29 May 2008 | Comment, United Kingdom
Mary Whitehouse was a shrill provocateur on a relentless crusade to stifle, oppress and scare, writes
Padraig Reidy
Mary Whitehouse has always been a peripheral idea in my life — one of those puppets on Spitting Image I never really recognised as a child, but laughed at anyway, because if I didn’t seem to be paying attention, my parents might revoke the ‘being allowed up late to watch Spitting Image’ licence they had so generously granted.
Later, in my smart-arsed adolescence, came the Mary Whitehouse Experience, the apotheosis of smart-arsed comedy. I don’t think I really knew where the name came from, save from the notion of some batty old woman.
That batty old woman turned up again last night, in the BBC’s Filth: The Mary Whitehouse Story. Whitehouse herself was played by Julie Walters, which, to me at least, immediately makes her a sympathetic character: everyone likes Julie Walters, not least because she generally plays likeable people. The casting directors might claim they merely picked a great actor (and Walters is a great actor) but I can’t help being reminded of the casting of Brad Pitt as an IRA volunteer in The Devil’s Own: back then, the producers furiously rebuffed notions that they were “glamorising” the IRA, but, being honest, the very fact of casting Pitt had to imply glamour. Pitt is intrinsically glamorous, and Walters is intrinsically likeable.
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27 May 2008 | Africa
A truck carrying thousands of copies of Zimbabwe’s leading independent newspaper was burned out last weekend, writes Wilf Mbanga
A 14-tonne truck containing 60,000 copies of last weekend’s edition of the Zimbabwean on Sunday was burned out as it attempted to deliver the newspapers.
The driver, Christmas Ramabulana, a South African national, and distribution assistant Tapfumaneyi Kancheta, a Zimbabwean, were stopped 67km from Masvingo and forced to drive along the Chivi-Mandamabwe road for 16km before they turned off into the Mandamabwe road, where the truck and its contents were set alight. The two men were badly beaten by their kidnappers and abandoned in the bush. They made their way to Masvingo, from where they contacted the Zimbabwean’s Harare office.
Kancheta said his head was badly swollen from the savage beating, and the driver was reported to be having problems breathing.
The Zimbabwean on Sunday was launched in February this year as a sister paper to the popular weekly the Zimbabwean, which since last year has become the largest selling newspaper in Zimbabwe — selling 230,000 copies a week at its peak during the run-up to the landmark 2008 elections.
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22 May 2008 | News
Lawyers representing journalist Shiv Malik and Greater Manchester Police were today told to draft new production orders as judges adjourned to consider their decision in Malik’s attempt to quash an order relating to materials for his book Leaving Al Qaeda.
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22 May 2008 | News, United Kingdom
Journalist Shiv Malik’s attempt to have a production order served on him by police resumes at the Royal Courts of Justice this morning. Malik, 27, was ordered to hand over notes, tapes and other materials relating to his book Leaving Al Qaeda, co-authored with former Al Muhajiroun member Hassan Butt.
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