Can you imagine being in the room? youtube.com/watch?v=fyAUKU…

Steve Wright was so damn good.

I can’t think of anything I’ve ever seen, heard, eaten, drunk, worn or driven that comes close to Miriam Margolyes reading Bleak House. Perfection.

I never understood the Guitar God business - it was always the piano, since I can remember - but hearing Jeff Beck do this live, supported by the the ineffable Jools Holland, was the most thrilling thing ever. I've listened to/watched this clip a hundred times, and I think you…

Sublime

Happy New Year to all. Eat as well as you can, try not to wear black, and smile at strangers.

Happy Christmas everyone, in spite of it all!

I’m out of the office until the best regain their conviction and the worst empty themselves of their passionate intensity.

From this day on I will use ‘broad’ to mean exceptional, great, touched by genius. twitter.com/englandcricket…

Time. Such a fickle lover. You watch replays from two hours ago, and it might be 1990.

The always excellent Paraic O’Brien describes the horror in Sudan

I am ageing a year with every run and a decade with every wicket.

For people who don't follow cricket, what Ben Stokes has done is as extraordinary as a jockey who reinvents horse racing by carrying the horse.

Thank you for lovely birthday messages, cakes, balloons, trinkets, gadgets, poems, ballads, Arab stallions, and islands of manageable size. You are all very kind.

Hey hey hey! Hugh Laurie's 'Why Didn't They Ask Evans' is in the 'New Drama' category and also Lucy Boynton/Will Poulter are in the 'Drama Performance' categories. Don't forget to vote!

A straight piece of carnival barking: I’m 3rd bassoon in a terrific podcast dramatisation of Kim Hooper’s #PeopleWhoKnewMe , written and directed by Daniella Isaacs. Rosamund Pike is, as you might expect, the business, and the whole thing thrums on BBC Sounds

Expect a postcard.

Studios denying writers their worth is really strange. Like refusing to pay for the bottom half of a ladder. #WritersGuildStrike

ZADOC THE PRIESTTTTTTTTT absolute stone banger Handel you unit #Coronation

Your and my thoughts on the monarchy aside, the BBC’s Coronation Tailors is just beautiful. Such skill, such calm competence. Such cheerful dedication to craft, tradition, ritual, continuance. I will not hear your cynical ripostes.