Hillary dies

Not her, the interesting one. Sir Edmund Hillary died a few hours ago. The Telegraph obituary will be up in a minute.

He was disappointed towards the end of his life that people, no doubt picking their way over the KFC buckets and cans of Stella, were reaching the summit in droves.

There is a point to being the first up Everest. There is also a point in saying that the reason you do it is to "knock the bugger off". There seems precious little reason to do it when your claim to fame will be that you are the youngest bisexual asthmatic from Omaha.

Find your own Everest, as Hillary used to counsel.

Happy 100th Birthday, Doctor (Who)

It would have been William Hartnell's 100th birthday today. Today is also the birthday of Elvis Presley, Shirley Bassey, David Bowie, Lawrence Alma-Tadema, Wilkie Collins, Carl Rogers, Dennis Wheatley, Roy Kinnear, Graham Chapman, John McTiernan, Arse Kelly, Stephen Hawking...

Is there anything in that astrology? (The answer is no.)

Spam

I've started getting spam comments on the blog (hence the removal of a couple). I don't look back down the old stuff all that much, so there may be more.

The reasons I thought these two were spam were (1) the first was entirely in Spanish and seemed to mention money (2) the second was from someone I'd never heard of who was delighted to meet me at the airport the other day (I haven't flown in the past three months) and pointed me at her website.

Is it a compliment to get drivel added to your site?

On the subject of blogs and their usefulness, or otherwise, can we start a campaign to get Uncle Zip's Window back up?

I know Mike has to earn a living and all that, but I really think folk ought to camp out in Barnes with placards saying "M John Harrison belongs to the people".