I live in Nottingham but I didn’t see any of this - some of us have to work for a living. The man with the owl is a bit of a local legend, you often see him out and about with his owl, who is a she, but I forget her name. He also has a dog.

Northern accents are very different - a Manc, Geordie or Scouser all sound totally different to each other, then you have variations from town to town as well. This is a really strong Cumbrian accent, which generally only a few older people have. My friend’s Dad used to talk like that. I do understand it, but have to…

Surely the Geordies would have pah-stah?

Do you mean “paaarsta”? I don’t say it like that. Those of us from north of Watford don’t pronounce our a’s that way.

There’s the pronunciation of “bastard” to consider as well. Being a northerner I use a very short, flat “a”, so it’s said as bas-tard. The word works well if you say it this way, it has hate behind it. There are though some posh buggers who pronounce it as baaaaar-staaaaard, which makes the word limp and wet, and…

...and he might have a dog with him, or he’ll see some dogs.

But this is ITV - they get their money from advertising and selling their (crappy) programmes elsewhere. The licence fee is for the BBC and pays for my beloved BBC Four. Well, that’s what my licence fee pays for. Eastenders, football coverage and Chris Evans (the other one for our US friends) can piss off.

The man of steel has buns of steel.

I know, I didn’t mention William and Mary, and posted before some of the other comments.

There have been lots of Queens married to Kings - George V was married to Queen Mary. She, and others, are Queen Consorts. There aren’t many King Consorts.

Ha! I don’t know how anybody kept their faces straight seeing that instruction. I remember when we had a short loan collection *goes misty eyed*.

I work at a UK university, and have a vague memory of one of the evangelical groups being banned from the library a few years back - they’d book group study rooms and use them for indoctrination purposes.

The Judicial Appointments Commission, which is a completely independent body, and people are selected by merit, not what side of the political divide they sit on. The system in England and Wales is totally different to the US. https://jac.judiciary.gov.uk/what-jac-does

I was reading a Reddit thread with similar themes to this earlier today https://www.reddit.com/r/books/comments/6klik0/reading_naughty_books/. I definitely watched the miniseries when it was on, but I don’t think I read the book. It was The Thorn Birds for me, before graduating to Up and Coming by Molly Parkin.

Me too! It was interesting watching it happen. A lot of what Derren does is about suggestibility, and some people pick up on them far easier than others, and they’re the ones who can be easily manipulated.

He did a good take down of faith healers a few years back.

I have wavy hair. For many years I didn’t have a fringe (as we call them on this side of the Atlantic) after growing it out because I got so sick of it looking stupid all the time. I had it cut back in again about 10 year ago and I love it, but it’s straightened. Even then it can get to a length where the wave…

He’s actually done it, fair play to him. https://www.theguardian.com/politics/video/2017/jun/10/author-eats-book-after-incorrect-general-election-prediction-video

Yep, amazing isn’t it. Each and every vote counts. I’ve never seen it as well illustrated as in this election.

Well done. This election has been a staggering example of how every vote counts - did you read about Kensington going over to Labour by 20 votes?