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Graeme Swann rightfully jumps for joy after gaining Hashim Amla's wicket on the 4th day of the 2nd Test v South Africa in Durban.
England won a great victory, with centuries from Alastair Cook (118) and Ian Bell (140) in their total of 574-9d. Graeme Swann (21o-3m-54r-5w)and Stuart Broad (17-3-43-4) then bowled the South Africans into the ground.
England's sensational win was by an innings and 98 runs: worth getting up early for and enjoying our new TV... Let's not forget that we almost lost the 1st Test (it went to the very last ball, with one England wicket left for SA to get to win) and look forward to the next Test (3 out of 4), starting on 3 Jan.
Times Online report is here
Sang Messiah on Thursday, in St Paul's Cathedral. Difficult for the listening audience, but singing from the stage is a different experience - awesome.
Lee Everett, then wife of DJ and Comedian Kenny, visited the USA in 1979. During this trip Lee came across a tastebud revelation, a chilli pepper jelly, and was instantly hooked. On her return to the UK, Lee began developing her own unique version of a Chilli Pepper Jelly.
Although an accomplished cook, perfection was not easy to achieve, but once there, Chilli Jelly was born. The product was a huge hit with family and friends, with demand being so big that it quickly developed into a cottage industry, with Chilli Jelly being sold locally to a variety of fine food outlets. Hand-cooked batch runs went from 10 or 20 jars up to 1,000 jars in the final batch run. So it was no wonder that Kenny Everett, with his zany sense of humour, nicknamed her 'Chilliqueen'. The name has stuck and appeared on the jars as the brand ever since. Suggestions and recipes are on their website here.
Kenny Everett, my all-time favourite DJ - a truly inspired genius, who was placed on this planet to entertain:
"Eat well, drink well and live well" - a quote from Victor Sassie, proprietor of the Gay Hussar restaurant in Greek Street. Born August 28 1915, died June 7 1999. Restaurateur who became involved in catering in the early 1930s, sent by the British Hotel and Restaurant Association to Budapest, Hungary, to work for Karoly Gundel in 1932. He was working at the Hungarian Pavilion in New York, NY, by 1939, and then moved to the Budapest restaurant in London, England. After serving in the second world war, he reopened this restaurant in 1945, changing its name to the Gay Hussar by 1954.
The Gay Hussar has been favoured by politicians for many years. In the picture you can just make out the old blue-and-white plaque reading 'Recommended by Egon Ronay's Guides' - a blast from the past when Roy Ackerman owned both the restaurant and the guides...
Roy Ackerman quotes Victor Sassie on his Coolcucumber.tv food and drink online tv/video website here: www.coolcucumber.tv
* Read the Grauniad obituary
* The Gay Hussar's webite is here.
Broadcasting legend John Robert Parker Ravenscroft, otherwise known as veteran Radio 1 DJ John Peel, OBE (awarded in 1998 for services to music).
His eclectic taste and honest, subjective approach to new music attracted a warm-hearted audience since he started to grace the Radio 1 airwaves in 1967. He was very influential in his own, unique way, however he was usually too 'indie' for me, being more of a Bob Harris man.
John Peel - Margrave of the Marshes, the second half of which was completed by his wife, Sheila, is a love story masquerading as the part-autobiograpgy of a gentle philosopher who always threw in a salty dose of reality to his broadcasts and the way he lived his life. His belief in the primacy of Liverpool FC, the love of his wife and their Suffolk home (Peel Towers - actually, a thatched cottage, from where he broadcast in later years) and an intrepid drive to be different on Radio 1 are constant themes throughout the book. His favoured Radio 1 'rhythm pals' included Johnnie Walker, Kid Jensen, producer John Walters and Andy Kershaw.
His public-school ('imperfect') education at Shrewsbury belies him, but he also belittles it beautifully in the book by writing that his children would say that it provided him only with 'the sort of education that enables you to talk for about twenty seconds on almost any topic, although there is no one thing thing about which you know a great deal'.
Peel was a Private-Eye loving maverick with the gift of the gab, whose style and bravado I much admired and - curiously - have something in common with. Both he and I attended the Martin Luther King memorial service in St Paul's Cathedral; he was outside with the crowds, while I was inside, singing as a 13-year-old chorister.
The best £3.25 I've spent on a hardback book in ages, courtesy of a charity shop in Canterbury last summer.
* Grauniad: A Life in Pictures
* BBC1 Tribute site
* Hear the voice of the legend and the sweet-eating game (courtesy of www.planetbods.org)
* Pics from the annual John Peel Day celebrated around the country
Human rights campaigner Martin Luther King preached at St Paul's Cathedral on his way to Oslo to collect the Nobel Peace Prize. Dr King preached to a full Cathedral at Evensong on 6 December 1964 (four years before he was assassinated), where he spoke of signs of a rapidly growing problem of race relations in Britain. 'We must not seek to rise from a position of disadvantage to one of advantage, substituting injustice of one type for that of another,' he said. 'God is not interested in the freedom of white, black or yellow men, but in the freedom of the whole human race.'
Georgia O’Keeffe, 1956, by Yousuf Karsh
In perhaps one Karsh's most famous photographs, Karsh travelled from his studio in Ottawa, Canada to Abiquiu, New Mexico, to capture American painter Georgia O’Keeffe for a portrait around 1956. He later wrote that he had hoped to find in her “some of the poetic intensity of her paintings.” Instead Karsh found “the austere intensity of dedication to her work.” He made a quiet portrait of the distant O’Keeffe during a moment of repose in her home.
'I hate flowers - I paint them because they're cheaper than models and they don't move.' Georgia O'Keeffe (1887-1986)
