Woo hoo!! Dickie’s playing Canon Chasuble in The Importance of Being Earnest at the National in November!

*coils like a spring in anticipation of questions of clerical vesture*

nationaltheatre.org.uk/productions/th…

50th anniversary of Nixon releasing transcripts of the Watergate tapes. He resigned four months later. It turns out even executive privilege cannot put a sitting President entirely beyond the reach of the law. God bless America!

Chefs! At what point do you think very finely chopped garlic becomes minced garlic?

Dined with my pal Andrei who was born in Moldova in the year we did Don’t Leave Me this Way and whose first memories were of the collapse of the Soviet Union and the rationing of water, power and food, while I was discovering pecorino and ISAs.

Happy 80th birthday to #MichaelFish , Eastbourne boy, doyen of weathermen, natty dresser, honoured by the 1985 punk hit 'I wish, I wish, he was like Michael Fish'.

Sexual intercourse began
In 1993 -
Between the launch
of Super Scope
and Mortal Kombat 3.
#philiplarkinvideogames

I learned today that the dazzling young S Korean pianist Yunchan Lim says he loves the Chopin Aeolian Étude op 25 no 1 because it makes him think of a goose looking out of a window and feeling nostalgic.

Even under unseasonal — borderline lowering — skies, East Sussex wears the spring like the late Queen wore Norman Hartnell.

Don’t you think Klaus Mäkelä is becoming the Ryan Gosling of classical music?

Ten years ago today. I miss it.

Counting the days to the new Sonos app launch.

Pongo ‘sharing’ Daisy’s birthday supper.

Daisy got shepherds’ pie for her birthday.

Recorded #rabbitholedetectives today (new episode dropped yesterday!) and discovered that once, travelling in South America, Charles Spencer had to fend off an attack from a giant anteater who tried to get into his tent.

Had a delightful morning talking to Gyles Brandreth for his #Rosebud podcast. A voyage of discovery for him, I think, and for me — it’s BAG-IN BRANDRETH!

Happy birthday Daisy, 105 today!

It is the 50th anniversary of the Carnation Revolution in Portugal, the only revolution to begin with a DJ playing an entry for the 1974 Eurovision Song Contest entry on the wireless — but you only ever hear about ABBA, right?

Leaving do for Julian, one of my very favourite BBC producers. He joined in 1979, was threatened with death by a Nobel laureate, and once accidentally broadcast a widely believed April Fool piece on March 26th. Here he is dancing a farewell jig.

When I was a boy growing up in Kettering I dreamed of lunching at the bar in a little place in Town on a work day.

Oh my goodness this is gorgeous.