Let's twist again

Another historic picture from the archives.

This photograph taken in Devon, seemingly in the 1980s, is believed to show not traditional badger strangling – which involved a slightly shorter pole, and is thought to have gone entirely underground by this time – but the training of dancing badgers.

The trainer (his identity is concealed here because the activity was, strictly speaking, illegal) still tended to be known as the ‘strangler’. The occupation of strangler was a hazardous but lucrative one, because dancing badgers were still a popular sideshow at country fairs. Styles were slow to change – so much so that in the Eighties the animals were still predominantly doing the Twist, though break dancing had started to make an appearance.

Footnote: the noose which can be seen attached to the pole came into play only rarely – typically when it was necessary to make an example of one rogue animal to encourage the others.

It's all going black

Anyone know what film pundits (eg Kermode) would do if they couldn't use the word dark for a week or two?

I know you don't have to listen to them anyway. That's not the point.

In search of the super-extra... evolving the language

What would TV and radio pundits (especially arts and politics) do without the word extraordinary?

So many extraordinary things seem to go on now that there doesn't seem to be much that isn't.

Obviously we need a new word to occupy the place previously held by extraordinary. Extra-extraordinary? But what comes after that?

PS... talking of TV news, here's a tip: in our house we discovered, after being driven to desperation on election night, that there was a way to avoid having to watch Dimbleby and his chums: switch to ITV!

It turns out that the same strategy frees one, on a daily basis, from having to hear from Orange Huw, Fiona Bruce, Robinson, Peston etc. It's well worth putting up with the adverts.

PS: Do you know where the word pundit comes from? India. You would guess that though, I suppose....

Lost in France

The man, the bike, the road… the misery.

If you’ve never followed continental cycling this picture probably won’t have much appeal. If you have, in a way it’s got nearly everything – including the classic Peugeot jersey as worn, of course, by Tom Simpson a couple of decades before.

Long-time cycling photographer Graham Watson recently re-posted this picture of Sean Yates taken in 1983. Yates did have lots of better times, casual readers will be pleased to know; here’s one of them: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NQYJydVy_wM

In the video you will note that crash hats are still optional. Happy days…

PS: Graham Watson is at http://www.grahamwatson.com/