News

Despite what many right wing commentators and the Daily Mail tell you, humour isn’t timeless. It changes over time. Watch the first episode of the ‘classic’ BBC sitcom Only Fools and try not to wince … Read More

1979 was a year that’s ramifications arguably are still rattling our contemporary society. That year saw the defeat of Labour in the general the birth of Thatcherism in the UK, a neoliberal experiment that would … Read More

It might seem strange to younger as they say viewers, but if you’re in your mid-fifties you were born twenty odd years after a World War, after a Holocaust, after an ‘Iron Curtain’ was drawn … Read More

Adults rarely appear in the Peanuts cartoons. The Peanuts kids all struggle with adult existentialism and everyday stresses anyway, so there really isn’t any need for the depiction of grown-ups. One of the exceptions is … Read More

I could sleep in the most haunted house ever and whatever remnant of a person hanging around there from the next world will leave me alone, in fact very probably studiously ignore me. I’m whatever … Read More

There’s a Peanuts cartoon that basically boils down to ‘Everyone has a best day ever’ – ‘What if you’ve already had yours?’ We kind of know that Charlie Brown, though only a kid and only … Read More

Lucy is probably the most contemporary character in Peanuts. Normally this would mean that she represents contemporary thought and values. And she does. Just not particularly positive thought. In the Peanuts world there’s no happy … Read More

I was going to try and articulate what a contemporary editor does in this essay but quickly realised how pointless and probably very boring that would be. Instead (and perhaps inevitably) I will focus on … Read More

We’re all natural editors, particularly those of the generations that grew up in around here (Northern Ireland) in the 1970s/1980s. We avoided certain people or certain streets in certain areas, editing ourselves out of our … Read More

I’m worried about a little boy who sits in front of me at school. He cries every day. This afternoon I tried to help him. I whacked him one on the arm…There’s nothing like a … Read More