.. before I email the BBC. Read more

OK, I looked at the question, thought that 'maths is about finding the simplest and easiest answer' and said '120 x 1'. I'm kicking myself slightly for not thinking of sqrt(120) x sqrt(120) first 🙂

JA(7) saw that 120 is a multiple of 20 and worked out that '20 x 6' was 120.

L said '2 x 60'.

Adult visitor P said that seven year olds probably wouldn't know anything higher than their twelve times tables and said '12 x 10'.

You lot had… Read more

From a SATS key stage 2 (i.e. for 6-7 year olds) practice question…

Harry multiplied two numbers together. His answer was 120. Which two numbers could he have multiplied together?

I'm listening to the complete Round The Horne and in an 1967 episode, Kenneth Horne spots an ad for Julian and Sandy's latest venture, the Bona Bijou Tourette travel agency, via an ad in his monthly copy of Breezy Pics incorporating The Leather News and Amateur Paediatrician. I wonder if they lose that last bit in the BBC7 repeats?

Best lines, when trying to talk Horne out of going to Malaga:

Sandy: 'You know he got very badly stung.'
Horne: 'Portuguese man o'war?'
Jules: 'Well, I never saw him in uniform…'

I really will find and finish my 'review of 2008' soon, but apparently Don John (which I was greatly looking forward to seeing at the end of December) will be coming to London's Battersea Arts Centre in April for a month.

The email from the RSC (who hosted the original run) has two quotes:

'Magnificent… the finest Kneehigh production I have seen' Five stars Financial Times

'There's nothing to beat this company at their inventive best' Time Out

.. to which I have two comments:

How many Kneehigh productions have they seen? Just looking at their recent stuff, Brief Encounter, Cymbeline, and Nights at the Circus were all much better than this.

I would almost agree with the second (Improbable are better, but not much else) however alas Don John is not them at their inventive best.

The basic idea is interesting – take Don Giovanni, update it a bit (they've set it in the late 1970s), emphasise the women (who all retain their names from the opera, whereas all the men's names are changed) and… well it goes a bit wrong from there.

Including snatches of the opera only serves to remind you that it is better than this (disclaimer: it's my favourite opera) and I'll see if I can refind the review I agreed with that for some strange reason the RSC isn't quoting.

It was the LGBT Consortium conference today and I was asked late on to do something there.

More later, but it was staggering how Michael Cashman MEP stood out compared to everyone else. In his fifteen minute speech, the b-word never once passed his lips (and he skipped lightly over the not so good bits of Labour's record on LGBT rights). He even managed to rename LGBT History Month, when asked a question about it, to 'Lesbian and Gay History Month'. Oh, and homophobia only affects lesbians and gay men, apparently.

The name of the organisation he's so proud of having helped found? Stonewall. You'd never guess…

Someone's published a map of how many steps it takes to walk between inner London tube stations:

You'd think they'd get one of the basic tourist gotchas right – it does not take 822+1,275 steps to get from Queensway to Bayswater… That route probably involves walking to Notting Hill Gate, turning round, going back past Queensway and up the road to Bayswater! I'm a bit dubious about Euston to King's Cross St Pancras being under seventy steps less than Euston Square to Kings X too, plus they're ignoring the District / Hammersmith and City version of Edgware Road, thus meaning you can't see what they reckon it would take to walk the Circle Line.

A more useful map would show the number of steps needed to make the changes at the various interchanges. Some are trivial 'cross the platform' ones, others are hikes in themselves.