I know I really shouldn’t just direct everyone to random, deranged Youtube videos, but if you want a glimpse of just how bizarre the world of AI is getting, as well as to see what Elvis Presley would look like if he was captain of the Starship Enterprise, just check this out. Seriously though, such footage puts me in awe of just how advanced, how realistic, AI-generated mashups are becoming: we’ll soon reach the point where we’ll be unable to tell reality and fiction apart any more.

As deeply uncomfortable and horrified as it makes me, I think anyone who cares about the current state the USA is in needs to watch this. It’s a Times Radio documentary on American evangelical megachurches and their links to Donald Trump and the MAGA movement, and you won’t be surprised to read that I find it utterly obscene. What such ‘churches’ do in manipulating people, brainwashing them, even extorting a significant amount of their income from them, goes well beyond the comprehension of any rational person. What makes it even worse is that it is overtly political: these people believe with all their hearts that Trump was somehow ordained by ‘god’, and anyone opposing him is an evil demon. While the film does not give us any idea of just how widespread the cult it is depicting has become, leading me to hope that it is a small, fringe group, the fact that such absolute insanity exists at all in America is very, very frightening.

When I came across this appalling news earlier, that the Tories now plan to take the UK out of the European Convention on Human Rights if they win the next election, my automatic reaction was to wonder where they plan to build the gas chambers for everyone the tories deem ‘useless eaters’? I was, of course, being rather facetious – I don’t actually think the Tories intend to exterminate anyone. Nonetheless, I think there is a grain of ugly truth at the bottom of that sentiment. The ECHR has guaranteed and safeguarded our human rights for decades. Without it we would all be defenceless, open to the most sickening manipulation and persecution. The rich and powerful would be able to do as they please with the vulnerable and weak; racism and intolerance would become commonplace, even lauded. It opens up the prospect of a future so hideous, so unjust, that it doesn’t bear thinking about. Thus, while the Tories might not go as far as creating execution camps, I seriously think taking us out of the ECHR would be a horrifying step in that direction.

I had a shower this morning. I shower fairly often of course, but these days I have four personal assistants, so different chaps help me each time. This morning it was Dom’s turn, and as usual he was also helping me to shave. Sitting there getting wet earlier, something fairly interesting occurred to me: everyone uses a slightly different method of shaving my face. Artur uses long, deep strokes; Dom uses shorter, lighter strokes, re-applying shaving foam. Dad, if memory serves, was somewhere in the middle, shaving sessions often infused with cries of “Keep still you fool!” Ultimately, though, they all achieve the same goal: I always end up with my face nice and smooth and well-shaven. It just interests me to reflect upon how much variety there can be for such a simple, everyday task. It occurs to me that probably only someone like myself would ever notice such variation, as most men only shave themselves, no doubt using the same method day after day. Everyone has their own way of doing things, their own method of reaching the same end. At the end of the day though, it all serves the same purpose. We all have the same needs; all men have faces to shave. It doesn’t really matter how they do it, as long as their faces our smooth by the end. As a community we seem to be forgetting that fact, and turning simple differences into outright divisions. Ultimately, though, it’s all air-filled foam to be washed down the drain.

I don’t really have much to say today – not much that is blogworthy anyway. Following on from yesterday, I thought I’d take the Bakerloop up to Waterloo again. Today though, rather than crossing the river to come home from Westminster, I thought I’d trundle west along the river a bit – that is still an area of the city I don’t know much about. It started as quite a lovely roll, but I soon realised that the area I was heading into was becoming more and more built up. I eventually got as far as Battersea Power Station. I must say, however, that what I found there was astonishing: I last headed that way about three years ago, and even then I found the amount of money being poured into that area jaw-dropping. Heading that way again this afternoon, it had grown even more obscenely flamboyant and gentrified. Walking into the shopping mall was like being teleported to Dubai, not that I would ever buy anything from such a place. To get a glimpse of what I mean, watch this. Then again, it’s the same situation all across London: the whole city is turning into a kind of perverse, hyper-wealthy distortion of reality, in which the people who live here gradually are loosing their grip on what really matters.

I don’t think I’ve ever come across a more sickening, gratuitous example of cultural misappropriation (read: outright theft) than the one detailed here. I’m not going to say much about it, but the racist disgrace to human civilisation Stephen Yaxley-Lennon has been told to stop using the famous anti-apartheid theme Something Inside So Strong at his rallies. “For decades, Labi Siffre’s hit (Something Inside) So Strong has been a global anthem against apartheid. It was inspired by a documentary about apartheid-era South Africa, and was widely reported to be Nelson Mandela’s favourite song. But now the singer-songwriter has taken the step of issuing Tommy Robinson with a cease and desist order after the far-right activist incorporated the song into his social media posts and used it at the recent “unite the kingdom” rally in central London.”

If that doesn’t strike you as perverse, I don’t know what will: it’s as if the racist, violent thug is trying to frame himself as some kind of freedom fighter, on the level of great civil rights activists like Mandella or Martin Luthur-King. The obvious reality is, Robinson is the figurehead of the very kind of intolerance, arrogance and bigotry such heroes fought against. More to the point, Yaxley-Lennon seems to be trying to spin the story that he is the victim of some enormous injustice, silenced by the state as Mandela was. For the p’tahk to make such vainglorious, self-pitying claims for himself really is sickening: Rather than being a civil rights leader, Yaxley-Lennon is nothing but a racist scumbag whose views have no place whatsoever in civilised society. Rather than being somehow discriminated against, he is the one pompously demanding the right to discriminate in a society where such bigotry is no longer acceptable.

If anyone fancies a bit of James Bond related news (read: gossip), then I think this is worth a read. It’s just a pretty standard, mainstream film magazine article, although I’m told it’s author is pretty reliable. It does, however, contain two key details which I think are worth highlighting: firstly, those in the know assure us that the next actor to be cast as 007 will be British and male. Given that is broadly in keeping with the character created by Ian Fleming, I find that satisfactorily reassuring. Secondly, we are told that filming for the next Bond film is set to begin in 2027, ready for a release in ’28. Given that doesn’t seem that far off, it feels like I suddenly have something to look forward to.

Needless to say, this is certainly a topic I’ll be returning to: the world seems so dismal right now, we can all do with some James Bond escapism, sooner rather than later.

I remember, when I was very young, telling people that my biggest wish was to be “normal”. I used to watch able-bodied children like my brothers doing all kinds of wonderful things which I physically couldn’t do, and feel left out. How wonderful it must be, I reasoned, to be a normal boy. The people I told this to, of course, replied that there was no such thing as normal, and that everyone is normal in their own way.

They were perfectly right of course, and I have taken the notion as a personal standard ever since. Having a physical disability does not mean I am any more or less abnormal than anyone else. The odd thing is, I have recently noticed a surge in people, especially online, referring to other people as “normal”, “neurotypicals” or “normies”, as if they saw themselves as something else. It is no longer cool to be normal, apparently. As far as I could tell, though, all of these people would have been what I would call normal: straight, able bodied and economically privileged enough to make YouTube videos. Yet they seem absolutely desperate to other themselves; to not be perceived as a member of the privileged majority. They obviously think that such a majority exists, but are desperate not to be seen as part of it.

Needless to say, this trend does not sit well with me, or at least strikes me as very strange. It may only be a turn of phrase, but it seems as if the otherness I have felt all my life is now being craved by people who, as far as I can tell, will know nothing of the social ostracisation that members of minorities face. They only claim to be abnormal because they want to be seen as abnormal, usually claiming to have neurological conditions that I doubt they really have, or have very tenuous links to having diagnosed themselves based on a set of fairly vague criteria (please see my reflections on this issue here). Thus they gleefully refer to everyone else as “normies”, jumping onto this or that social bandwagon, urgently emphasising what they think makes them distinct or different. Yet in doing so they mock and insult those of us who have actually lived on the fringes of society, feeling the sting of otherness in every kid’s jeer all our lives.

Perfectly put, quite frankly.

I am under no illusion that not many people read my blog: It is mainly visited by a few of my friends and family members who know about it, and a few people I’ve met out in London who I have shown it to. That’s fine by me: to me, blogging is about recording my thoughts and experiences for posterity, rather than seeking attention. I feel it is important that I do my bit to convey to the world what life is like for a man with cerebral palsy. The problem is, more and more people these days seem to be using the internet to attract attention and entice people to their blog, YouTube channel or whatever. This means that their output is becoming more deranged and extreme. Earlier on the breakfast news for example, there was an item about the many online conspiracy theories which sprang up after a teenager went missing: people began making up all kinds of baseless, nonsensical stories about the child just so that other people read what they said. Something similar is happening with regard to the ‘flat Earth’ phenomenon, with people now spouting all kinds of preposterous, idiotic nonsense just to attract viewers. The people who create this shyte don’t care how wrong they may be, as long as they get attention. The result, I worry, is the steady reduction of the standard of online public discourse into a quagmire of general stupidity. Now that so many people have access to the web and can articulate their thoughts and opinions to virtually everyone else, we all seem to be feeling a desperate urge to be the centre of attention. For my part though, I’ll just continue spouting inane nonsense on here as I always have, trying not to get too provocative.

I just read that an all-party parliamentary group is being set up to represent the interests of online content creators, and that ‘YouTube content creators contributed £2.2bn to UK economy in 2024’. As a blogger, I must admit that strikes me as rather interesting. YouTube was apparently set up in February 2005, so I have been blogging a couple of years longer than it has been around; yet it interests me to reflect on how the website seems to have more or less taken over the internet itself. Apart perhaps from Facebook, it is the website everyone visits no matter what. I personally go straight to it every morning when I get to my computer. This truly astronomical figure is surely a sign of just how dominant it has become, and perhaps it isn’t surprising that these ‘influencers’ now carry so much weight that they require political representation. Mind you, as someone who, by and large, confines his online output to text, and who was a member of the first wave of blogging back in the early noughties, I can’t help now feeling slightly left behind.

Given that it is in the news, and I have touched on the subject a couple of times, I feel I should probably say something about Trump’s recent comments regarding Autism. I am, however, not an expert on the subject by any means: although I have met quite a few people who were on the autistic spectrum over the years, I know as much about it as any other lay person. While I went to a special school with students who had profound neurological disorders and learning difficulties, the kids in my class all had physical disabilities, and none of them were autistic. I am very concerned, though, that the issue and condition is becoming increasingly politicised. These days, we hear about it more and more; more and more people are now said to have it; frankly, it is looking more and more like a sociopolitical bandwagon that everybody’s dying to jump onto. I worry that these recent idiotic comments from Donald Trump are only going to stoke that fire, and make the current commotion surrounding what is, at the end of the day, a profoundly debilitating neurological disorder, even worse. Nobody knows what causes autism, or even fully understands what it is; yet it is becoming increasingly political. As a topic it is becoming volatile, with people openly arguing over what it is and who can claim to have it; and now that the fool currently leading the USA has barged in on the topic, things are going to get even worse.

To my great, great relief I’m glad to say that I am back online and able to access the internet from home once more. A very friendly technician just came and fixed the broken cable, and it feels like I’m back in touch with the wider world. It’s quite strange to reflect upon how dependent on the web we have become, though: guys like me now use it for almost everything, from watching TV to keeping in touch with my parents. Without it I felt completely lost, even though I was only offline for a relatively short time.

Appropriately enough, while I was waiting for the technician this morning I thought I’d watch 2001, A Space Odyssey, just for a bit of classical Hollywood escapism. Believe it or not I don’t think I’ve really sat down to watch Stanley Kubrick’s 1968 classic before, or at least haven’t in over twenty years. What I found myself watching this morning was a jaw-dropping masterpiece: a slow, reflexive thesis on the ever-increasing role technology plays in contemporary society. Certainly, it shows it’s age, and you can tell the film premiered well before Star Wars hit cinema screens in 1977; but it seemed to me that that leant it a certain profundity. 2001, A Space Odyssey was created well before the advent of the internet or AI, but seems to foreshadow a world in which computers are becoming ever more dominant, lifelike, and essential to our daily lives. That gave the film a hint of ominousness which really resonated with me. It was enough to reflect to myself that all the characters really needed to do to shut Hal off was unplug their router. More to the point, though, much of the cinematography was truly spectacular, such as the use of camera framing to convey the sense that the characters were weightless. Frankly, a lot of it made my jaw drop in awe, and I couldn’t help lamenting to myself that they really don’t make films like this any more.

It is probably extremely strange that I find myself getting incredibly nervous if I don’t manage to blog. I have now been blogging for so long and so regularly that it is part of my daily routine, and I seem to get a desperate sensation of failure if I fail to post a blog entry at least every couple of days. Basically my personal assistant Artur was cleaning yesterday and accidentally unplugged my WiFi router at home, so I haven’t been online since. The cable should be fixed shortly, but until then my usual witterings might be suspended.

Call me old fashioned, but I still believe plays should have plots. That is, they should tell coherent stories with beginnings, middles and ends; and the audience should be able to discern the plot fairly easily. Watching a play is, after all, entertainment. John and I went to see Stereophonic last night. It was his idea, but naturally I’m always up for new things. Truth be told I knew absolutely nothing about David Adjmi’s 2023 play, but a night up in London always beats yet another evening watching TV.

What I found myself watching, however, was woefully disappointing: first of all, the wheelchair space at the Duke of York theatre was abysmal, and I could barely see half of the stage. That probably negatively effected my attitude, as quite frankly I found the performance as dull as ditchwater. It was set in a studio and was about members of a fictional Californian band creating an album. That, just about, is it. The way it dragged on about the character’s relationships frankly reminded me of a soap opera, and not a very entertaining one at that. I found the performance extremely dull, with very little in terms of action and intrigue, and quite frankly I didn’t see the point.

I know I should always relish going to the theatre. London is, after all, one of the most theatrical cities on Earth. The performance we went to last night, though, simply wasn’t up to scratch: The plot (inasmuch as there was one) was tiresome, the characterisation dull, the music uninspiring. I don’t know whether I missed some important detail or what, but last night could have been much better.

I’m quite sure that I’m speaking for us all when I say that there can be little more nationally embarrassing than the sight of your sovereign and other elected heads of state all effectively kissing the arse of a known conman, fraudster and charlatan, just because he happens to lead the world’s foremost superpower. Like everyone else I watched the footage of last night with disgust this morning: Trump putting on his statesman act, reading words he clearly barely understood, yet having the air of someone who assumed he was born to attend such dinners; King Charles clearly buttering him up, using carefully chosen words to keep the buffoon on our side, while obviously knowing full well that he was participating in nothing more than a charade. It was a sickening, perverse, spectacle. Especially given all the abject politics Trump represents, I’m sure I’m not the only person wondering how it came to this.

Perhaps one of the oddest things about being a blogger, and blogging as regularly as I do, is that you suspect that readers are expecting you to write about certain things on certain days. Political chap that I am, you’re probably all expecting me to write something about Trump’s visit today. Yet to be honest there isn’t much I can say: Having been shopping earlier, my corner of London seems perfectly normal; and as much as I loathe the egotistical jackass I’m not particularly interested whether Trump visits or not. You can probably take my contempt with the entire farce that is currently unfolding as read. Thus I think the best thing I can do today is direct everyone to this rather excellent Channel Four documentary about the twit and his pal Elon, just for a bit of background.

In other, non-political, far more cheerful news, I simply wouldn’t be able to call myself a blogger or cultural commentator if I didn’t direct everyone here today, simply because it was so awesome. I’m quite sure it got the entire country dancing around our living rooms like nutcases last night. Scaramoosh! Scaramoosh! Will you do the fandango?

I have tried to describe what I call ‘my rages‘ here before: how, probably due to the brain damage which brought about my Cerebral Palsy, I seem to feel and express emotions a lot more intensely than other people. It has always affected me. I remember, when I was very small, getting extremely upset at losing family board games – far moreso than either of my brothers. These intense feelings these days mean I get extremely worked up about politics, and for a few moments I feel uncontrollably angry whenever I see something I disagree with or object to on the news, rather like as demonstrated by Beavis here.

The thing is, I’m obviously no longer alone in getting so agitated. Society in general now seems to be fast descending into the same state of white-hot anger; it seems to be even worse in the States. There, political discourse in general seems to have descended to the level of playground bickering, or reactionary, hate-filled bile. People have resorted to open violence, seemingly totally refusing to see anything from anyone else’s point of view. Frankly, we are at a very, very dangerous juncture. Obviously the situation isn’t helped by their president openly fermenting such division; nor by their press being hijacked by the worst, most sickening reactionaries of them all. Yet I fear that, if society in general does not step away from this precipice of intolerance and animosity quite soon, something terrible will follow.

I really must stop blogging about items I’ve just seen on breakfast TV, but surely this is the coolest, most awesome thing I’ve seen in months. Like most people I suppose, I think Queen’s Bohemian Rhapsody is one of the greatest songs ever recorded. It was just revealed that it was performed a few days ago by a flash mob in Paris. A group of people got together to perform the piece seemingly on the spot in a Parisian square. Naturally I checked it out on Youtube, and it is absolutely spectacular – I particularly love the drum-kit reveal, although having a kid play the guitar in the place of the great Brian May was a bit lame. Of course it makes me wish I could have been there, but it seems J and I came back from Paris slightly too soon. On the other hand, it makes me wonder what other spontaneous happenings like this are possible: I’ll certainly be keeping an eye out on my trundles around London today.

Just as an update on this entry from last year, it would seem that Red Dwarf is now not making it’s long-awaited comeback: UKTV have now cancelled the reboot. According to this guy and confirmed/expanded upon here, cost played a major role in this turn of events, with broadcasters like UKTV no longer having the funds to commission big fictional television programmes. Needless to say, I think it’s quite a disappointment – you know how excited I get about such reboots. When Picard first appeared, I was squealing with excitement like I was five again; seeing Lister and co. make a similar reappearance would have been no less awesome. Mind you, it’s not that unusual for projects like this to hit such snags, so I wouldn’t be too hasty to write this reboot off completely.

Betty Brown really is an obnoxious, entitled, arrogant cow isn’t she? If you don’t recognise that name, Brown is one of the supposed victims of the Horizon Post Office fiasco; she was on the BBC Breakfast program this morning. Of course, we should have every sympathy for anyone caught up in that dreadful saga, but the way the nonagenarian bitch presented herself this morning really wound me up. She was acting as though she had the authority of an elected politician, or as if she knew far more than she clearly did. She had the audacity to attack Angela Rayner, even though she wasn’t asked for her opinion on the subject and it was completely off-topic. She appeared to think that being one of the many victims of this well known scandal had given her the right to say whatever she wanted on national television, and that people had to listen to her because of her great age, giving herself an air of arrogance and entitlement which I found sickening.

By the end of the piece, I had no sympathy for her whatsoever, and thought she should just pay what she clearly owed. I’m afraid, though, that such attitudes of entitlement are becoming ever more common: contemporary culture is developing into one where everyone sees theirself as some kind of victim, whose voice ought to be heard by everyone else. People like Brown are symptomatic of an increasingly entitled, individualistic culture. The way she conducted herself this morning really wound me up, but I’m afraid it’s just a sign of these increasingly fractious times.

As you may well know, I love Star Trek. I have been a massive Trekkie for most of my life. In Star Trek, we can read a future for humanity in which we have all united to explore the universe. It is one of the fictions I go to whenever I need strength and courage: through characters like Spock and Picard I gain my own resilience, fortitude and curiosity. With this in mind, would someone please explain what the zark this is.

On Saturday I got hopelessly and gloriously lost in exactly the way I like. I was trying to get to Beckenham, but ended up just following my nose. Fortunately for me, I found a bus heading straight back to Eltham. On the bus I set to work on my daily blog entry, but looking up from my iPad I noticed that the bus was heading past an interesting looking area I didn’t recognise at all: it seemed to be quite a new town centre I had yet to explore.

I headed back that way again today to check it out. I’d been there before, but not for some time. Bromley seems to have been redeveloped quite recently and appears to be flourishing. As I wrote here a couple of years ago, perhaps the mall there doesn’t quite rival the one at Stratford, but I would say it is approaching it in terms of commercial lavishness. I noticed there is an Apple store there, which could be useful the next time I have a problem with my computer. It just strikes me as strange, though, that all these lavish, high end shopping arcades are appealing all over south London, but they are still rather difficult to get to using public transport. The bus there and back today took at least half an hour. There might well be an overground train route, but that isn’t really on the cards for me. If London is building all this lavish new commercial space, you would think they would create the transport infrastructure to go with it. More to the point, it still troubles me that so much of this lavish new commercial space is being built in London, while the rest of the country is still being relatively neglected.

I’m not going to go into much detail, but over the last few days I have come across rather vast amounts of information putting my suspicions regarding what I call ‘cultural intrusion‘ beyond all doubt. From what I have been reading and watching online, it is now clear that people are increasingly claiming to have medical conditions or disabilities which they do not have, and making online content based on that claim. It seems not only to be actually happening but is in fact rife, particularly when it comes to conditions like Autism or Tourettes. It has even been termed Munchausens by Internet. I’ve already watched quite a few videos on it, of which this is a prime example.

Needless to say, as a disabled man I find this extremely troubling and insulting, as if these people have taken a part of my identity I’ve struggled with all my life to play with and exploit. Frankly, I keep thinking of all the severely autistic, profoundly disabled young people I have met over the years: when I see all these charlatans online, their hair dyed bright colours in order to look ‘different’, doing sickening imitations of their involuntary, often uncontrollable behaviours, my blood boils. It is as distasteful and insulting to me as white people painting their faces and claiming to be black. The question now is, what am I, as a disabled writer, blogger and activist, going to do about it?

Given the p’tahk will be appearing on the Sunday morning politics shows this morning, this astute summation of Farage seems rather apt.

A couple of days ago, I came across a post on a Monty Python Facebook fan page complaining that a film like Life Of Brian could never be made today as it would cause too much offence. Faith is one of those culturally sacrosanct things which we are no longer allowed to question or mock. I replied that, on the contrary, as society becomes increasingly aware of the inherent idiocy of religion, we become more accepting of films and other artworks mocking it. In these postmodern, intellectually engaged times, religion seems more absurd and anachronistic than it ever did. Besides, when Brian first came out in the seventies, the clergy were up in arms: how dare people poke fun at the set of nonsensical myths they based their authority on!? If everyone realised the myths were bollocks, how could they continue to use them to control us? Thus to pretend the film was universally welcomed when it first hit cinema screens is a clear misrepresentation.

That is, of course, still very much my position. Even so, thinking about it, the question is valid and worth exploring. Would a contemporary film mocking the Christ figure be welcomed or seen as discriminatory? And what if it mocked Mohammed or the Buddha instead? Is this something that I should look into more deeply? In these days of Political Correctness, Wokeism as well as heightened intercultural animosity, how might such a film be received?

Appalled as I am at BadEnoch’s demands that Angela Rayner resign when she obviously hasn’t done anything wrong, all I have to say today is, tax-dodging Tory scumbags in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones. It’s obvious that, at most, Rayner has just made an accounting error. That will be nothing compared to the tax-dodging schemes we hear Tory (and Reform) MPs being involved in almost weekly. For them to now start acting like pro-tax saints who always pay the on time and state without complaint is sickeningly hypocritical.

Autumn is such an untrustworthy, deceptive season: one minute the sky is blue, the next I’m desperately trying to get out of the torrential rain. This can certainly put a dampener on my daily trundles. However, I think I now have a new favourite way to explore: say I’m out and about and it suddenly starts absolutely chucking it down. I simply get on the first bus I can. I might not know where it’s going, or how I’ll get home, but at least I will keep my powerchair dry. Using this method I have been taken to completely new, unexplored areas of London. A few days ago, for instance, I came across a pretty little park the other side of Eltham which I didn’t know about. Perhaps autumn won’t be so bad after all.

Today I would just like to air an idea which I’ve been mulling over for a while. I admit it might not be practical or get any traction, but nonetheless I’d like to put it out into the electronic ether. As I go around all these fabulous places around London such as the O2, Canary Wharf or Stratford, naturally I go past lots of restaurants, and can smell the delicious food drifting out of them. The problem is, on my trundles I’m usually alone so I have nobody to help me eat. This means I can’t actually go into a restaurant to eat anything, which can be agonising, especially if I’m hungry. My idea, though, is this: would it be possible for restaurants, or at least larger ones, to have members of staff trained to feed people like me? I don’t mean a dedicated member of staff just waiting for someone like me to show up, but an otherwise ordinary member of the waiting team.

I know that sounds rather far fetched, especially given customers like me will be quite rare, and most disabled people have their own personal assistants following them around to help with such matters anyway. Yet, from my perspective, it would be a great help: it would mean I could go into a restaurant I was passing, order something to eat, and someone there would be available to feed it to me. It would make eating out far more inclusive. A far fetched idea I admit, but one I just needed to air.

Huge Tolkien fan that I am, I will always be extremely glad that, when the book came to be adapted for cinema, it was done as faithfully and reverently as possible by Peter Jackson. His three-film masterpiece still stands at the pinnacle of popular mainstream cinema. If you want a glimpse of how screwed up it could have been, just check this out. It’s slightly long and is just a summary of an unmade screenplay, but from the sound of it, John Boorman’s unmade 1970 adaptation of The Lord of the Rings would have been utterly catastrophic. I just wanted to flag it up here A) because it’s so amusingly psychodelic, and B) because it would have been so awful, naked dancing elves, Frodo shagging Galadriel and all.

If you’re interested, the script itself can be read here.