Piers Morgan coy over country matters

Posted by Axegrinder on 2 June 2009 at 11:35
Tags: I'm Sorry I Haven't a Clue, Piers Morgan, Radio Four, Stephen Fry, Uncategorized

In his unsurprisingly piss-poor column The Insider, in The Mail on Sunday’s Live magazine, Piers Morgan says he and Stephen Fry “haven’t really seen eye to eye since he once went on Radio 4 and invented a new word to describe murdering me”.

Sadly, Piers decided the word coined by Fry was “too rude even to repeat in this column”.

For those who may not have heard Fry on that famous edition of I’m Sorry I Haven’t a Clue, Axegrinder is happy to reveal that the word in question was “countryside”.

May you never forget John Martyn’s leg-pulling

Posted by Axegrinder on 2 February 2009 at 18:15
Tags: Allan Jones, Colin Patterson, Melody Maker, Radio Four, Uncategorized, Uncut

When singer John Martyn revealed in 2003 that his right leg had been amputated below the knee, he mischievously told some reporters this was because he’d been involved in a collision with a cow when worse the wear for drink. 

Although there had been an incident with a wayward cow 12 months before, the leg amputation was actually the result of a burst cyst. 

Fast forward to last Thursday, when Martyn died aged 60, and listeners to Radio Four’s Six O’Clock News heard entertainment reporter Colin Patterson, in a hastily compiled obit, repeat the old tale of the leg amputation being “due to an encounter with a dark cow on a dark night”. 

Ah, the dangers of playing jokes on journalists. The jokes live on in the cuttings library.

And for those who think war correspondents are the only journalists to risk life and limb, Axegrinder recommends you read Uncut editor Allan Jones’s brilliant account of his encounter with Martyn for Melody Maker before a gig at Leeds University in 1975.