19/03/08
Things I Learned This Week -
Categories: I'm now working on two topical radio shows - The Now Show and the new Tilt for BBC7. So I'm reading the paper more than usual, in fact several papers, in fact every waking moment I seem to be reading a paper or an online version of a newspaper or trying to catch the radio news on-the-hour, or having BBC News 24 in the background. I will scour carriages on the train and tube to find a paper I haven't read. "Ooh, 4 random pages from The Guardian - haven't seen those yet... Yesterday's Metro? Lovely, get a different slant on the news... London Lite? If I must... The financial pages of the South Korean Chronicle? Well you can't be too informed..."
And I've learnt some things. I'm not going to report back actual news - you can do that yourself very easily. But here are some trivia nuggets that I thought I'd share...
- There are 13 wars going on right now in the world. 11 of them are civil wars. The only two that are between nations are the US-led invasions of Iraq and the US-led war in Afghanistan. So apart from America, everyone else is just about getting along.
- The M62 splits because of one single farmhouse, who refused to sell up his land when they were building the motorway. So it goes around him.
- You can't search for 'June 4th' on any Chinese internet search engine. Any other date is fine, but that one date will yield no results, because they don't want you to read about Tiannamen Square.
- There is a secretive PR company called Editorial Intelligence (or something like that), who specialise in creating PR for things without it looking like PR. For instance they'll be employed by the McCanns to cajole columnists to be sympathetic towards them, or get editors to focus on particular issues over other ones.
- Captain Birdseye actor John Hewer died yesterday, but he first had an obituary written next to his face in 1971. This was when Birds Eye decided to retire the Captain character (briefly), so The Times printed a fake obit. Captain Birdseye also came top in a poll of Most Recognised Captain. Second was Captain Cook.
- There are special retirement homes for actors and entertainers. Madge from Dame Edna, who died recently, was in one, as was Captain Birdseye.
- The average person has less than 2 legs.
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