Jonathan Meades c/d?

Yeah I guess it's always provocative, I still felt as the opening line that was bolder. There are always things he doesn't flesh out which seem vaguely disagreeable but the sum of the parts and the style is so brilliant. The humour is unique to him.

only had time to watch half of it. maybe i don't watch the right documentaries, but it was good to watch a bbc arts programme that wasn't an stream of random talking heads. otoh it would have been p funny to get mani's views on what a top lad benito was in the studio.

Actually "all for one, one for all, if we all join hands we can build a wall" would be an apt soundtrack to a programme on fascist architecture

Did catch a bit of these new puritans though

fascinating as ever but flawed in his analysis of the (anti)politics of fascism IMO, it was much better when he was actually talking about the architecture

the sign language for 'hitler' is just as you'd imagine:

https://www.dropbox.com/sc/yk8342wl9066y34/AAC7y64BexyWCH6IdV27HzpRa

and iplayer reminds me there are 23 programmes about post war architecture available for viewing in their archive

http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/group/p01s0hpy

ooh good find, that Ian Nairn series looks worth a watch

Definitely. It is a delight.

The entire Jonathan Meades Collection is all out there in the torrent world as well, although for some reason that doesn't include his Nazi/Soviet architecture episodes.

there was a dvd box set but they had trouble with clearing some of the music iirc

it would have been p funny to get mani's views on what a top lad benito was in the studio.

didn't meades call franco a "lad" at one point in this? i was going to try post that on nakh's wall. felt like he'd been reading ilx.

dank meades

It's the throwaway details, like the fact that he bought half a dozen plastic plates because they had a craquelure design pattern, that I love.

"surely everyone knows milk is poison unless turned into cheese"

http://www.entschwindetundvergeht.com/nairns-journeys/

Some Nairn films at the BFI followed by a conversation between Meades and the socialist writer Douglas Murphy. Should be interesting.

Sold out v swiftly I think - we certainly missed tickets some weeks back.

anyone here in essex?

https://twitter.com/RadicalEssex/status/763053538532548608

https://unbound.com/books/the-plagiarist-in-the-kitchen#synopsis

he's releasing a book of recipes, which is pretty exciting to me. i ate at the restaurant he cites for the first recipe on that page, last year. it was fairly quiet, which i guess added to how much i enjoyed it.

u feeling those excerpted recipes? not i tbh

the first one definitely. the second one not so much but i don't eat chickpeas/lentils etc. i like the taste fine but diarrhoea is less enjoyable.

not what correlates with yr personal palate. the recipes

idk i get the thumb-in-the-eye brutish curt charm but the signature crass/refinement matrix seems a bit strained forced into this rarefied format? erbs and seasoning arent bourgeois affectations big man

distinctly familiar whiff of nakh's dairylea lunchables w/ chateauneuf du piss or imago's xmas papa johns

i honestly feel like the first one would be good - seems pretty hard to imagine that failing to taste nice.

the second seems a bit more unusual but i guess it's all about a good broth.

I quite like chick peas as a bit of protein ballast to add to my godawful chilli con carne/curry dishes. I will probably try a chickpea broth at some point, but definitely not that one - it is missing the ingredients for starters!

Meades is one of my fave tories, but I don't respect his cooking.

is he definitely a tory? i guess he must be.

he's without representation atm, I'd guess

about a 97% chance probs, I mean A A Gill was a lifelong labour member - but I still considered him a tory.

it's hard to imagine him liking the current government, but i guess he could be one of those elder tories who pick and choose different beliefs or causes while still remaining tories.

wonder what his favourite administration of his lifetime has been

or what he thinks about brexit.

second churchill prob lol

http://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=230&v=evCvKbn0NWU

Yeah I can't find anything on brexit, butfrom 3 mins 30 here you get some very sarcastic Meades on Trump

i was just watching that the other day. sad!

https://www.morningstaronline.co.uk/a-6b9e-Shooting-yourself-in-the-head-three-times-is-quite-an-achievement

But Meades is unwavering. “Politics is taste,” he barks. “One has a taste for Mister Cameron or for Mister Miliband, I don’t have a taste for either of the fuckers.”

Still, he says, anything is preferable to Tony Blair. “He thought he was answerable to God or someone, God being a kind of fiction. Rather than answerable to the people who put him in power.

“I do think that he should be on trial and so should Alastair fucking Campbell.”

Is there any hope for Britain? “I’m not familiar enough with the generation of politicians after little George and Dave, I don’t know who they are,” he groans.

“I hope that fucking buffoon Boris Johnson never gets anywhere because he isn’t just a buffoon, he’s a calculating bastard.”

When he is in sarcasm mode, like on Trump there - he has me in stitches, lowest form of wit and all that + probably not really that funny - but he has that effect on me.

so I'm probably definitely harsh calling him a Tory.

hastily reading the wikipedia pages of various leaders, he'd probably have been heavily influenced by macmillan?

seems like he's sort of similar to the rest of us, politically.

yeah i doubt that he's Tory in any meaningful sense

not that i think it would dent my admiration if he were

I feel the same tbh

we're all allowed up to three conservative voters we like unreservedly

I always got the impression that he was right-libertarian leaning?

I thought he would be more that way inclined. I could imagine him criticising austerity for it's negative effects on culture/buildings/arts, but not much gaf about actual people!

That Football Pools Towns episode from Off Kilter is hilarious, sad + brilliant and it gets quite angry with Thatcherism. Loads of shit food and bad public housing sadness and ace football grounds. Brilliant. Also probably not exactly Nostradamus level when he predicts Gove and BJ would stab Dave in the back, but still very otm in the context of '09.

"Animal lactates are poisonous, unless they are transformed into cheese" and the one about Scottish chip shops offering a better euthanasia service than Switzerland!

All buildings should be made out of granite, it even makes blocks of sandstone look like cheap Spanish air-bricks.

I have been re-watching the awesome Magnetic North tonight, would love a Euro trip to some of the locations and sample the architecture, beers and foods.

also "Germany without potatoes is as unimaginable as a repetitively re-offending suicide bomber" !

I couldn't get very far with the Encylopaedia of Myself. Far too solipsistic (which I know is the point, but...).

Search: Magnetic North, The Absentee Landlord. I love the show he did on Brussels most of all.

Tried watching his show on France but turned it off after his rant on the self-hatred (yes, France, that most self-hating of countries) that lead to a former French Algerian independence fighter who blew up a cafe getting a place in French academia in women's studies, "ironically, since most of the people in the cafe had been women".

I know blowing up a building with people inside is a somewhat graver sin than being a bit dim on gender but it still felt too Daily Mail Comments for me to stick with it.

New Meades anthology! https://unbound.com/books/pedro-ricky-come-again/