Last night was Miss Lebanon 2011, a show so glitzly you needed sunglasses just to watch it on TV. In the end, Yara Khoury-Mikhael, armed with little more than a degree from LAU, some strategically placed masking tape and an army of Facebook fans blew away the competition to take the crown. Here’s how she managed it:
Not that this is remarkably new, but a few choice tweets today reminded me of the hilariously arbitrary compendium that is the list of movies banned by General Security in Lebanon. Or, rather, it starts out at hilarious. It ends up being enraging. Many films are banned due to ‘erotic’ or ‘obscene’ content; others for being potentially offensive to Arabs. Monty Python’s The Life of Brian is blacklisted for ‘sexual content/it shows David’s star/too much Jewish innuendoes and possibly shot in Israel’ [sic]. One reason for outlawing that repeatedly crops up is simply ‘Jane Fonda.’ One tweeter, @toufoul pointed out why General Security might be so adverse to letting flicks featuring Fonda into the country. @matthewteller @RHallDailyStar Fonda visited Lebanon, not Israel, & entertained Israeli…
“Well, I’ve never done that before,” I mutter as we walk down the stairs. The sweet tea we’ve been given cloys at the back of my throat and as we emerge into the clamorous streets of the Dahiyeh, I suddenly realise I have absolutely no clue where were are. A non-discript suburb of Beirut, up an annonymous set of stairs, is perhaps a fitting place for the headquarters of Hizbullah. When I pitched an idea to my editor earlier in the week and told her the area I intended to do it in, she looked a little unsure and suggested that I go to meet her contact at Hizbullah, you know, just in case one of their depressingly numerous thugs decided to take a…
That time of year has arrived, so wondrously coincidental with the coming of spring flowers. The Apprentice is back. What difference a year makes. This time in 2008, Alan Sugar was still banging on about being worth eleventy billion pounds as he took a helicopter ride around Canary Wharf. This year, with the world in the grip of the worst recession since the Thirties, the tone is likely to be more sedate. S’rAlan is unlikely to come across as so beligerently loaded. But will the contestants follow suit?
Tagged: apprentice, BBC, Ben Clarke, contestants, Majid Nagra, Mona Lewis, Philip Taylor, Sir Alan Sugar
Gordon Brown sounded positively Rooseveltian yesterday: The old orthodoxies will not serve us well in the future. We’ve got to think the previously unthinkable. We’ve got to do what was previously undoable. The question is, for whom was it ‘previously undoable’? For Brown this could mean tax cuts – genuine income tax cuts, to a token diminishment of VAT – as is now being hinted. The amount the government receives from income tax has fallen 11 per cent since last year, providing a January surplus of only £8.4bn - a virtual halving of monthly intake. With government borrowing predicted – by Darling (with pinch of salt) – to reach £77bn by the end of the financial year, it’s staggering to think where Britain is…
Yesterday, as most of Britain frolicked in a winter wonderland, businesses were counting the cost of the heaviest snowfall for almost 20 years. It’s estimated that “snow day” cost Britain in excess of £1bn and that figure could rise to £3bn as the cold front looks set to remain for the rest of the week. Over one fifth of all British workers (at least those who aren’t striking) couldn’t make it to their desks as transport links across most of South East England were disrupted. Of those who clambered through the wilderness to make it to work, 80 per cent of them did so late. Britons yesterday essentially pulled a nationwide sicky.
Tagged: Boris Johnson, Credit Crunch, London, recession, snow
Congratulations to a gushing Kate Winslet. Congratulations too, to those who worked on Slumdog Millionaire, the film that last night won five awards at the 66th annual Golden Globe Awards. Based (loosely) on Vikas Swarup’s novel, Q & A, about a Mumbai chai boy winning the Indian equivalent of Who Wants to be a Millionaire? It’s a game show that the producers hope will never be won for one reason: they don’t own the jackpot. Well-educated doctors and lawyers rarely get past the 60,000 rupees round, so imagine the public’s surprise and joy at a slum-dweller bagging the billion grand prize. Slumdog Millionaire is an important film for these times for a few reasons. First are the parallels we can draw between the financial…
Tagged: banks, Brown, entrepreneurs, Labour
People shouldn’t be allowed to criticise the BBC. If they are offended by prank calls, obvious jokes and patronising journalists, they have a choice – don’t pay the license fee. The BBC is run and moderated not by some grey beards in their ivory tower but by a trust – it has become more diverse, representative and progressive, as we demanded. Now stop it. Change the channel. Watch Five, if you think it’s any better or palatable. Go see a play – although I should warn you that Titus Andronicus is a little racy and has little by way of complaints procedures. Just because we pay a license fee, it doesn’t mean we should have a say on BBC content. Do you call up…
Tagged: BBC, complaints, license fee, Paxman, prank call, Top Gear
For a minute there, you’d be forgiven for forgetting the world is going to hell in a handcart. Almost all the papers splashed today with the fallout from Russell Brand and Jonathan Ross’ poorly judged prank calls to actor Andrew Sachs, alleging that Brand had slept with his granddaughter. Who is hardly a shrinking violet herself. Brand has fallen on his sword and issued a heartfelt apology for any offence this unfortunate episode may have caused Mr. Sachs. I’m not sure what the other 27,000 callers were offended about. It was a prank, and its biggest error was being neither funny or particularly subtle. But for Brand to feel compelled to resign due to the public outcry is the most lamentable thing of all.…
Tagged: BBC, Brand, Gordon Brown, Ross
