"Not all affairs have a positive effect on a marriage"

Tunbridge Wells [in Kent] has been laid bare as an infidelity hotspot by a controversial website. Nearly 1,000 love rats from the town are said to have signed up to a website which helps married people meet new lovers.

We spoke to one local adulteress who has been cheating on her husband for nine months. She said: "It's a self-esteem boost when you get lots of messages from people wanting to get to know you. I definitely don't want my marriage to end. I'm not sure what I would do if I got caught."

[...]

The website even carries a startling disclaimer, warning visitors that "not everyone is suited to having an affair".

"Not all affairs have a positive effect on a marriage," it adds.

The website claims to have 944 members from Tunbridge Wells, while across Kent more than 11,000 people are using the site to cheat on their other halves.

- This Is Kent, 29 October 2010

"It's not finished... now it's finished"

'During the first set Rufus has asked that you please do not applaud until after he has left the stage as his exit is part of the piece'.

- Notice to fans attending a Rufus Wainwright concert

[Via Popbitch]

"I wish they wouldn't waste it on dogs"

Comedian Kristen Wiig reads from a slender collection of poems written by former Three's Company actress Suzanne Somers, in an instalment of the Celebrity Autobiography show.

One man's passion for VCRs

This chap - Finnish, I gather - has what is perhaps the world's biggest private collection of VCRs. Here he takes viewers on a tour, providing a rare insight into the life of an obsessive collector. And his hair is a bit special too.



[Via Guardian Viral Video Chart]

David Mitchell's metal penis

From a recording of the comedy panel show The Unbelievable Truth, hosted by David Mitchell:

DM: I'm not playing the game - I see myself as the 'icy host'.

Chris Addison: You see yourself as an Anne Robinson figure?

DM: Yes, an Anne Robinson figure. But still partially organic.

CA: What part isn't organic, just out of interest?

DM: My metal penis.

CA: Isn't that a Kaiser Chiefs album?

DM: I'm very pleased with my metal penis, but it certainly gets through the diesel.

CA: If it's diesel does that mean it's taxed more highly than the unleaded metal penis that you were previously using?

DM: I try and say that I should be able to use the agricultural diesel, because it's used for breeding purposes. But as I have failed to breed with it I'm not allowed.

Rufus Hound: It's classed as a recreational vehicle?

DM: I know, it's ridiculous really, because I've never seen anyone have any fun with it.

- The Unbelievable Truth, Radio 4, 18 October 2010

The naked truth

The cheek of it... Berliners strip in protest at city's sky-high rents

The movement is sending shock waves through the normally orderly world of Berlin estate agents: when they show off apartments for rent, their presumed tenants strip off and prance around wearing nothing but Mickey Mouse masks to hide their identities.

The protesters, who paint their naked bodies with slogans such as "too expensive" and "rip off", pose as ordinary would-be tenants and queue up to "view" expensive apartments to let.

Once inside they strip off and dance around to blaring music pumped through loudspeakers while being filmed. In most cases they manage to flee before the police arrive. A video of their protest usually appears on YouTube the following day.

"We want every estate agent and every apartment management company to be aware that if they try to rent out flats at rip-off prices, they can expect a visit from us," one of the protesters, who would only identify himself as Denis, declared on one of the videos.

The rent rise protest is conducted by a group called Hedonistic International which recently gained publicity after its members stormed a neo-Nazi pub. Their demonstrations have so far been confined to the Berlin inner-city districts of Kreuzberg and Freidrichshain. Both districts are being gentrified after providing cheap flats for immigrants and students for more than two decades.

- Independent, 21 October 2010

Coachella in miniature

Lovely tilt-shifted and fast-forwarded short film capturing a day in the life of the 2010 Coachella rock festival; catchy tune too -

Coachelletta from Sam O'Hare on Vimeo.

Careful, you'll have someone's eye out

'Mum was 15 when the war started, and started work in an office. By the age of 18 she was also an ARP warden. I've never been able to understand how risk-averse my mum is. She hated conkers, pea shooters and anything that could have someone's eye out: skipping, swinging on your chair, talking with your mouth full. I think there must have been something deficient in the diet in 1920s Portsmouth and people were born with very weak eye sockets, so that if you burped a baby over-zealously, there was a risk its eye would pop out over your shoulder. I understand Mum grew up in a time of danger and that she wanted us to be safe, but I did sometimes wonder how she got through the war at all. How did she function as an ARP warden, venturing out during the Blitz in a tin hat, looking for fires, injured people, unexploded bombs and possible German paratroopers? She could cope with all that, but if a Jerry had crept up on her with a snowball, she'd have panicked because there could be some grit in that and that can have someone's eye out'

- Jeremy Hardy, My Family And Other Strangers, 2010

How to get ahead

'The odd thing in this world is than an eager-beaver type, with no original ideas, who mimes those in authority above him right to the last twist of necktie and scrape of chin, always gets noticed. Gets selected. Rises. In the banks, in insurance companies, big electric companies, missile building firms, universities. He had seen them as assistant professors teaching some recondite subject - survey of heretical Christian sects of the fifth century - and simultaneously inching their path up with all their might and main. Everything but sending their wives over to the administration building as bait'

- Philip K Dick, Time Out Of Joint, 1959

'This Monty Python, is he one of us?'

'Being Margaret Thatcher was a very demanding, 24-hour-a-day job. Like many people held in the grip of their own convictions, Thatcher had trouble understanding the thoughts and words of others. She was, and no doubt is, a kindly woman. Staff were always pleased when she remembered their birthdays, even more when she remembered their children's birthdays. She could be tolerant of other people's way of living, even when she did not understand or sympathise with it. However, if she had a sense of humour, it was well hidden.

There are many stories about this. When the Liberals adopted a sort of stylised yellow bird as their logo, one of her speechwriters produced a passage based on Monty Python's parrot sketch – 'this parrot is no more, it has shuffled off this mortal coil and gone to join the choir invisible . . .' She had to be persuaded that the lines were funny, and would be recognised by the audience. She had one other concern: 'This Monty Python, is he one of us?' (Interestingly, Cameron referred to the same sketch in his party conference speech this week, confident that everyone would get the joke.)

Earlier, Peter Jay, the son-in-law of the then prime minister Jim Callaghan, had said that Callaghan saw himself as Moses, leading his people after long travails into the promised land. It was a silly thing to say, and Thatcher's people seized on it. They wrote a line for her party conference speech: 'My message to Moses is: 'Keep taking the tablets.'' But she didn't get the joke and tried to change it to 'Keep taking the pills.' Only after it was carefully explained to her did she agree to the proper version.

She was nonetheless the source of much unwitting humour. Just as, in an early silent movie, when you see a man up a ladder with a pot of paint, you know with near certainty that the star is going to walk under the ladder at exactly the wrong moment, so with Thatcher. When a double entendre appeared in the offing, you felt she was certain to utter it.

I recall Thatcher being asked in the Commons about pacifists handing out leaflets outside an army barracks. 'I'm sure soldiers will know exactly what they can do with those leaflets!' she said, to outright laughter from the Labour side and surreptitious giggles from the Tories.

At a training centre in Putney, she was introduced to an extremely large youth who was working with a giant wrench. 'Goodness,' she said, 'I've never seen a tool as big as that!'

But Thatcher saved the best of all for her victory tour of the Falkland Islands. She was taken to inspect a large field gun, basically a ride-on lawnmower with a barrel several feet long. It was on a bluff, overlooking a plain on which another Argentine invasion might one day materialise. She admired the weapon, and the soldier manning it asked if she would like to fire a round.

'But mightn't it jerk me off?' she replied. Chris Moncrieff of the Press Association, who was covering the visit, recorded the manful struggle of the soldier to keep his face, indeed his whole body, straight'

- Simon Hoggart, Guardian, 8 October 2010