Ken Loach made the keynote speech at the 54th BFI London Film Festival. He said television has become the ‘enemy of creativity’.

The BBC Archive has put together a terrific page with 30 audio and video recordings about the ‘gay rights’ movement. They span more than 40 years — from 1957 to 2009.

Quite a number are complete programmes that are more than 25 minutes long.

What a great resource.

Fifty years ago today, on 10th April 1960, the premiere of the film Hell Is A City took place at the Apollo cinema in Ardwick. (more…)

In 1978 I was a teenager and one afternoon switched on the local ITV channel — Tyne Tees — at about 5.15pm to watch the US sitcom Mork and Mindy. However I nearly fell off my chair when it turned out that the episode was all about their evil landlord who was called ‘Arnold Wanker’.

Although a Wikipedia page about the word claims that the show was severely edited by ITV when it was shown (and wrongly calls him ‘Oliver’), the word certainly wasn’t cut in the north-east. I can only imagine no one at Tyne Tees had viewed the episode before screening it!

Now like many dimly-remembered shows from years gone by it has turned up on YouTube.