This Substack article by Stephen Fry is rather good...
Showing posts with label Fry. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Fry. Show all posts
Friday, 28 March 2025
Sunday, 13 December 2009
On Piers Morgan
The Guardian Newspaper yesterday identified Stephen Fry as the originator of the well-known Piers Morgan 'countryside' joke. But I'm sure I first heard it on Clue, where it was a new definition for the Uxbridge English Dictionary by - Graeme Garden.
Doesn't make it any less funny, though.
Doesn't make it any less funny, though.
Sunday, 6 December 2009
Equivalence and Arundel
There is a marvellous programme on Radio 4 at present called Adventures in Poetry. This could be awful (especially with a title like that), but it isn't. Each week just one poem is discussed in some depth for half an hour. There is a certain amount of biography and historiography - setting the piece in context - but mostly these programmes work as extended analyses of the poem in question. For example, a few weeks back they joyfully spent some time considering the various effects resulting from Adlestrop beginning with the word 'Yes'.
The result is people with a deep knowledge and understanding speaking about something they care about, and refusing to talk down to their audience. On the contrary - being wholly unafraid of using their expertise and eridition.
It is broadcast on Sunday afternoons, but I prefer the late night Saturday repeats, as I can concentrate much more on the people and what they are saying about the poem when I'm lying cosily tucked up in bed. Last night we had Larkin:
An Arundel Tomb
Side by side, their faces blurred,
The earl and countess lie in stone,
Their proper habits vaguely shown
As jointed armour, stiffened pleat,
And that faint hint of the absurd -
The little dogs under their feet.
Such plainness of the pre-baroque
Hardly involves the eye, until
It meets his left-hand gauntlet,
stillClasped empty in the other;
andOne sees, with a sharp tender shock,
His hand withdrawn, holding her hand.
They would not think to lie so long.
Such faithfulness in effigy
Was just a detail friends would see:
A sculptor's sweet commissioned grace
Thrown off in helping to prolong
The Latin names around the base.
They would not guess how early in
Their supine stationary voyage
The air would change to soundless damage,
Turn the old tenantry away;
How soon succeeding eyes begin
To look, not read. Rigidly, they
Persisted, linked, through lengths and breadths
Of time. Snow fell, undated. Light
Each summer thronged the glass. A bright
Litter of birdcalls strewed the same
Bone-riddled ground. And up the paths
The endless altered people came,
Washing at their identity.
Now, helpless in the hollow of
An unarmorial age, a trough
Of smoke in slow suspended skeins
Above their scrap of history,
Only an attitude remains:
Time has transfigured them into
Untruth. The stone fidelity
They hardly meant has come to be
Their final blazon, and to prove
Our almost-instinct almost true:
What will survive of us is love.
Next week (or 16:30 this afternoon if you like) the poem is Browning's My Last Duchess - so I have to recommend it.
Amazingly, this wasn't the only example yesterday of surprising amounts of real knowledge being displayed in a broadcast programme. I caught an old edition of QI on Dave, flipping over to find, (as I thought initially), the usual clutch of five white, middle-aged comics sitting chortling to each other. Chief chortler was Stephen Fry of course, but the other villains were Alan Davies, Sean Lock, Rob Brydon and Ben Miller (from Armstrong & Miller). I was, I would soon realise, being somewhat unfair on the last of those.
The theme was science fiction (and science too, I guess, I missed the beginning), so they were all wearing silvery Klingon-style regalia over their shoulders. Of course they were.
At one point Fry asked a question about alien life - Rob Brydon said he didn't believe in aliens, and then - wonderfully - Ben Miller spent some minutes properly discussing he Principle of Equivalence and the Fermi Paradox. Brydon looked a bit shocked. A few minutes later Fry stated that science 'knew of no reason why time travel shouldn't be possible' and started to give an explanation of the grandfather paradox. Miller then challenged this view with a very sensible discussion of the Second Law of Thermodynamics, ending with questioning whether humans could exist in a universe where time's arrow didn't only point in one direction. If the other three panellists were gobsmacked, it was also true that the dilletante-ist Stephen Fry seemed very much out of his depth.
The jokes about not understanding this stuff came quickly, of course, to cover up their embarrassment. Then a minute or so later Locke said something about not understanding how even simple machines like telephones worked. Brydon responded - slightly sneeringly, I thought - with "And now my colleague Mr Miller will explain it properly to you."
So he did.
He spoke about transduction and piezo-electric crystals, was clear and straightforward - and kept it to the basics - and explained in essence how landline phones work. The others were again clearly flummoxed to find someone who knew what they were talking about on the show.
It was marvellous, of course, but almost unwatchable given the smug, sheep-faced responses of the rest of the panel, so I had to switch it off. Sigh.
Still, two peices of something sensible being broadcast on the same day? Who'd have thought it?
There's hope yet.
Postscript : According to IMDB, Ben Miller's (uncompleted) Cambridge PhD Physics thesis was on 'novel quantum effects in quasi-zero dimensional mesoscopic electrical systems'.
The result is people with a deep knowledge and understanding speaking about something they care about, and refusing to talk down to their audience. On the contrary - being wholly unafraid of using their expertise and eridition.
It is broadcast on Sunday afternoons, but I prefer the late night Saturday repeats, as I can concentrate much more on the people and what they are saying about the poem when I'm lying cosily tucked up in bed. Last night we had Larkin:
An Arundel Tomb
Side by side, their faces blurred,
The earl and countess lie in stone,
Their proper habits vaguely shown
As jointed armour, stiffened pleat,
And that faint hint of the absurd -
The little dogs under their feet.
Such plainness of the pre-baroque
Hardly involves the eye, until
It meets his left-hand gauntlet,
stillClasped empty in the other;
andOne sees, with a sharp tender shock,
His hand withdrawn, holding her hand.
They would not think to lie so long.
Such faithfulness in effigy
Was just a detail friends would see:
A sculptor's sweet commissioned grace
Thrown off in helping to prolong
The Latin names around the base.
They would not guess how early in
Their supine stationary voyage
The air would change to soundless damage,
Turn the old tenantry away;
How soon succeeding eyes begin
To look, not read. Rigidly, they
Persisted, linked, through lengths and breadths
Of time. Snow fell, undated. Light
Each summer thronged the glass. A bright
Litter of birdcalls strewed the same
Bone-riddled ground. And up the paths
The endless altered people came,
Washing at their identity.
Now, helpless in the hollow of
An unarmorial age, a trough
Of smoke in slow suspended skeins
Above their scrap of history,
Only an attitude remains:
Time has transfigured them into
Untruth. The stone fidelity
They hardly meant has come to be
Their final blazon, and to prove
Our almost-instinct almost true:
What will survive of us is love.
Next week (or 16:30 this afternoon if you like) the poem is Browning's My Last Duchess - so I have to recommend it.
Amazingly, this wasn't the only example yesterday of surprising amounts of real knowledge being displayed in a broadcast programme. I caught an old edition of QI on Dave, flipping over to find, (as I thought initially), the usual clutch of five white, middle-aged comics sitting chortling to each other. Chief chortler was Stephen Fry of course, but the other villains were Alan Davies, Sean Lock, Rob Brydon and Ben Miller (from Armstrong & Miller). I was, I would soon realise, being somewhat unfair on the last of those.
The theme was science fiction (and science too, I guess, I missed the beginning), so they were all wearing silvery Klingon-style regalia over their shoulders. Of course they were.
At one point Fry asked a question about alien life - Rob Brydon said he didn't believe in aliens, and then - wonderfully - Ben Miller spent some minutes properly discussing he Principle of Equivalence and the Fermi Paradox. Brydon looked a bit shocked. A few minutes later Fry stated that science 'knew of no reason why time travel shouldn't be possible' and started to give an explanation of the grandfather paradox. Miller then challenged this view with a very sensible discussion of the Second Law of Thermodynamics, ending with questioning whether humans could exist in a universe where time's arrow didn't only point in one direction. If the other three panellists were gobsmacked, it was also true that the dilletante-ist Stephen Fry seemed very much out of his depth.
The jokes about not understanding this stuff came quickly, of course, to cover up their embarrassment. Then a minute or so later Locke said something about not understanding how even simple machines like telephones worked. Brydon responded - slightly sneeringly, I thought - with "And now my colleague Mr Miller will explain it properly to you."
So he did.
He spoke about transduction and piezo-electric crystals, was clear and straightforward - and kept it to the basics - and explained in essence how landline phones work. The others were again clearly flummoxed to find someone who knew what they were talking about on the show.
It was marvellous, of course, but almost unwatchable given the smug, sheep-faced responses of the rest of the panel, so I had to switch it off. Sigh.
Still, two peices of something sensible being broadcast on the same day? Who'd have thought it?
There's hope yet.
Postscript : According to IMDB, Ben Miller's (uncompleted) Cambridge PhD Physics thesis was on 'novel quantum effects in quasi-zero dimensional mesoscopic electrical systems'.
Sunday, 11 October 2009
William and the Don
R4 yesterday gave us a new production of Shadowlands in the afternoon play spot. Now, I'm not absolutely sure a new production of this piece was needed. There is quite a good film with Anthony Hopkins available, for example. That being said, I like the play. So I listened to it.
Partner said that C.S. Lewis was played by Stephen Fry, but I was sure that wasn't right. No -there was something out of kilter. Then I got it. Bloody Martin Jarvis. From then on the whole piece had a peculiar echo of William Brown standing just behind it and off to one side. At times, when it got too much, the other Inklings began to seem like Douglas, Henry and Ginger. The weirdest experience. Sigh.
Partner said that C.S. Lewis was played by Stephen Fry, but I was sure that wasn't right. No -there was something out of kilter. Then I got it. Bloody Martin Jarvis. From then on the whole piece had a peculiar echo of William Brown standing just behind it and off to one side. At times, when it got too much, the other Inklings began to seem like Douglas, Henry and Ginger. The weirdest experience. Sigh.
Saturday, 20 June 2009
Panning Fry
Well the BBC gave it a news item, and Clue is back. With Stephen Fry in place of the late and much-missed Humph, for the first of this (the 51st!) series. So what was it like?
Not bad - Victoria Wood was a brilliant guest, as she uses enormous wordplay in her act and fitted in perfectly. Uxbridge English dictionary was near-perfect - "Chatelaine" particularly. Oh, and she can sing.
The best for me was the moment when she suddenly and to be honest inadvertently launched into a quick Joyce Grenfell impression. Smashing. I also enjoyed Barry Cryer's "Clement Freud memorial buzz" in Just a Minim.
But the big question of course was did it work without Humph? Well, the script was strong, as good or better than most of those from recent series. All of the panellists did well. But Stephen Fry had an almost impossible job. He had a Humphish script and all he could do was deliver it. It was just so much less funny. As I listened I had a curious double effect: I could imagine, almost hear Humph reading out the same lines and getting the laughs. SF just did not have his delivery, and sounded somewhat out of his comfort zone. We'll see how the other two guest presenters do, but I do feel Clue is now a little bit more ordinary...
This isn't a particularly radical view, I know. Many of the comments on the ISIHAC Comedy Blog have been saying the same.
Fry has also been annoying elsewhere. The Saturday Guardian gave him a column-cum-avertising feature for the latest i-Phone and firmware upgrade. Tiresome in the extreme. He is full of love for these little shiny baubles, but doesn't - to me at least - really show that much understanding. For example, he is a eulogist for the Apple apps, but never mentions that actually their popularity is essentially modelled as an extreme power series. Most of the vast panoply of offerings are used by very few people indeed, if any. Clay Shirky is better on this sort of thing (See "Here Comes Everyone" and his discussion of the activity of Wikipedia editors). Presumably the Guardian only ran the piece because it was by Fry, a Famous Person. And, for me, one who is beginning to come across as a kind of all-pervasive cross between Thora Hird de nos jours and Douglas Adams. Not, to my mind, a particularly workable combination.
Not bad - Victoria Wood was a brilliant guest, as she uses enormous wordplay in her act and fitted in perfectly. Uxbridge English dictionary was near-perfect - "Chatelaine" particularly. Oh, and she can sing.
The best for me was the moment when she suddenly and to be honest inadvertently launched into a quick Joyce Grenfell impression. Smashing. I also enjoyed Barry Cryer's "Clement Freud memorial buzz" in Just a Minim.
But the big question of course was did it work without Humph? Well, the script was strong, as good or better than most of those from recent series. All of the panellists did well. But Stephen Fry had an almost impossible job. He had a Humphish script and all he could do was deliver it. It was just so much less funny. As I listened I had a curious double effect: I could imagine, almost hear Humph reading out the same lines and getting the laughs. SF just did not have his delivery, and sounded somewhat out of his comfort zone. We'll see how the other two guest presenters do, but I do feel Clue is now a little bit more ordinary...
This isn't a particularly radical view, I know. Many of the comments on the ISIHAC Comedy Blog have been saying the same.
Fry has also been annoying elsewhere. The Saturday Guardian gave him a column-cum-avertising feature for the latest i-Phone and firmware upgrade. Tiresome in the extreme. He is full of love for these little shiny baubles, but doesn't - to me at least - really show that much understanding. For example, he is a eulogist for the Apple apps, but never mentions that actually their popularity is essentially modelled as an extreme power series. Most of the vast panoply of offerings are used by very few people indeed, if any. Clay Shirky is better on this sort of thing (See "Here Comes Everyone" and his discussion of the activity of Wikipedia editors). Presumably the Guardian only ran the piece because it was by Fry, a Famous Person. And, for me, one who is beginning to come across as a kind of all-pervasive cross between Thora Hird de nos jours and Douglas Adams. Not, to my mind, a particularly workable combination.
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