Alan Moore on QI, well there's an idea.....

PJ Holden suggested it first on twitter, but it's a great idea; Alan Moore On QI.

Everyone send their #alanmooreonQI tweet to Stephen Fry.

Stephen Fry on language

Mr Fry does some marvellous podcasts. Some may go on a little too long perhaps and there are times I'd rather read his thoughts than listen to them. But the recent half hour podcast on Language is wonderful. And should you desire a written version on the subject - it is here.

Take this for example from the written version, as Mr Fry begins talking about his absolute joy of language and the pleasure in using it in all it's forms:

There are all kinds of pedants around with more time to read and imitate Lynne Truss and John Humphrys than to write poems, love-letters, novels and stories it seems. They whip out their Sharpies and take away and add apostrophes from public signs, shake their heads at prepositions which end sentences and mutter at split infinitives and misspellings, but do they bubble and froth and slobber and cream with joy at language? Do they ever let the tripping of the tips of their tongues against the tops of their teeth transport them to giddy euphoric bliss? Do they ever yoke impossible words together for the sound-sex of it? Do they use language to seduce, charm, excite, please, affirm and tickle those they talk to? Do they? I doubt it. They’re too farting busy sneering at a greengrocer’s less than perfect use of the apostrophe. Well sod them to Hades. They think they’re guardians of language. They’re no more guardians of language than the Kennel Club is the guardian of dogkind.

National treasure indeed.

Reasons we love Stephen Fry # 29996765787

As seen today on Twitter.

Stephen Fry on the future of the Beeb

The latest in the esteemed Mr Fry's blessays is up here. It's the text of hi sspeech on the Fuure Of Public Service Broadcasting. And it's well worth a read:

It begins thus.....

Before I can even think to presume to dare to begin to expatiate on what sort of an organism I think the British Broadcasting Corporation should be, where I think the BBC should be going, how I think it and other British networks should be funded, what sort of programmes it should make, develop and screen and what range of pastries should be made available in its cafés and how much to the last penny it should pay its talent, before any of that, I ought I think in justice to run around the games field a couple of times puffing out a kind of “The BBC and Me” mini-biography, for like many of my age, weight and shoe size, the BBC is deeply stitched into my being and it is important for me as well as for you, to understand just how much. Only then can we judge the sense, value or otherwise of what I am saying.

Read on...