Jonathan Calder

A reader sent me the link to this 2001 radio documentary about the great Viv Stanshall. As was inevitable in that era, it was presented by Stephen Fry.

Beavers and badgers. Badgers and beavers. It's all getting very confusing. How far this pair are correct in blaming Hegel for the societal organisation of the beavers and the impenetrability of T.H. Green I shall leave the philosophers to debate. In any event, Lord Bonkers is on record as preferring his brother, T.H. White.

When I lived in Kew (well, North Sheen) in the early 1980s, Piccadilly Line trains would stop at Turnham Green on Sundays, or at least for a part of them.

ITVx wins our Headline of the Day Award with this bushy tale of life on the Reading to Gatwick line. Thanks to the reader who alerted me to this story The story below our winning headline informs us that:

We come to the end of a beaver-stuffed (and latterly badger-stuffed) week at Bonkers Hall. As far as I'm concerned, the new political season can't begin soon enough.

"Labour's recent creative industries plan, published in March, avoids any talk about new horizons or radical change, either in the country or the wider world. Rather, it presents arts and culture as an existing 'part of 'our national story' and 'our sense of national pride.' References to technology are always balanced with something more traditional."

The Map Men explain, and also show how weird electoral borders can be used to deliver weird results.

A largely positive article about the Liberal Democrats by Jonathan Edwards for Nation Cymru points up an irony.

BBC News wins our Headline of the Day Award. Congratulations to them, to Annie Allen and to the alpacas. Ms Allen said:

I spent my last day in Shropshire at Snailbeach and Stiperstones village. Here is the Stiperstones Inn with the hills behind it.