That's an old one in fact, it might have been "de-slurred" slightly by time covering its original meaning which is why it might seem to be a newly crowned slur (also probably partly cultural). In the UK at least it was a playground taunt at least as far back as the 70s (a well-known charity changed their name from…

Oliver doesn't have a strong stereotypically Brummie accent though, if you played his presenter voice in that same (deeply flawed) survey I suspect even a lot of Brits wouldn't immediately identify it as from Birmingham (as compared to e.g. Jasper Carrot or Noddy Holder).

I'd only relate to it about 70% as much as a show about an all male law firm.

Turnout for the 2014 European election in the UK was actually very slightly up on the 2009 election (from 34.7 % to 35.60 % - still pretty woeful admittedly) so I doubt Brand had as much impact there as is sometimes claimed.

It also helps if you're in 1992 when we only had 4 channels and the BBC ones in particular still carried a fair degree of authority. Nowadays not only are we much more sceptical in general but it'd be debunked by about 15 different people on Twitter as it aired then the next day the Daily Fail would be calling for the…

It's no Gadget Man.

If someone involved in the show doesn't contrive to somehow have "TNETENNBA" come up on his round i'll despair of the world. I may even write a sternly worded letter.

I hold Assange in fairly low regard for a few reasons but it may be worth pointing out that he hasn't been charged with rape in Sweden or anywhere else (there's a warrant for his arrest for questioning on allegations of rape but that's not the same as actually having been charged with the crime).

Well, Charlie successfully invaded in as much as he got as far south as Derby then saw what he was up against, thought "Bugger this for a game of soldiers" and legged it - the invasion was successful, the staying around afterwards part not so much.

Yeah but avoiding the depiction of the not particularly exciting bits of things is sort of Hollywood's jam. See, for instance, every hacking scene ever.

Be interested in your evidence for the claim about Maric initially being a co-author. Is it perhaps related to the common misconception based on the Swiss custom of the man in a marriage adding the woman's maiden name to his family name ? So that in some of the correspondence relating to "On the Electrodynamics of…

Well, he was a great physicist but by many accounts, not such a great man, or at least his feet were very much made of clay (his second marriage - to his cousin, itself founded in an affair while he was still with Mileva - was mostly a sham wherein he had multiple affairs and he had a son with mental health issues who…

Yep, Spidey 3 was not good, it wasn't just an aging Maguire that led to Raimi not doing a 4th film. That franchise would be over by now anyway I suspect.

Aside from a general caveat about judging based on edited interviews, I think her point was more that this isn't a documentary and was never intended to be. If you go into it expecting a precisely true depiction of events (i.e. verisimilitude) then you're looking for the wrong things from it since this is an artistic…

She is not a number, she is a free woman !

Fucking splitters.

In the interests of balance though, some thought it was just OK.

C'mon, it's like trains and tunnels FFS ! The subtext was basically text.

Yeah, sorry, replied twice not immediately realising it was to the same person. No, not read the Antonia Fraser book, I may have to add it to the hilariously huge TBR pile.

Or a really vocal minority skewing the voices count.