AE on Telly News (NEW CONCEPTS)

[Mick Harper]

I didn't realise. I thought she was 'staff'.

[Grant]

Digging for Britain

The lovely Alice was reporting from a dig where they had discovered lots of animal bones which had been thrown in water 11,000 years ago. The archaeologist told us that this was odd and they may have been deposited there as a ritual.

It’s a rule of British archaeology that no-one ever just drops something in a lake accidentally or just throws it away in the nearest pond.

[Mick Harper]

In her and their defence, there is a difference between 'accidentally dropping' stuff, 'chucking' stuff and 'depositing' stuff, because of the sheer scale. Not that they can necessarily be trusted even when they know the difference. In HistRev there's a discussion about the Oxus Treasure which was also allegedly ritual offerings underwater but since it is a hoard rather than just separate bits and bobs, there has to be an explanation how it all came together in the first place

------------------------

Why the need for academese at all in the non-academic context of a museum discoursing to the general public on its website? It is because the British Museum finds itself in such a bind over its Oxus Treasure that it is the professionals, not the public, that have to be bamboozled. Professionals may not read museum blurbs but they do write them, so they dare not write them in plain English without the risk of, we might say, unbamboozling themselves. There would be a real crisis if this happened because the curators at the British Museum

● know there has to be an aggregating mechanism
● know they have not got one
● know one will have to be provided
● know this can only be achieved by lying their heads off
● without knowing they are lying their heads off

It is easier than you might think. First, state a truism

[Grant]

Vanished: Where is Nicola Bulley?

Interesting Channel 5 show because they interviewed the leader of the private diving team which were helping the police in trying to find this unfortunate woman. Apparently where Nicola was supposed to have fallen in there were rocks next to the river bank making the river very shallow, and the water at its deepest was no more than three feet (now it’s only two).

If you look at the map of the Wyre it’s very meandering and still ten miles from the sea. So the argument of the police is that a fit woman fell into three feet of slow moving water and then drifted out to the estuary out of the police divers’ reach within a few hours of her fall. Also, surely anything floating down a slow-moving narrow river ends up in the bends of the river?

[Mick Harper]

The only thing I know about this case is that hordes of 'private investigators', with their own websites and Facebook groups, have been infesting the area because they 'know' where Ms Bulley is. The police are having to take steps to keep them out. It used to be just psychics and dowsers joining the rubberneckers. Now you want us to join in. Certainly!

The first thing of interest is that, unlike with Frost et al, the local police force does not have its own specialist underwater unit to call on. I should think not, a clear waste of resources in these straitened times. But nor does ACPO, the National Crime Agency, the Met Police on detachment, the Home Office et al. A clear dereliction of duty. Who are these 'private investigators'? Hobbyists? Underwater archaeologists? Marine biologists?

[Mick Harper]

Atlantic Crossing (Drama Channel)

This continues to amble along amiably. (Why relegated to the dungeons of cable?) One jarring note had been the treatment of Eleanor Roosevelt, a secular saint only one down the canonical pecking order from FDR himself. It was fair enough to paint her as an interfering and jealous old baggage but to line her up with the American-Firsters in Congress when in reality she was as far to the left as American politics allows, was messing with history more than somewhat. But anyway in the latest episode she has made a late run for sainthood by giving the Crown Princess some elocution tips.

I am not sufficiently equated with domestic Norwegian history (I've sent off for a brochure) to judge the accuracy of the London manoeuvrings but it is interesting how -- just as with us, just as with the Americans -- certain personages have to be shown in a constant good light which means everyone else has to be serially villainous. Nobody ever says they're all doing their best in trying circumstances and they're all of roughly equal incompetence.

One day someone is going to make a 'straight' history play. Unfortunately it won't even make it to cable, so just the once. Until we can replace the TV-watching population with one our world deserves. Eight billion Mick Harpers. Is that too much to ask?

[Mick Harper]

Vanished revisited

The last big manhunt in this area was the disappearance of Sharon Mathews, later found under a cousin's bed. AE did assist (belatedly) in this by pointing out that female abduction is incredibly rare because the risks versus rewards are so out of kilter, and therefore victims are always incredibly 'pretty'. Which Sharon Mathews was not.

So first off, where does Nicola Bulley sit on this scale? The reason this is an AE matter is that it is considered such intolerably bad form discussing these things that they never are, to the detriment of rational discussion. Also off limits is a discussion of the psychiatric history of the 'victim'. If she's got form, the odds are that she is in some derelict barn on the Lancashire moors (or a flat in London). Because for sure, as Grant says, the chances she is in the water are vanishingly small. Shallow grave, not vanishingly small.

Maybe I'd better watch the programme before making any further sweeping statements.

[Mick Harper]

Spot The Errors

[Mick Harper]

Mussolini: the First Fascist (PBS)

Despite the weird title this new two-parter is proving unexpectedly (because it's PBS) favourable to the old brute. It shows, for instance, how wise the Italians were in choosing him -- and it also shows they did choose him. Not as democratically as the Germans did later with Hitler but certainly with widespread and enduring enthusiasm.

His main contribution was simple stability. Outlawing the unions seems to have done that particular trick. The economics was typically only so-so and the rest standard populism, but everywhere in the twenties and thirties was in need of that. And, unlike a good many dictatorial regimes, he did it all without killing sprees though there was certainly hard prison time for recidivistic opponents. It is interesting to speculate how history would have dealt with him if he had been the only fascist. A sort of Berlusconi of his times would be my guess.

[Mick Harper]

U-Boat Wargamers (Sky Exclusive)

Starting next week but I can confidently predict that it will be the ultimate in military history revisionism. How some young women won the war by pushing some draughts pieces across a table with long sticks in Liverpool. Take that, Grand Admiral Doenitz!

[Mick Harper]

For those of you who missed out the first time round, all episodes of Barry are being repeated on the Sky Comedy Channel. Or, for those like me, who want to wallow all over again.

[Mick Harper]

Hornby: A Model World (Yesterday Channel)

Oh, they're bringing out a Blackburn Buccaneer, are they? Well bully for them and bully for sixties naval aircraft freaks. What the rest of us are pacing up and down for is a 'Ukrainian suite'. We want pre-loved Leopard II's, we want drones, we want half-trackers. I've already repainted my Scottish highland regiment in Wagner black and I've nearly finished putting flak-jackets on an entire press corps. And we've got nowhere to go!

[Mick Harper]

The National Comedy Awards for Stand Up to Cancer 2023 (Channel 4)

It seems a bit early in the year to come to a judgement in this somewhat recherché corner of light entertainment -- surely it would be better to wait for Edinburgh -- but at least we'll get an idea of who is still on the boards and who has been reduced to Zooming.

[Mick Harper]

Digging for Britain (BBC-2)

Alice were oop north this week and had found anchoresse bones in York. Now 'Slack' used to be a forensic anatomist before she took the TV shilling so she and the local archaeo-forensic anatomist were busy swapping notes.

"That's unmistakable, that is."
"Aye, syphilis if ever I saw it."
"Funny though, her being an anchoresse and all."
"Well, she were a lady afore that so maybe that's why she got walled up."
"No, I mean syphilis arriving in Europe in the 1490's and the anchoresse business being closed down by Cromwell in the 1530's. It's a tight window."
"Aye, they needed one to pass the food through."

[Mick Harper]

Mr Beluncle (Book at Bedtime BBC R4)

My enjoyment of this slashing attack on the London suburban bourgeoisie was considerably ameliorated by the thought, "How dare VS Naipaul come over here and slag us off, he can just fuck off back to wherever he came from." It was only on discovering it was VS Pritchett that my appreciation could be properly centred.