Reading: Tina Fey: Bossypants     Tina Fey is pretty high in the Bookish Brunette list of icons (I’ll publish this list in full one day). She’s clever, funny and cool as hell. She also wears glasses and has brown hair – traits that make us, essentially, the same person.   Bossypants was in my pile of books that I was reluctant to read because everyone else was raving about them (see also: How to be a Woman by Caitlin Moran). In these cases, my inner contrarian acts out and I find myself willing to read anything, including the back of shampoo bottles and People’s Friend magazine, instead of what I really want to read.   I caved late one night and purchased Bossypants to read on my iPad. Oh my, this book is good. It is like an inspirational handbook for every nerdy and ambitious woman out there, though I don’t think Tina would agree with that. She’s too cool to try and tell people how to live their lives. The book recounts Tina’s childhood and her early days in improvisational comedy. She is honest and direct when it comes to her success in the male dominated TV industry. Her account of the Sarah Palin phenomenon is hilarious in how it depicts the madness of a TV juggernaut alongside her anxieties over planning her little daughter’s birthday party.   Tina Fey has worked her ass off the get where she is on her own terms. I plan to do the same. Thanks, Tina.   Michel de Montaigne: On Friendship   I blogged about this dude a while back, when I was pondering my own tendency to be “on the fence” about certain things. I picked up a copy of On Friendship from the book market on the South[.....]

  Have you ever done that thing when you make a cup of tea and leave the tea bag in for too long? The result is a bitter and disappointing beverage that leaves a nasty taste in your mouth.   That is how I’m feeling about film and TV execs. refusal to leave Sex and the City alone. The original show was good, much like tea. The first film was a tad too much – a bit like when you over-enthusiastically squish the tea bag with a spoon. The second film was over steeped and over squished, with a hefty teaspoon of cringe inducing racial stereotyping and the unforgiveable “Lawrence of my labia” line.   News that US TV network, The CW has green lit a pilot of a Sex and the City prequel series, based on Candace Bushnell’s The Carrie Diaries, is making it tricky for me to extend this simile without introducing excrement to this already overwrought cup of tea.   Rumour has it that Josh Schwartz and Stephanie Savage will produce the show. Now, I love these guys; they gave the world Seth Cohen. The OC is my ultimate DVD box set indulgence. They produced Gossip Girl too, which is essentially The OC relocated to New York. They excel at telling far-fetched stories of beautiful, spoilt and one-dimensional young people. They also excel at recycling ridiculous story lines. With The CW as the network and this powerhouse producing pair at the helm, there is no doubt that The Carrie Diaries will be glossy, groomed and full of supposed teenagers talking like grown-ups. There will be stories of mistaken identity, masquerade balls and a sensitive “outsider” love interest for young Carrie.   I’m just not sure what a Schwartz/Savage back story will add to the Sex and the[.....]

  There has been lot of stuff that has baffled and bemused me this year. I kind of wish that I’d kept a list of all these things, it would have made writing this list easier and have resulted in a far superior piece of work. Well, there’s always next year…   1)    Downton Abbey: Not seen it, don’t want to see it. Bring back The House of Eliott, now that’s what I call a period drama.   2)    How Facebook is ever going to make any money: You don’t want to know how much of my time and energy has been wasted pondering this issue. Best solution? Fine users for the following infractions:   i.     Status updates that hint at political allegiances with the EDL ii.    Status updates whilst in labour iii.   Spelling “with” as “wiv” iv.    Stupid chain messages/statuses suggesting that I can help cure breast cancer by sharing my bra size and colour with all and sundry. It isn’t funny, it is just plain creepy.   There are more but I’ll stop there.     3)    That Fenton video on YouTube: It is an old dude chasing a dog through a park. I can watch my Dad doing something very similar on a daily basis.     4)    Thatcher “nostalgia”: Yes, she’s a powerful woman. This doesn’t mean that I should respect or give a shit about the heinous old cow.     5)    Why everyone suddenly became a current affairs pundit/satirist: I blame Twitter for this one. From Hackgate to Higgs Boson, everyone has suddenly decided that their opinions and gags are so important and hilarious that the WHOLE WORLD needs to read them. I really hope 2012 is a slow news year.     6)    The Kate Middleton look: Hurrah! Sloane for the 21st Century! That’s just what[.....]

  The first time I saw her, I didn’t know what to think. She was either the greatest or most unusual person I had seen on television for a long while. After pondering about it out loud to my husband, we agreed that she was great in an unusual way. And unusual great is my favourite sort of great.   I’m talking about the wonderful Lucy Worsley: my current favourite person on the telly. She is the Chief Curator of the Royal Historical Palaces, an author and TV presenter. You might have seen her presenting Elegance and Decadence: The Age of the Regency or If Walls Could Talk on BBC4.   The reasons for this newfound admiration are as follows:   1. She knows her stuff: Lucy is clever. She studied Ancient and Modern History at New College, Oxford before gaining her PhD in Art History. She can talk and write about stuff like the history of domestic lighting in great depth and make it really interesting. She brings together historical sources and breathes new life into them, whilst making them fun and accessible. Leading onto my next point…   2. She looks like she’d be ruddy good fun to have a drink with: Whilst she is brainy it appears that Lucy isn’t above having a laugh. She’ll dress up as a Dandy, lounge in bed like a decadent flapper or don a bonnet and go all Pride and Prejudice. Yep, she’s not afraid of looking daft. She also has an knack for finding the juicy and amusing parts of history and making them relevant to life in 2011.   3. Her hair is super cute: This is the bob that I have longed to pull-off for years.   4. Her wardrobe is super cute: The lady owns contemporary bluestocking[.....]

Here’s the idea: being the bastion of good taste and all round smashingness that I am *gazes lovingly at glitter tiger ornament *, I’m going to post a “stuff that I love” column every week. It’ll be kind of like my “Reading/Watching/Listening To” posts but covering a more diverse range of stuff. I’m also going to have a “Blog of the Week” category going on – so look sharp my blogging buddies! It could be you! (I can already feel the nervous anticipation.) Fashion Deadly is the Female A brilliant boutique in Frome, Somerset. They specialise in faux-vintage pin-up girl style clothing. Want a perfect wiggle skirt or pair of tutu knickers? Look no further. They win extra cool points for their adorable Chinese Crested dog called Gomez. He was curled up on A THRONE, WEARING A RED JUMPER when I visited the shop in February. Their online shop is great and the dresses on offer are absolute knock-outs. Trench Coats Time to send my trusty camel coat to the dry cleaner.  Trust me, it needs it. Hello trench coat! Time to go frolicking in the rain together. Read my trench coat tips here. Food Marks and Spencer Salted Caramel Milk Chocolate The sort of chocolate that many people just don’t get. The salt-caramel-chocolate combination fries some poor folk’s brains. This is good because you get to eat more of it. TV How to Make it in America One of those trendy “insider” types of shows from the people responsible for Entourage. It follows two friends, Ben and Cam,as they attempt to set up their own denim brand. The rely on their street-smarts to get them out of scrapes  and keep their American dream alive. The opening credits set the Nylon magazine readin’, vintage t-shirt wearin’, dive bar drinkin’, obscure vinyl[.....]

My in-laws went to Portland, Oregon and hated it. They said it was full of strange drop-out hippy types and blokes with beards wearing flannel shirts drinking out of bottles in paper bags. Based on clips of Portlandia, Carrie Brownstein and Fred Armisen’s new comedy sketch show, they were like totally missing the point. They had stumbled onto a city were the ‘90s has never gone away. The blokes with beards weren’t hobos, they were graphic designers or performance artists, skillfully challenging society’s norms and values by dressing like hobos. The bottle in the bag was organic carrot and echinacea juice, made at a local raw food co-op using carrots that had joyfully leapt out of the ground and into the juicer. Portlandia premiered on US network IFC on 21st January; whether it will reach us here in the UK is unknown. Though if I were a Channel 4 exec., I’d be opening up my cheque book sharpish. Brownstein (of Sleater-Kinney fame [if you can call it that]) and Fred Armisen (a guy you’ll recognise but won’t be sure how) are an established comedy duo going by the name of Thunder Ant.  They find ripe comic material in spoofing the lives of Portland’s oddball hipsters, poseurs, artists and left-wing idealists. And, my gosh and golly, Portlandia is funny. The show is developed from a series of short clips on the Thunder Ant website called “Feminist Bookstore” (typical quote: “every time you point, I see a penis”). With their confused understanding of feminism and contempt for everyone but themselves, the staff of “Women and Women First”, Toni and Candace, succeed in alienating customers and never selling a single book. The Feminist Bookstore crops up in Portlandia alongside a host of new characters and hilarious scenarios. The “Put a Bird on It”*[.....]

This is an article I wrote a while back to apply for a job as a columnist. I didn’t get the job and I always feel a bit bummed out when I’ve worked hard on something that has, ultimately, lead to nothing. But such is the life of a wannabe writer. Sigh. Time to pick myself up, dust myself down and keep on at it. At least you guys now get to read it. Enjoy! If I was a sheep mommy or daddy, I’d be locking up my daughters about now. It’s tupping time  - the season for some serious sheep lovin’. As we are eagerly opening the first doors on our advent calendars, sheep are out having a total boink fest. Rams are off smearing their raddle on the fleece of many a ewe. And that is not a ewe-phemism. Good for them. You may be wondering how I have such knowledge of sheep mating rituals. Maybe I’m a thwarted sheep farmer or maybe I have some weird fetish. The latter is the closest description, though fear not, I do not get aroused by the sight of ovine carnal activity. The site of Matt Baker paddling a kayak along the Thames is an all together different matter. Yes, I have a problem. I am a Countryphile. Sunday night TV has always been my dirty little secret. I’m going to whisper this because all my liberal hipster buddies might overhear and I’ll lose my hard-earned cool points (quelle beast): I really love Antiques Roadshow, Last of the Summer Wine and even *gulp* Songs of Praise. Most of all I love Country File. These are TV programmes that I don’t really understand, they offer nothing I can possibly relate to. The most valuable thing I own is a copy of the[.....]