames.  It is said that for evil to triumph all that is required is for good men to do nothing.  So I did nothing except send MI6 a postcard along the lines of "Good luck with that one".  Dr Ashti was renouned for his talents in driving a hard bargain.  For example, there was a story (which may be apocryphal but the dead can't sue) that he offered to pay £1m for our consultancy but after he'd signed the sales documents the seller found that the currency had been changed to dollars...

After this, Dr Ashti wandered into my life occasionally at strange irregular intervals as a source of constant amusing anecdotes.  Sometimes popping up at conferences where he often looked as if he'd bought something else that disagreed with him and sometimes on Panorama- Iraq's Missing Billions attempting to flirt his way out of difficult conversations with Jane Corbin.  Dr Ashti made a lot of money for the KRG flogging oil and gas licences for the huge Kirkuk & Rumalia fields.  The only problem was that the KRG wasn't a recognised country by the United Nations so there were questions about whether this was legal.  The central Iraqi government however seemed to suck it up.  Perhaps like many other people who dealt with Dr Ashti they shook hands but didn't count their fingers afterwards.  Dr Ashti certainly made a lot of oil money for the KRG but judging by the number of Kurdish people who come over to Dover in inflatable boats and end up on documentaries on my telly professing the quaint belief that we are still a first world country ...there may not have been a lot of trickle down.  If the aim of the Iraq invasion was democracy one must necessarily ask why the man with no name lasted as a government Minister in the KRG for 19 years seemingly encountering no major change of administration...

As well as overhauling the KRG's oil and gas industry Dr Ashti also set about overhauling his private life, finding himself a wife 45 years his junior.  Chraxan Rafiq and he soon fell out however perhaps because she was arrested for passing blank cheques or perhaps because she claimed that “Nechirvan Barzani threatened me to kill me if I do not divorce Ashti Hawrami”.  The powerful Barzani family had the hump with Ashti... Since the 2003 war KRG has had several Prime Ministers or are they Presidents? I lose track ... Masoud Barzani, Nechirvan Barzani and Icantrememberhisnamebutitsalsoprobably Barzani whose literal relation to each other may explain Iraq's drop on the Economist Democracy Index from 4.01 in 2006 to 2.28 today... Suggesting there might have been a tiny flaw in George W Bush's plan to introduce democracy at the point of a gun...

A cloud of amusing if-you're-at-a-distance corruption allegations seemed to follow Dr Ashti everywhere like the cloud of dust that used to follow Pigpen in Peanuts.  Most of them linked to the oil company Gulf Keystone as can be found in this article ... Dr Ashti was not happy and immediately instructed Carter Ruck to institute libel proceedings.  The authors claimed Qualified Privilege on the basis that most of the article was based on evidence from other court cases.  The judge rejected this and they fell back on public interest defences but by this point Dr Ashti had sadly popped his clogs... Hopefully he will find peace in Jannah if anyone there can penetrate any of his many aliases deeply enough to discover who he actually ever was?

Guest post by the POTUS

 

Why didn't we tell our Japanese allies about our decision to attack Iran?  Well, did they tell us about Pearl Harbour?  No.  They like surprises ... By a lot.  I model myself on General Tojo ... By a lot.  You gotta have the element of surprise.  We went in and hit them hard.  Like an air raid.  Japan killed 2,403 Americans and left 1,178 others wounded all on one day.  We hope to improve on that.  We're also retraining our pilots in the Japanese art of Kamikaze.  I've been practicing this myself recently.  Some people said I shat myself publicly in front of the world's press.  Actually it was divine wind.  Some people say we are losing control of the Straight of Hormuz but I reply that in our present situation, I firmly believe that the only way to swing the war in our favor is to resort to crash-dive attacks with our aircraft. There is no other way. There will be more than enough volunteers for this chance to save our country, and I would like to command such an operation. If Congress provide me with $300bn I will turn the tide of war.  Can't say fairer than that.  

Pete Hegseth has promised to train our young people to fly out new Cherry Blossom flying bombs personally. As I say to my son Barin, when you eliminate all thoughts about life and death, you will be able to totally disregard your earthly life. This will also enable you to concentrate your attention on eradicating the enemy with unwavering determination, meanwhile reinforcing your excellence in flight skills.  But obviously he can't pilot a flying bomb due to bone spurs - a very cruel hereditary condition.  It's a real shame. I'm sure there's nothing he would like more than to die for his Emperor father.  Then again some people say he looks like Dracula, so maybe he already is dead.  Sometimes I think I am too.  People say I'm dead behind the eyes every day.  I take it as a compliment by a lot.  I'm only sorry that our NATO partners won't be joining the fight.  It's very sad how our allies aren't rallying round us in the same way Germany & Italy honoured their Tripartite agreement in 1942...  The Japanese PM say Baron looks like me and is very handsome.  That's what I like about Japanese.  They know how to kiss bottom.

There was a young lady from Croydon

There was a young lady from Croydon

Who sat on an articulation

As it rounded Reeves Corner

The tram pinched her posterior 

Till her arse became an accordion

Free seeds for bees with 38 Degrees

Spring has come, with all its gentle showers - 38 degrees thinks it is time to buy the bees some flowers...

Dear Anthony,

The future of Britain’s bees hangs in the balance. Over the last few decades, we’ve lost 97% of our wildflower meadows. Our bees' food supply is starting to run out. And if they’ve got less food, there’ll be fewer bees to pollinate our crops - which means we’ll have less food too. 

But that's where you come in, Anthony. Evidence shows that planting bee-friendly flowers in our gardens could be the key to saving our bees. [3] And if tens of thousands of us come together, we could plant enough flowers to make sure that our bees have the food that they need to thrive this spring.

So Anthony, will you sign up now to get your very own packet of seeds to plant this spring - and chip in for others to get a packet too if you can? Seeds will be limited to one packet per person, to make sure that as many people as possible can take part.

SIGN UP FOR FREE SEEDS

Don’t want to plant seeds yourself? Why not chip in to pay for someone else's packet so we can send out even more seeds to help our bees?

It doesn’t matter whether you’ve got a large garden or a plant pot on a windowsill - anyone can plant some seeds to help our bees!

Last year we sent 60,000 packets out to 38 Degrees supporters - that’s people like you Anthony - so they could plant seeds to help protect our bees. And this year we want to do the same and fill our gardens with flower food to help our buzzy friends.

So Anthony, will you give our bees a helping hand? The seeds will need to be planted in the next few weeks, so the more of us who sign up now, the more flowers there’ll be for our bees!

Or if you can’t plant some seeds yourself, will you chip in so we can send some seeds to someone who can?

Thank you for everything you do,

Alicia, Megan, Foyez and the 38 Degrees team

Backwards Innovations

What absolute ninconpoop decided steering wheels should no longer be round? If I wanted to drive a car with a square wheel I'd have rung up Hengist Pod...

Having to drive a hire car because mine is at the garage waiting for Vauxhall to order parts whose ETA is "when the cows come home" I have been really struggling with this new concept.  Sort of like driving a WWII spitfire.  The fun of sliding the wheel through your fingers just doesn't happen...

Now call me Jeremy Clarkson but wasn't the "Quartic Wheel" a failed 1973 British Leyland experiment that went down like HMS Hood with the consumer?  So what wally decided to bring it back?  Apparently the idea is to make the instrument panel easier to see?  Really who looks at that?  My plug in satnav tells me what speed I'm going and us still better than the onboard one which wouldn't allow me to program it (without an exorbitant subscription)...

On the Ford I drove it was all pointless touchscreens and LCD panels ...why?  How inconvenient is it to have to use a touchscreen to change the canon fan speed, rather than just turning dials and pulling levers?  

Top of the list of backwards innovations was not having an ignition key so you start the car with a button and have to remember to turn it off and if you don't it flattens the battery.  I was thinking at 72,000 miles it was time to say goodbye to my Corsa D but this experience of backwards innovation has determined me to stick it out and wait for the parts to come by surface mail and continue to make-do-and-mend...

And people wonder why British Manufacturing is dying....

What a kerfuffle!

Being a bleeding heart liberal internationally famous as a soft touch I continuously receive in my inbox copious invitations to sign petitions and donate to dubious causes of a left wing nature but few as dubious as this one for a man who chased Matt Lucas up and escalator and doorstepped him for "looking at him a funny way", then uploaded the interaction to the internet whereupon he was internationally identified as at best a complete wally...  I mean, if you wanted to harass someone about the genocide in Gaza there are surely more deserving victims than white bald men who have worked in the entertainment industry...?  Welcome to stalking stars...

However, that said ... Everyone deserves a second chance so please get your violins out for...

Hi

 

Being falsely accused of antisemitism is one of the most distressing things that can happen to anyone.

Over the past few years, I have known many people who have gone through this, but few have seen their lives unravel as quickly as Thomas Bourne’s.

Thomas was travelling on the London Underground to a Palestine protest when he saw the comedian Matt Lucas glaring at him. In response, Thomas took out his phone and recorded the confrontation. He later posted the video on Instagram, before being told that Lucas is Jewish and realising that the incident could be presented as an antisemitic attack.

By the time he took the post down, it was already being widely shared and used against him. A flood of articles followed, portraying Thomas as having targeted Lucas because he is Jewish.

He was then doxxed, lost a job he had held for more than 10 years, and became the target of a series of newspaper attacks, including reporters doorsteping members of his family.

Thomas knows he made a mistake and wants to move on with his life. But he is now struggling to find work, while also trying to support his young family and deal with the damage caused by these smears.

I have donated to his crowdfunder and I am sharing it because I want to do more to help.

If you are able to support Thomas in any way, whether by donating, sharing the crowdfunder, or helping him find work, it would be hugely appreciated.

All the best

Frsipin Clintoff

Mundesley's Mines

This blog has been in limbo for the last week when the author was on holiday... During which he and the beautiful Ava Alexis discovered an unusual war memorial in Mundesley... Consisting of a 500kg German Bomb embedded in a Concrete Base...

...the unusual design is due to the fact that it's not mainly actually a memorial to people who died during the war but to the 27 Royal Engineers who died between 1944 and 1953 clearing the mines that the British government had laid around the Norfolk Coast to prevent the Nazis from landing.  Quite a topical issue with Iran threatening to mine the Straights of Hormuz.  It's easy to lay mines but much harder to clear them...

A similar memorial exists in Kent.

Denmark never managed to clear all it's mines.  

And the Allies resorted to using forced German POW Labour to clear minefields after WWII in violation of the Geneva Convention 1929 Article 32. Apparently there is even a film about this:  Land of Mine (Danish: Under Sandet 'Under the Sand') written and directed by Martin Zandvliet...  149 lost their lives.  And those were just the prisoners used to clear mines in Denmark... Not the ones also used in France.

I was watching a daytime documentary on Yesterday a year or so ago about the bombs that are regularly turned up on WWI battlefields even today.  Weary farmers treated them and the bones and bits of tanks as just mundane.  Officials from the government were supposed to come and collect them regularly but it took a long time so they'd stack them away in the back of sheds.  Shells that were live and even gas shells.  An official tried to reinforce how dangerous these things were and they should not be moved but the farmers who needed to move them to plough the fields so couldn't just leave them in situ sighed wearily... tired of the patronising bureaucracy that can never solve their problem..... And in many ways they are the lucky ones.  There are still uninhabitable areas of France  where the ordinance could not be cleared so they remain fenced off...

At the going down of the sun MAGA has forgotten them....

On a lighter note, nearby is the thema bone of a Mammoth...

For where two or three do not gather in my name, I am not there with them

 

Another day, another dodgy property investment expert mouthing off all over social media...

"I wanna buy churches like this that are shutting down across England.  So if you know a church that's for sale and potentially closing down, let me know. I wanna buy a church.  I don't care if it's got planning permission to return to flats redeveloped. I don't care.  I wanna buy it. I don't care how profitable the conversion will be.  If it was built as a church, I believe it needs to stay as a church.  I want to save churches like this one from being shut down and sold off to developers all across the UK.  I love making profit in property, but when someone's being built as a church to honour Jesus Christ, that's a no no. There's revival coming in England and we need to keep our churches open. Ready for what’s to come. Is this a good idea you would support?"

So speaketh Mr Samuel Leeds who seems to make a living selling property investment advice like many other monotonous mouthpieces in what remains of the British economy.  You gotta have a gimmick though whether it's buying churches or living in Monaco.  I spoke to my Christian neighbour Dorothy Cotton who said that whilst she wished to bless his heart and chip in, suspiciously lacking from the grim faced Mr Leeds's social media entreaties is any mention of stuff like prayer.  Or any mention of Biblical inspiration.  Perhaps we can provide some?

One is reminded of John 18:36 "My kingdom is not of this world".  Or the tale of the Widow's mitre in Luke 21 "He sat down opposite the treasury and observed how the crowd put money into the treasury. Many rich people put in large sums. A poor widow also came and put in two small coins worth a few cents. Calling his disciples to himself, he said to them, 'Amen, I say to you, this poor widow put in more than all the other contributors to the treasury. For they have all contributed from their surplus wealth, but she, from her poverty, has contributed all she had, her whole livelihood.". Still, at least the rich people did put in money, not ask for the Temple's postcode.

St Predator of Bandwagon

Coming onto more practical matters, if you were to purchase a disused church (and it's conspicuous that Mr Leeds is not offering to buy one, just asking for intel on where one might be) the first most obvious problem that would spring to my mind would be that there is a bit of a staffing problem.  When I was a child the Sacred Heart and St Thomas at Whyteleafe had three priests living together in a house in a not-unlike-Father-Ted situation.  There were about 5 masses.  One at 6:30 on a Saturday.  Then 8am, 10am, noon?... I forget the others.  We always went to the 8am because my father had a low boredom threshold and this was the shortest.  With none of your folk singers and organists wanting to perform to an audience that was still in bed Father Harrington could skip through the whole thing in half an hour - often 25 minutes.  According to my father when he was in the RAF some priests could get it down to 20 minutes.  Priests were appreciated for their brevity.  Get it out the way quickly so you can enjoy the rest of your Sunday... sort of like a visit to the lavatory.  St Thomas's is now flats and there is only one priest.  According to Canon Law one priest can say only 3 masses in one 24 period and only two maximum on one day.  This has greatly reduced the number of masses... With increasingly frail priests covering ever wider areas.  I'm sure other denominations have similar staffing problems...  But a church is a living thing made of people... Much like a Comedy Club.  Without acts and an audience any venue is little more than an empty room.  

Indeed, I was reminded of the time PJ started a failed Comedy Club in the backroom of a pub in Stockwell which he shared with a religious sect who had it the other day of the week and seemed to regard him as a venue thief.  The religious regalia such as Crucifixes had to be hidden every time the dirty comedy was on and the comedy posters taken down whenever Christ was there because unlike Paul Kerensa no one had adapted their act for our saviour by removing the swearwords.... A bitter battle for control ensured which PJ lost ... For even though there are less churches and services than there used to be religion still pulls more punters on a Sunday than most of the entertainment industries combined.  At the end of the line if he really wanted to help churches why not fund ones that still have congregations - there is a collection plate, mate? As the good Lord said: "For where two or three gather in my name, there am I with them ... and where they are not ... there is a Property Investor"

Don Corleone's Post Box

Will people please stop knitting creepy shit and putting it on top of postboxes! Are there not real people you can knit for?  I'm reporting these as a fly post.  I've just had enough of hideous Santas and horse's heads?  It's like something out of the Godfather... 

I mean, I'm up for Chinese New Year as much as the next man but this is like something out of a nightmare.  Like something off Colonel Blimp's wall of hunting trophies.  There's no escape as the three heads eye you from every direction.  I've never really liked wool as a material and this makes me like it even less.  Maybe I have a wool phobia.  I had a woollen toy as a child that I really didn't like.  I think it was meant to be a pixie.  It gave me the evil eye and I didn't like how it felt.  Horses can be scary when they look at you sideways and being looked at sideways by three horses heads is too much for me.

I think I'll quieten myself down now by looking at something less terrifying like the war in Iran.  I passed another post box today without a wooden hat, just flaking red paint and rusty iron.  I felt a little better ...

 

I venture the great Li H'sen Chang himself would have appreciated that...

 

One of the questions that comes up in various Doctor Who threads from time to time is the racism or otherwise of the Doctor Who story The Talons of Weng-Chiang - the epic 6 part adventure that closed the 14th season of the program.  There is much to recommend this serial.  

Tom Baker dresses as Sherlock Holmes (I think of the Man with the twisted lip in the opium den), there are hansom cabs, the production design is lavish with real theatres and fantastic sets, Magnus Greel is a homage to the Phantom of the Opera, there is the double act of Henry Gordon Jago (a satire of the Good Old Days who inhabits the Palace Theatre built by Richard D'Oyly Carte for the Gilbert & Sullivan operas before it became a Music Hall?) and Lightfoot the pathologist (Dr Watson reference?) ... it's all jolly good fun with many elements of Victoriana interwoven including ... less fortunately Fu Manchu ...the 1912 brainchild of Sax Rohmer whom Li H'sen Chang himself looks suspiciously like.  Fu Manchu was always controversial from the first publication.  Indeed even as early as 1980 the Peter Sellers parody "The Fiendish Plot of Dr. Fu Manchu" was picketed by protesters.  It was a box office bomb anyway however so they need hardly have bothered...

Matters are made slightly worse by the casting of a white actor John Bennett with uncovincing make-up which I've always excused in my head as being the result of him being 500 years old.  Magnus Greel is also played by a white actor but he's so hideously deformed it doesn't matter but ...

The producers explained their casting of John Bennett in make-up to be down to the difficultly of finding Chinese actors in London at a time when they were all Burt Kwouk who was probably otherwise engaged trying to kill Inspector Clouseau.  However, this excuse seems wafer thin when we consider that the cast included several actual oriental actors - so why not use one of them?  Tony Then who played Lee was a Singaporean actor who was primarily a dancer, Vincent Wong who played Ho was actually Jamaican-British (presumably with Chinese heritage) and John Wu who played simple "Coolie" was ...well, who knows?  What we do know is that having them all playing nincompoops and thugs is a little racist.  Only Chang has something approaching sympathy to his character and he's still a psycho who's been accomplice to Greel's Jack-the-Ripperish antics.  "Despicable Chang has other intentions" indeed...

But all this got me thinking about Fu Manchu - was he actually the model for Li H'sen Chang as we all suppose?  We can't ask Robert Holmes because he went to the Great Palace of Jade in the mid 1980s... 

Chung Ling Soo

... but I did discover there were certain supposed models that Sax Rohmer might have used for Fu Manchu who are quite interesting.  Notably a famous 19th century magician called Chung Ling Soo who looks not a bit unlike Li H'sen Chang.  Chung Ling Soo died (like many others) performing a bullet catch... Li H'sen Chang also performs a magic bullet trick with Tom Baker's Doctor ... "Please to be very quiet.  Chang shoot many peasants learning this trick".  Coincidence?  

To make things murkier Soo was not really Chinese, his act was simply stolen wholesale from real Chinese magician Ching Ling Foo resulting in them having a bitter feud over many years.  Foo hailed from the US so Soo simply borrowed bits of his act hoping no one in Europe would notice... in the same way that some UK comedy acts ripped off US comedy acts in the 80s and 90s before VHS and DVDs circulated more widely and they couldn't get away with it anymore.  Although the feud was quite complicated.  Foo said he would pay $1000 dollars to anyone who could explain one of his tricks.  Soo said he knew how it was done but that Foo refused to pay up...

Ching Ling Foo

People were shocked when Soo died to discover that he was not (like John Bennett) really Chinese at all.  He concealed his true identity (William Ellsworth Robinson) by simply speaking in broken English, saying very little on stage and keeping his private life very private.  It seems there was a long pattern of what would now be called cultural appropriation at work not just in the creation of Fu Manchu or Li H'sen Chang but going right back to 19th century... so maybe John Bennett playing a fake Chinaman is historically accurate?

What are we to make of all this in any analysis of Li H'sen Chang?  Well, it is more than possible that some of this was known to Robert Holmes.  We don't know.  I've often theorised that Henry Gordon Jago is in fact "The Father of the Halls" Charles Morton who would have been running the Palace Theatre at that time ...

... although, of course, if Jago's theatre is really modelled on the real Palace Theatre well ... that's on Shaftesbury Avenue and Charing Cross Road so the River Fleet could not really be going underneath... it goes up through Holburn towards Kings Cross... and he's more likely to be modelled on Leonard Sachs than any real historical character but then trying to figure out how much reality there is in fiction is kind of part of the fun...