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Post by samuelwhiskers on Jan 25, 2023 15:07:35 GMT
But they don't live in Britain? Even if they did, there's no way any royal is going to a state comp. They'd go to a posh school stuffed full of aristos, rubbing shoulders with kids named things like Artemis Cholmondeley-Plantagenet. I went to a state comp in a fairly posh part of London, and there were quite a few double-barrelled and unusual names, no bullying.
The'll end up at some posh private school in California with children of movie stars who are all named things like Pomegranate and Delaware. Or ∞=兀x2. Maybe just going by Archie Windsor and Lili Windsor, and be teased because their names are too boring and commonplace.
Anyway, surely worries about the media pursuing the children refer to the Cambridge children (who are public figures, are frequently photographed and trotted out at public events, will be expected to take on increasing public duties as they get older, and on whom the media are already thrusting manufactured personas and narratives) and not the Sussex children (who live thousands of miles away, are private citizens, and are barely ever papped)?
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Post by samuelwhiskers on Jan 25, 2023 14:41:26 GMT
1. M3GAN 2. M3GAN 3. M3GAN 4. M3GAN 5. M3GAN
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Post by samuelwhiskers on Jan 25, 2023 12:34:39 GMT
That said, if and when they announce the transfer, I will be the first to congratulate you on being correct. :-) I'll hold you to that. I'm very proud of this show.
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Post by samuelwhiskers on Jan 25, 2023 11:24:37 GMT
Do I do the “I told you so” dance now, or in September? (Sorry I know it’s obnoxious. But I did keep saying it would transfer to the West End, and hardly anyone believed me!)
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Post by samuelwhiskers on Jan 22, 2023 15:49:24 GMT
Exactly. The way the Cambridge children have been exploited in the media since birth is shameful. The media started to push this invented narrative that George is the mature well-behaved one, and Charlotte and Louis the naughty wilful ones, when they were still very young. It’s only a matter of time before Charlotte becomes the new Harry and the tabloids earn a fortune by making up stories about what a wild child teen she is (and the inevitable “showing off her leggy pins” stories - if they have decency they might wait till she’s 16) and demonising her to make George look good. None of those kids will ever know privacy, since the royal deal is the children belong at least partly to the press.
Thank god the Sussex kids are out of it, where the British tabloids can’t stalk them.
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Post by samuelwhiskers on Jan 17, 2023 11:06:57 GMT
Not crazy about the plot description but love the cast!
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Post by samuelwhiskers on Jan 17, 2023 11:03:16 GMT
It’s honestly bizarre how obsessed you are with attacking everything to do with Harry and Meghan and this book. You clearly hate them - which is your right - but by any standard it’s obviously and undeniably a gigantic hit sales-wise.
Harry’s book has been selling a million copies per day just in the US. He sold enough books to make the top 10 bestseller list for an entire year, in just one week. It’s a phenomenal seller. Claiming it’s not selling and making snide comments just looks weirdly petty. You can dislike Harry and dislike his book while still acknowledging that it’s sold insanely well.
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Post by samuelwhiskers on Jan 14, 2023 15:06:24 GMT
There are pap photos of Harry coming out of a TK Maxx holding TK Maxx carrier bags, so he obviously has purchased items there.
No one has made any suggestion that Harry merely "walked around looking", so no need for any linguistic debate as to whether a purely hypothetical situation can be named as shopping or not.
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Post by samuelwhiskers on Jan 12, 2023 23:38:23 GMT
The response to the book (the media’s willingness to flagrantly and knowingly print deliberate lies and openly do the RF’s dirty work for them) is so sinister and corrupt, it’s making them look a thousand times worse than anything Harry could say.
Look at this TK Maxx nonsense. The paper Camilla’s best friend runs just published a statement from TK Maxx saying Harry has never shopped there (how would they even know??) and calling Harry a liar. But they were immediately outed as liars themselves because they themselves had previously tweeted photos of Harry shopping there.
Sounds random, until you learn TK Maxx is one of the biggest partners in Charles’ charity. (Of course, Charles’ financial dealings have always been incredibly shady).
The level of corruption and just sheer lies the British establishment is engaging in right now is so Trumpian. A lot of people don’t care about royals or regard it as just celeb gossip, which is understandable, but it’s not about Harry, it’s about the fact all this is revealing that we have a press who openly and deliberately lie to us whenever it suits their agenda or boosts their cronies.
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Post by samuelwhiskers on Jan 11, 2023 14:53:29 GMT
Well Harry just described Jason Knauf as "a particularly close friend" of Dan Wootton -- where's the poster who insisted that just because they were in the same class all through university it didn't mean they'd "gone to university together" or knew each other? /s
The main thing I'm getting from all this book and TV interview stuff is that after several years of Meghan being blamed for absolutely everything, and Harry being cast as a helpless child with no free will, it's becoming increasingly clear that Harry's the hot-headed, entitled one who explodes, and Meghan was the one who tried to obey the rules and be placatory.
It seems fairly obvious at this point that Harry was the one leading the decision to leave (which he's talked about wanting to do for many years), and Harry's anger at things going back decades that's inciting all of these disclosures.
Yet the press (as other journalists have pointed out, led by one of Camilla's best friends!) are still firmly blaming Meghan! Why can't they accept that isn't Meghan somehow "brainwashing" Harry, Harry genuinely is that angry and traumatised. Even if Harry and Meghan did get divorced, it wouldn't magically make Harry not feel angry, and it wouldn't make him want to reconcile.
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Post by samuelwhiskers on Jan 10, 2023 19:41:16 GMT
The RF are obviously racist. They permitted an overtly racist hate campaign against Meghan for years, and their systemic racism (eg lobbying to be made exempt from laws banning racial discrimination) is well-documented, as are many individual incidences of racism. Presumably Harry had some remorse over losing his family hence his hesitation now to go full guns blazing, but he's not said "the RF aren't racist", he challenged the exact wording of how he recounted a single incident. The RF's years-long smear campaign against one of their own family members is a thousand times more vindictive than anything Harry has done. So do we believe him? Or not. Does it matter? Whether or not Camilla (or whomever) once speculated on Archie’s skin tone barely registers against literally lobbying the government to be made exempt from racial discrimination laws. Quite apart from the sinister amount of control the RF have over the government (no human being should be above the law, much less allowed to re-write laws purely for their own benefit), what kind of corporation even thinks “wow laws banning racism? We definitely don’t that! Let’s actively lobby for the right to be racist!”
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Post by samuelwhiskers on Jan 10, 2023 18:00:30 GMT
The RF are obviously racist. They permitted an overtly racist hate campaign against Meghan for years, and their systemic racism (eg lobbying to be made exempt from laws banning racial discrimination) is well-documented, as are many individual incidences of racism.
Presumably Harry had some remorse over losing his family hence his hesitation now to go full guns blazing, but he's not said "the RF aren't racist", he challenged the exact wording of how he recounted a single incident.
The RF's years-long smear campaign against one of their own family members is a thousand times more vindictive than anything Harry has done.
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Post by samuelwhiskers on Jan 10, 2023 14:35:56 GMT
Tower Theatre are an am-dram company, though they do high quality shows.
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Post by samuelwhiskers on Jan 9, 2023 20:27:45 GMT
Apparently we’re “famously one of the most toxic online brands there is”
Oooooooo. Fight behind the bike sheds after school?
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Post by samuelwhiskers on Jan 9, 2023 13:21:45 GMT
I am interested in how the press works - I have been since I was a teenager and briefly wanted to be a journalist - and I’ve spent far far too much time over the years delving into it. I do things like actually read full court judgements to libel and privacy trials, and follow the outcome of complaints to IPSO (and formerly the PCC). I watched the Leveson enquiry avidly. Yes, same for me too (though you research more rigorously than me) - I did a journalism degree (my dissertation supervisor and mentor was Ros Coward, a royal reporter who has written books on royals, then moved to writing books about feminism) and I worked a tiny but as a freelance journalist before moving into theatre. I've worked on or closely with people from The Crown and various stage productions that sought to illuminate the hidden power structures underpinning British society and that's what fascinates me the most. Remember when the American media outlets cut away from and refused to broadcast Trump from the White House press room, because they could not in good faith broadcast lies? I wish the British media could have a moment like that, but too much of our press are the ones standing behind and financing the liars. I'm not so much interested in Harry and Meghan as people, though I wish them well - they both seem like privileged, damaged people who mostly just want a good life for themselves and their children. Which is their right, of course, but they're not going to be the radical firebrands holding truth to power that some want them to be. The most interesting thing Harry is doing is pulling back the curtain, and revealing how sheltered, manipulative and feudal the entire royal system is. William's comment "you can't have Africa it's mine" is so perfect Mike Bartlett would put a red line through it for being too on the nose. It's almost hilarious how reactive and rote it all is - the response to Spare being accidentally put out early in Spain was to instantly get Will and Kate's neighbours to release footage of them trick or treating with the kids, along with an interview trashing Harry. Because Will and Kate can't give interviews saying that Harry's a spoiled brat but their friends sure as hell can. It's all so predictable: any hint of criticism or scandal, the kids get trotted out and someone close to Will and Kate but decidedly not Will and Kate badmouths Harry.
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Post by samuelwhiskers on Jan 5, 2023 0:53:25 GMT
It’s evidence of nothing. How many hundred were on that course. According to the university's website, the average number of students per course in 2004 was 21. Universities don't have hundreds of students in one class. Besides your original post didn't say "there's no evidence they were close friends at uni", you claimed they'd not even attended university together at all, when they obviously did. However you slice it, it's a pretty odd coincidence that Meghan was assigned a press secretary (who leaked to the press, and who clearly hates her) who just happens to have been classmates with the same tabloid editor who ran the most stories and had the most insider info about her (and who clearly also hates her). Low definitely did not. No journalist ever reveals their sources. LOL, we're not talking about Watergate here, we're talking about tabloid gossip. Emily Andrews literally went on TV and talked about having lunch with Jason Knauf. Valentine Low made tweets explicitly naming Jason Knauf.
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Post by samuelwhiskers on Jan 4, 2023 23:39:11 GMT
There is no evidence that those two men went to a university together. It’s all hearsay. Jason Knauf graduated from Victoria University of Wellington with a BA in Political Science in 2004. (Proof: numerous media profiles, including profiles in serious political outlets when he used to work in politics; an interview Knauf gave to the Victoria University of Wellington alumni magazine in 2015 which states his graduation year; Knauf's own LinkedIn profile.) Dan Wootton graduated from Victoria University of Wellington with a BA in Political Science in 2004. (Proof: Wooton's name and graduation year appears on Victoria University of Wellington's own website, and also numerous media profiles.) Okay it’s not proof they were friends, but the fact they went to uni together is absolutely a matter of official public record and both men have confirmed it. They studied the same subject, same degree course, and were in the same year. They obviously would have known each other, and they’ve long been reported as old uni friends. As far as the emails, Low confirmed that Knauf is the one who leaked those emails to the Times, and again it's a matter of public record that he gave Meghan's letters and emails to the Mail on Sunday lawyers, and that he agreed to give a witness statement on behalf of the MoS. Thomas Markle also made very odd comments that named Jason Knauf by name, and he also claimed that there was an attempt during the engagement to get Harry to call off the wedding. Thomas Markle has lied far too many times for anything he says to be trustworthy, but it is strange that he named Knauf, a man he doesn't appear to have ever met. I can't help but be curious what happened there.
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Post by samuelwhiskers on Jan 4, 2023 22:30:35 GMT
Jason Knauf approached the Mail on Sunday voluntarily, and offered them confidential material on Meghan (the judge rejected some of the material he offered as being irrelevant to the case). Knauf also made edited extracts from Meghan’s emails public, which were damaging to her; when Knauf was ordered to disclose the full unedited emails what do you know - they didn’t make Meghan look bad. There were also emails accidentally sent to Meghan’s lawyers showing that Knauf was working for the tabloid and against Meghan.
Multiple journalists have said Knauf fed them stories, and he’s been close friends with Dan Wootton since they were at university together. Knauf is the one who invented the bullying story, which no one else has backed up.
It’s pretty undeniable that Knauf was leaking against Harry and Meghan, and hard to imagine why he’s been so excessively lavished with royal honours when at the very least he betrayed the RF, leaked to press, and was terrible at his stated job. Unless he was under orders from Charles or William.
I really don’t think it’s some kind of crazy conspiracy that the RF didn’t like the ambitious black American actress, and continued the patterns of multiple generations in sacrificing lesser royals to the press, and leaking stories in order to control their own media image.
Remember the Cambridges threatened Krishnan Guru Murphy with false arrest to cover up William’s secret political meeting. Their aggressive stance towards media coverage they dislike (the Tatler piece, the Botox claim, the hair extensions claim, the “human rights violation” thing, and Rose Hanbury) has been shown time and time again. Of course they leak stories and manipulate the press. Everyone in the entertainment industry does it, why should royals be any different?
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Post by samuelwhiskers on Jan 3, 2023 20:33:31 GMT
Oh come on, they briefed against Diana too.
The golden rule of the monarchy is that everyone exists to prop up the monarch and the direct heirs. A huge part of that is the unspoken agreement with the press, which is becoming more visible by the day.
The royals make quid pro quo deals with the press, they give the press stories about lesser royals in exchange for the press killing stories about the direct heirs. Harry has always been a scapegoat for William - look at the Nazi uniform photos, those photos were leaked in order to keep William’s part out of the press. The rash of negative H&M stories being leaked were to bribe the press not to cover the Rose Hanbury thing.
For four generations, the heir has a press persona of being mature, sensible and regal, while the spare has a press persona of being a naughty wild child. It started with Elizabeth and Margaret and it’s already started happening with George and his siblings. It’s all completely fake and manipulated. It’s only a matter of time before we see “George worried about wild child Charlotte” headlines, and the press mysteriously manage to get their hands on photos of Charlotte drunk or whatever while George will continue to be painted as whiter than white. I’d put money on that happening by the time Charlotte is 18.
Plus no one is allowed to outshine the heirs. It’s pretty well documented that Charles was jealous when Diana started to become so insane popular, and the stories intended to put her in her place started after that. (Very similar to what happened after Harry and Meghan’s hugely successful foreign tour compared to Will and Kate’s disaster tours.) Then of course once Diana refused to be the quiet good girl and ignore his affair, the gloves came off and Charles/the RF did their outmost to use the press to make Diana out to be unstable and paranoid. Both Charles and Diana leaked stories, they both used and manipulated the press, and they both had their own pet journalists they’d leak to.
Anyway married-ins always get a rough ride at the start to test that they’re willing to sacrifice themselves for the Firm, and that they’ll tolerate bad press and tabloid lies without complaint. Kate passed the loyalty test so she’s protected now - the RF aggressively kill and deny bad stories about her, which they didn’t do when she first married William. Meghan obviously wasn’t willing to do the same. Plus it’s pretty clear they just didn’t like Meghan and didn’t see her as a suitable wife for Harry.
It’s fairly obvious some of the stories could only have come from royal sources. Both the court case and tweets from journalists confirmed Jason Knauf was leaking stories, yet Charles and Will hugely rewarded him. Either Knauf broke his NDA, betrayed the RF, and was plain incompetent at his job (in which case why did Charles and Will reward him so fulsomely?) or he was acting under orders. The journalist who broke the news that Kate and Meghan had a fight at the bridesmaids dress fitting is close friends with Carole Middleton and has a history of publishing pro-Middleton puff pieces. How many people were at the fitting or close enough to Kate to hear about a private fight? The only way that story could get in the press so fast is if someone present or someone close to Kate phoned up a journalist. So who’s this mystery person if not Carole?
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Post by samuelwhiskers on Jan 3, 2023 14:27:45 GMT
The royal family went whinging to the press about Meghan about 853,647 times since before she was even married. All they do is leak stories complaining. They were publicly airing dirty laundry (as well as leaking outright lies) about Harry and Meghan for years while H&M were entirely silent and never responded or defended themselves. For years.
How long would you tolerate your own family constantly telling the press all manner of nasty things about you without being allowed to speak?
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Post by samuelwhiskers on Jan 2, 2023 23:49:23 GMT
Charles just awarded Jason Knauf (the guy who was imposed on Meghan to be her advisor and run her press stuff, who was also Thomas Markle’s press handler, who was busted leaking stuff to the tabloids, came up with the bullying allegation which he also leaked to the press, and worked on behalf of Mail on Sunday in Meghan’s lawsuit against them) “ Lieutenant of the Royal Victorian Order.”
Yeah neither side is going to be on each other’s Christmas card list any time soon.
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Post by samuelwhiskers on Jan 2, 2023 23:44:57 GMT
You know the small handful of seats in the Lyttleton circle slips, where each seat is completely on its own and not near any other seat?
Those.
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Post by samuelwhiskers on Dec 31, 2022 21:41:47 GMT
I really liked the AHS that was set in an 80s summer camp (at least the episodes that were set in the camp; the episodes set after the time jump were awful), and the vampire writers in Provincetown started decently. The New Mexico aliens half season was woeful. Glad to hear NYC is a return to form.
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Post by samuelwhiskers on Dec 31, 2022 17:17:18 GMT
Scenes de Ballet/A Month in the Country/Rhapsody triple bill Royal Ballet (of which Month was the best for me) couldileaveyou said: Ashton Triple Bill – ROH
londonpostie said: Ashton Triple: Scènes de ballet / A Month in the Country / Rhapsody - perfection (ROH, Ashton/Carr)
It won't make a pennyworth of difference to the sums but, in case of confusion, can I just mention these were all the same event It didn’t quite make my top 5 but I also very much enjoyed that event.
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Post by samuelwhiskers on Dec 31, 2022 11:23:31 GMT
It honestly just never occurred to me that game shows might be considered “spoilers” the way a movie would be. I mean, high profile game show finals are promoted on TV and online, it doesn’t feel realistic to say “no one mention who’s in the final because that’s a spoiler for anyone who hasn’t seen the early heats”.
Asking people not to say “can’t believe so and so is the killer in Glass Onion” is very different from asking people not to say “fyi for fans, so and so is on TV tomorrow.”
However I will be more aware of spoilers in future - normally I do spoiler tag everything, so I apologise - it genuinely didn’t occur to me that saying they’re in the final would be a spoiler.
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Post by samuelwhiskers on Dec 30, 2022 18:45:51 GMT
University Challenge tonight had James Graham as part of the team from Hull. They made it to the final, which is tonight 8.30. One of the questions in the semi final is “what theatre is Kwame Kwei-Armah artistic director of!”
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Post by samuelwhiskers on Dec 29, 2022 13:09:27 GMT
Interesting little human drama at the Magic Flute ROH yesterday.
Two women sitting in front of me, Taciturn Friend and Chatty Friend. They’re on the end of a row with an empty seat next to them. Chatty Friend leans over to whisper to Taciturn Friend approximately every three minutes during the entire first half. Taciturn Friend reacts by nodding while I notice my foot is level with her head and resist the temptation to drop kick her over the balcony.
At the start of the interval, Taciturn Friend immediately runs out, Chatty Friend in hot but futile pursuit. Taciturn Friend returns alone halfway through the interval. Chatty Friend returns at the end of the interval with great cries of “where WERE you I’ve spent the entire interval looking for you I kept trying to phone you!!” Taciturn Friend’s response is her signature nod.
I now notice Taciturn Friend has used the interval to pile all their coats and bags onto Chatty Friend’s seat, thereby forcing Chatty Friend to move over into the previously empty seat, meaning they are now separated by Coat Mountain.
During the second half, Chatty Friend, deprived of access to whispering and clearly bored senseless, switches her phone on in order to have a good rifle through her bag and one point leaves the auditorium completely.
Taciturn Friend has won! Elated, until… she accidentally drops her wine glass with a massive crash and cringes so hard she shrivels up into a tiny ball.
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Post by samuelwhiskers on Dec 29, 2022 12:48:33 GMT
Yes!
There are two entirely different sections, Troy and Mycenae. They’re actually in two separate buildings (the sort of plastic hut bit where you enter is in between the two, the two big brick buildings on the left and right of the entrance are the performance areas) which are joined by a long corridor that can be tricky to find.
Each person is taken to either Troy or Mycenae at random at the start of the show.
You were in Troy, which comprises tons of tiny little rooms and represents Troy after the war, and covers the experiences of the Trojan survivors in the immediate aftermath of the war. Your wife was in Mycenae which is one massive room, plus mezzanine, and the action takes place right at the start of the war and broadly covers the story of Agamemnon’s sacrifice of Iphigenia which is the act that essentially brought the Greeks into the war.
It’s a major flaw in the production because people don’t know there are two separate areas and often can’t find the passage between them unless they’re actively looking or have been told where it is.
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Post by samuelwhiskers on Dec 23, 2022 17:10:11 GMT
Early, fortunately. By one day. So back tomorrow! I only live 20 minutes away so it's not a big deal, just embarrassing.
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Post by samuelwhiskers on Dec 23, 2022 16:25:46 GMT
Argh finally did it - showed up at the theatre on the wrong date. /blush blush
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