We rose as one

JOHN GLOSTER-SMITH (Horsham Staff 74-75) reflects on the Susan Boyle phenomenon.

"Riches beyond compare"

A GLOWING tribute to hospital chaplain Judith Thompson (Lillie, 1's & 7's 53-63).

Here today

HOLLY WALSH (LHB 92-99) hates temping (3 minutes):



Visit Holly's YouTube channel

Seven Deadly Glasses

THE Seven Deadly Sins inspire a set of wine glasses designed by Kacper Hamilton (Ma A, Gr E 98-05).

The curse of inherited wealth

NICK FOULKES (Th B 76-83) is starting to believe in it:

The best man at my wedding…enjoyed enough inherited money to enable him to give up working for a management consultancy firm when it became rather dull… After a few years he was found dead following a heroin overdose. The excitement of youth looks rather different when viewed from the pews in the chapel of a suburban cemetery.

Roller coaster ride

WATCH out for CH references in this novel by Zoë Higginson (Brickel, Hertford & Col A 83-90). (It's also available via Amazon and other online book stores.)

Lonely goatherds

THE three Extreme Cellists - the middle one's Jeremy Dawson (La B, La A 87-94) - perform "Climb Every Mountain" on the summit of Ben Nevis in July 2008 (2½ minutes):

At Number 10

CHRIS BURNS (Md B 72-79, Governor) meets the Prime Minister at a Downing Street reception to launch the Rugby Football Union's Injured Players Foundation.

Chris, who broke his neck playing for the CH 1st XV against the Old Blues in 1978, is a long-serving senior official of the RFU.

Gordon Brown lost the sight in one eye as a result of a rugby injury in his youth.

Pooh Two

DUE for publication in October, Return to the Hundred Acre Wood is the first authorised sequel to A A Milne's Winnie-The-Pooh books.

Its fearless illustrator - stepping into the shoes of E H Shepard - is Mark Burgess (Md B 68-75).

While Trongon slept

…THE world kept turning - so, to make up for my seventeen-month absence from blogging, here are more than 200 links about Old Blues and former staff whose dates at CH range from 1793 to 2008, most of which have never been published before on any CH-related website.

Talent in Bloom

THE uncrushable London band Nately tends to shrink and grow as alarmingly as Alice. When it was down to just two members, Niall Barker (Pe B & A 84-91) and Alex Selby-Boothroyd (Md B & A 84-91), they made this curious video (their first) to go with their haunting ditty "Are You Lonely, Mrs Bloom?" (3 minutes):

MS? We don't know

JUST spotted Multiple Sclerosis Society chief executive Simon Gillespie (Col A 70-77) on the TV news, reacting to a survey that says four out of ten people can't name a single symptom of MS and the same number think it ends inevitably in a wheelchair. Only one in four knows it can strike in your twenties or thirties.

Simon's a former Royal Navy officer who previously held senior posts at the Healthcare Commission and the Charity Commission.

"I hated CH"

SAD to see this caption above the schoolboy memories of Roger Highfield (Mid B 69-75), New Scientist editor and bestselling author.

Perhaps it's misleading, as the phrase "little boys" suggests he's referring to his junior house days rather than his whole CH career. I hope so.

Bluecoat Concert in London next month

Click to enlarge:

Tudortube

IS this the oldest Old Blue ever to inspire a TV series? The work of scholar and educator William Camden (CH c. 1560) underlies Nicholas Crane's Britannia: The Great Elizabethan Journey, currently running on BBC2. Crane takes a 5,000-mile hike to rediscover the landmarks featured in Camden's seminal travel log Britannia. (If you missed the first episode, never fear, it's still there on BBC iplayer).

Trident 'the Devil's tool of choice'

IN the interests of political balance, here's comedian and activist Mark Thomas (CB 74-81) addressing the Troops Out No Trident demo in Trafalgar Square this February:

Old Blue interviews David Cameron

THE Leader of the Opposition had this to say to Theo Usherwood (TB, MdB 92-99) of the Nottingham Evening Post.

Theo was recently shortlisted for 'Young Journalist of the Year' in the Regional Press Awards.

Bashing Bernard

ONE of the best-known incidents in the history of British live television, courtesy of YouTube.

The year is 1963¹. Journalist and critic Bernard Levin (PB 37-45) is taking part in the satirical BBC programme That Was The Week That Was ², but waiting to assault him is Desmond Leslie, incensed at Levin’s hostile review of a performance by Leslie’s then wife, the singer and actress Agnes Bernelle…



Full marks to Levin for his composure.

(Best YouTube comment: ‘disgusting that such brutal horrer [sic] is displayed where the innocent eyes of youth could be scrambled and deranged...no wonder we live in fear my god...’)
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¹ Or possibly 1962 – accounts vary.

² At least one of whose writers was an Old Blue, Sydney Carter (PB 1926/27-33).

The blonder blogger

Amy Leadbeater (BB, GrW 00-02), better known to readers of the Unofficial CH Forum as 'blondie95', is writing a blog entitled Leadpencils.

Personally I don't think there’s enough about coal in it, but good luck to her anyway.

Meanwhile the current CH Actor in Residence John Garfield-Roberts has started a blog called 1 actor, 1 school, 2 years in which he intends to chronicle his ordeal.

And the author of the shortlived blog Musings of a Drama Queen was a female Old Blue reading zoology at Liverpool. No name given, but you might well recognise her photo.

Father and son

Good news for Abingdon School and a couple of Abingdon churches: hefty bequests to them all from a former teacher, Hugh Randolph.

The link with CH is Thomas Berkeley Randolph (PA 1913-23), Archdeacon of Hereford and father of devout churchman Hugh.