大象传媒

Following the UDA show of strength on , I talked today, on Talk Back, to Frankie Gallagher of the Ulster Protestant Research Group, who read a statement to the press at Saturday's rally on behalf of the "inner council" of the UDA. Frankie Gallagher prefered to describe the gathering as a "show of solidarity" and told me that Northern Ireland needs the UDA in order to deal with paramilitary criminality.

I put it to him that much of the criminality he was talking about is being carried out by members of the UDA. He agreed. So, according to this logic, our community needs the UDA in order to deal with criminality that comes from the UDA.

One listener texted in to ask, "If the UDA is for the good of the general public, why do they hide their faces behind masks?"

The government today to remove a loophole in Northern Ireland's anti-discrimination legislation. is the title of the public consultation on new "proposals to outlaw discrimination on the ground of sexual orientation in the provision of goods and services in Northern Ireland". Today also marks the start of Belfast's week-long annual , but I understand that the launch date is purely coincidental.

Under these proposals, businesses turning away gay or lesbian customers because of their sexuality will have broken the law. I recall chairing a phone-in show on radio last year when we discussed the case of a gay couple who were not permitted to lodge at a family-run guesthouse because the owners were uncomfortable with their sexual orientation. This is the kind of scenario these new proposals are designed to capture.

Religious organisations are to have exemptions if a particular service is "linked to religious observance or pracices that arise from the basic doctrines of a faith" (Getting Equal, p. 39), but no exemptions are proposed in cases where a service is provided for commercial purposes or in cases where a religious organisation offers a service with a social or welfare focus (such as a social group for the elderly or a parents and toddlers group).

Take the case of a gay couple with an adopted child who wish to join a parents and toddlers group at a local church. If that church refused them admission to the group because, for example, other parents were uncomfortable with a gay couple being part of the group, or because the church claimed it did not wish to give the appearance of moral acceptance vis-a-vis the gay couple's relationship -- in either case, the new proposals recognise that the church will have discriminated against the couple (a breech of the civil law, rather than a criminal offence).

I'll explore these and other scenarios on tomorrow's Sunday Sequence with PA Mag Lochlain, president of the Northern Ireland Gay Rights Association, Bob Collins, the chief commissioner of the , and , MLA and spokesperson for the Christian campaign group Caleb.

Okay, I put my hands up. In a post on Wednesday, on the 150th anniversary of Bernard Shaw's birth, I had so much fun at the expense of the Irish Times leader writer who confused Heartbreak House with Hearkbreak Hotel that I neglected to speelcheck my own piece and misspelt Pygmalion as Pigmalion. Mark Adair, 大象传媒 Northern Ireland's ever-vigilant Secretary and Head of Public Policy, spotted the lapse. I could try to disguise 'Pigmalion' as a deliberately Shavian re-spelling; instead, I shall simply advertise here for a sub-editor and thank Mark for being gracious enough not to mock me with a well-deserved written comment.

So, Northern Ireland now has two paranormal investigation groups. I was joined on today's Not the Nolan Show by two members of the newly formed . Michael Hirons and Barry Fitzgerald are keen enthusiasts without any scientific training and claim to have discovered evidence of paranormal activity using high-tech equipment.

Within seconds of talking, we had callers lining up to come on air and share their experiences of being thrown off chairs by invisible forces. One lady even told us about the day she drove past a pre-famine village in Donegal -- accompanied in the car by her husband and three children -- only to discover the next day that the village they clearly saw had vanished completely. Each of these experiences is fascinating and each merits investigation. But what kind of investigation? There is only one academic department in any UK university specialising in parapsychology -- the at Edinburgh University (established through money left in the wills of the writer Arthur Koestler and his wife Cynthia).

Why do (apparently) so many people describe bizarre experiences of these kinds? Are our minds playing tricks on us? Are we leaping to paranormal accounts of episodes best explained in terms of illusion, deception, or a psychological convulsion of sorts? Or is it possible that there is more at work in our world, and in our minds, that we at first realised? The same kinds of questions can be asked of apparently miracluous events. Which explanation makes more sense to us today?

In early August, the journalist Rageh Omar will be presenting a three-part TV series for 大象传媒 One examining some of the most famous biblical miracle stories and asking if they stand up to scrutiny today. On Sunday, I'll introduce a similar discussion featuring the Oxford philosopher , who has written one of the most important philosophical studies of in the past .

What would have happened if Franco's Nationalist forces had lost the Spanish Civil War and the Republicans had won?

Counterfactual history questions are both fascinating and infuriating. Franco's success in 1939 -- at a cost of some 200,000 lives -- plunged Spain into a military dictatorship that lasted, essentially, until he died in 1975. Only then could democracy begin to emerge again in Spain. If the Republican forces had defeated Franco, would Spain have been plunged into a Communist satelite dictatorship lasting even longer, until the collapse of the Soviet Union? I've been pondering that question today, having spent part of my morning interviewing the military historian Antony Beevor about his new book, .

The book is a revamp of Beevor's 1982 history of the war, with new insights provided by his explorations in the recently opened Russian archives -- from which we learn a great deal more about, for example, Stalin's penchant for political spin in the period leading up to the war. You can hear the interview with Beevor on this week's Sunday Sequence. In addition to that counterfactual historical question, I explore with him the extent to which the Spanish civil war can be seen as a curtain-raiser to the global conflict that immediately followed it, the myths and misperceptions that still surround Spain's civil war, and resonances of the war in contemporary Spanish politics.

Many tourists from Britan and Ireland will spend part of this summer in Spain (indeed, something like one in five of Ireland's adult population apparently owns a second home in Spain). Isn't it remarkable, and deeply tragic, that those places we visit for the sunshine and the sangria were only seventy years ago flowing with a generation of Spanish blood?

A late-in-the-day post following my whistle-stop tour of Shaw's Dublin on this the 150th anniversary of his birth. The day began at 33 Synge Street, Shaw's birthplace in south inner city Dublin (pictured), where Angela Grayson was my guide. Standing in the bedroom where Shaw was born, Angela explained that he had been born feet first -- and a breech birth seems like a perfectly Shavian entrance. I was expecting a blue plaque marking the great writer's birth on the exterior of this very modest Victorian terrace. Instead, there is a sizeable marble memorial at the side of the door, and this reads: "BERNARD SHAW: AUTHOR OF MANY PLAYS WAS BORN IN THIS HOUSE, 26 JULY 1856". Quite an understated description of Ireland's first Nobel prize winner and the author of more than fifty plays who, at one time, was the most widely produced English-language dramatist after Shakespeare.

In the drawing room, where Shaw played piano as a child, we were treated to a lovely recital by the singer and actress Eileen O Sullivan. She performed "The Angel's Message", a typically melancholic Victorian song written by Shaw's mother Lucinda Carr Shaw. As I looked out from the window of Shaw's bedroom, on the first floor at the back of the house, I reflected on how unhappy his childhood was -- an emotionally distant mother who loved music but deprived him of basic lessons on the piano he loved, and an alcoholic father. No wonder he took refuge in the National Gallery of Ireland, a ten-minute walk from the family home, which was where he fell in love with art.

That was my next stop. I met up with Raymond Keaveney, the Gallery's current director, in the room housing Giovanni di Paolo's extraordinary Crucifixion (c. 1450). This is one of seventy-seven paintings and fourteen sculptures acquired by the gallery since Shaw's death in 1950 as a result of his bequest. The money has also partly-funded the building of the magnificent Millenium Wing (pictured). Richard explained that Shaw's legacy brings in about a quarter of a million euro annually -- a very useful addition to the Gallery's budget which will continue until the copyright on the author's works runs out in 2020.

A few rooms away, the Curator of British Art, Adrian Le Harival, introduced me to the wonderful stature of Shaw by the Russian sculptor Prince Paul Troubetskoy which is the centre-piece of their anniversary exhibition. Then the Gallery's archivist, Leah Benson, showed me original letters and documents relating to the Shaw bequest, including the now famous postcard Shaw wrote in 1944 to a former director of the Gallery in which he mooted the idea of including the Gallery in his will. I also saw the original, handwritten minutes of the Gallery's Board meetings at which the legacy was discussed. It seems clear that the Board, at the time quite understandably, thought this would be one of similar bequests that sometimes come their way. Neither they nor Shaw could have anticipated the extraordinary success of the Broadway and Hollywood versions of My Fair Lady, following Shaw's death, and how this would transform what looked like a modest gift into a multi-million pound legacy.

The actor and director Alan Stanford gave a presentation in the afternoon, in the Shaw Room appropriately enough, and I interviewed him a few minutes before he went out to a packed auditorium to extoll the virtues of Shaw's literary legacy. Alan is a busy man: he is simultaneously director of the production of The Constant Wife currently playing at the Gate Theatre and performing in Conall Morrision's production of The Importance of Being Ernest at the Abbey Theatre. I asked him why there is not a single Shaw play being staged in Dublin at the moment; he fears that Dublin has 'forgotten' Shaw. Perhaps -- though Pygmalion was last staged at the Gate just two years ago.

From the National Gallery to Trinity College, Dublin, to meet Professor Nicholas Grene from the School of English. He calls himself a 'Shaw Partisan' and he has an encyclopedic knowlege of all things Shavian, as befits the author of critical studies of Shaw and the introduction to a recent edition of Pygmalion. We talked about Shaw's attitude to Ireland, his political philosophy, the various stages of his development as a writer (from art and music critic, through experimental novelist, to playwright), and his relevance and appeal today. A perfect end to a day of exploration in Shaw's Dublin.

Now all we need to do is translate all of that into a 20 minute radio programme. It may prove easier to produce a Shavian version of the Dublin phonebook.

One last thing. Today's Irish Times included an excellent full-page article on Shaw -- "Superman of the modern age" by Peter Gahan -- and a very thoughtful editorial making a case for the restoration of Shaw's reputation in Ireland: "[the] best of his work deserves its place in theatrical immortality and his reputation here deserves some measure of restoration. A production of at least one of his plays during this anniversary would have been a good start." Alas, the same editorial, in a list of his "better known works for the stage", Shaw's anti-imperialist black comedy Heartbreak House is accidentally renamed 'Heartbreak Hotel'. Oops.

I've been asked today about the term 'Shavian', and why this curious adjective is used to describe Shaw-like char- acteri- stics (or, in its noun form, admirers of Shaw). The term is a of 'Shaw' (from Shavius), and is pronounced 'Shave Ian'. But that merely explains its origins. Why prefer this term to the more obvious 'Shawian'? Indeed, given Shaw's disparagement of the Roman-English alphabet and its logical and phonetic inconsistencies, wouldn't Shawian be more Shavian?

In any case, and continuing the Latin theme, I can't resist reproducing one of my favourite portraits of Shaw -- Augustus John's , which is titled 'When Homer Nods: Portrait of George Bernard Shaw, 1915'.

The literary reference here is, of course, to the Latin poet Horace (65-8 B.C.), who famously wrote: 鈥淪ometimes even the noble Homer nods鈥� (Ars Poetica I.359), meaning that even the author of the Illiad and the Odyssey was capable of a literary or factual slip here and there. Legend has it that Homer was blind, and critics are quick to point out how often Shaw was capable of a slip himself: he lauded regime, and made comments about policies that are extremely naive if not downright anti-semitic. Fair enough, but Shaw's greatest biographer, , is just as quick to point out that even these typically provocative interventions by Shaw need to be read with an eye to irony and context.

D Smyth is right to draw attention to Shaw's fascination with the English alphabet and his desire to see a new alphabet free of some of the oddities he associated with our current writing system. Part of the legacy money I mentioned earlier went to fund the creation of a new alphabet that would resist the phonetic weirdness of the Roman-English system. Shaw was an early disciple of phonetics as a discipline (a fascination clearly evident in Pygmalion), and did most of his writing in phonetically-based shorthand.

His will stipulated that the first 21 years of posthumous royalities from all his works should be used to fund the development of a phonetic alphabet, comprising some 40 or so letters -- he wanted to create an 'alfabet' enabling us to resist the strangeness of words like 'through', which is pronounced 'thru' but looks like it should rhyme with 'rough'. (What would he have made of our current text-messaging 'system': soz i 4gt 2 fon u. cu l8r -- if you need a translation, try .)

Had Shaw's wishes been honoured, his alphabet project would have received hundreds of thousands of pounds (today, millions of pounds). Appropriately enough, the whole project was overseen by Sir , MP for Bath, and the grandson of , the creator of Pitman Shorthand. James Pitman was himself a of some importance.

But, following a legal challenge by two of the three main institutional beneficiaries -- the British Museum and RADA (the National Gallery of Ireland, to its credit, refused to participate in the challenge) -- the project was given a mere 拢8,300. Part of the money awarded to the alphabet project paid for a public competition which eventually produced what is now known as the , much of it the work of the typographer Kingsley Read. Most of the remaining legacy funded the publication (by Penguin, in November 1962) of the only book ever to be printed in the new script: Shaw's play Androcles and the Lion.

There are some excellent Shavian links for those who wish to find out more about Shaw, phonetics and the alphabet project.

Thanks to Davy Sims for blogsitting while I've been away.

I'm back into the thick of things, working on in preparation for a Radio 3 interval programme I'll be presenting during this year's 大象传媒 Proms to mark the 150th anniversary of Shaw's birth in Dublin. Wednesday is the actual anniversary, so I'll be going to Dublin for the day, accompanied by Declan McGovern, the programme's producer, and taking in a full schedule of events celebrating Shaw's life and legacy. We'll start our literary expedition in Dublin's Synge Street, the site of the Victorian terrace that was and first home (he ended his very long life at the old rectory in in Hertfordshire, that was to be his home for forty years).

Like Wilde's, Shavian aphorisms speckle our language -- "Youth is a wonderful thing. What a crime to waste it on children", "England and America are two countries separated by a common language", "If all economists were laid end to end, they would not reach a conclusion", "He who can, does. He who cannot, teaches", "All great truths begin as blasphemies" -- but that easy quotability can, ironically, reduce a writer's reputation so that we see him or her merely as a pun factory or a wit machine. Mark Twain is another case in point.

Shaw's literary contribution is far greater than a few entries in the Oxford Dictionary of Quotations, nor is his legacy merely literary. In this programme, I want to explore Shaw's gift to contemporary Dublin in his decision to leave a third of his postumous royalties to the -- a gift that multiplied massively following the worldwide success of the musical , based on his play (1912), which was first performed on stage in 1956 (six years after Shaw's death), becoming a phenomenally successful film in 1964 (though will want me to point out that a movie version of , of the same name, predates My Fair Lady by 26 years).

Shaw didn't need his Nobel prize money to be a wealthy man. He once commented that "Nobel prize money is a lifebelt thrown to a swimmer who has already reached the shore in safety". But his legacy money has helped steer the National Gallery away from some trecherous waters over the years. And quite right too, since this self-educated Nobel laureate left school at the age of 15, and said that a good part of his childhood education came from vists to the National Gallery, where there is today a and a number of important acquisitions purchased with his gift, including works by Pissarro and Giovanni di Paolo. "In our ends are our beginnings," as Shaw might have put it, but he had to leave something aphoristic for his fellow Nobel laureate TS Eliot to say.

There have been two interesting events this week in my job as Editor New Media in Northern Ireland. First was a demonstration of the 大象传媒 iPlayer which is an advance on the iMP (integrated media player). The concept is pretty simple - download and watch any TV or radio programme for a week after transmission. Yet it is incredibly complex to deliver. We can probably look forward to the first version being delivered to your PCs around about March next year.

The second was a long discussion yesterday about how the 大象传媒's website will continue to develop into the next generation of WWW (usually called Web 2.0 - a phrase I dislike); how we make the web simpler, more intuitive and provide a way for the audience/users to make the site their own.

On the way to the Web 2.0 meeting I was with an old friend. "But where are we going to get the time?" he pleaded. "Someone told me that I wouldn't be switching on the radio to listen any more - I'd have to pre-choose all the programmes and download them. Now you're telling me I have to do the same with TV?" The good news for all schedulers everywhere, the schedule is not dead. Good news for the 99% of us who collapse at the end of the day in front of the TV - the Google Box will not replace the Goggle Box. We will have a greater choice of what we want to see and hear, when we want it - but it's not DIY 24/7.

In (1. Physiological 2. Safety 3. Love/Belonging 4. Esteem 5. Actualization) there is no 6. Downloading. It's not a need - just a convenience.

William has asked me to guest blog here while he wilts with over work and high temperatures. Meanwhile here in the air conditioned penthouse on the 15th floor of Broadcasting House in Belfast, I鈥檓 happy to write. It has taken a few days because I couldn鈥檛 find my password.

If you haven鈥檛 noticed it, the buzzword/buzzphrase of the month is 鈥淭he Long Tail鈥�. With the publication of Chris Anderson鈥檚 book and his recent UK tour, the phrase is on the lips of every new media .

The idea of The Long Tail began in Chris鈥檚 Wired Magazine鈥檚 article of the in October 2004. The first time I heard it was much more recently on Radio 4鈥檚 In Business (which I recommend to anyone interested in emerging/new media. I think in this programme. I had the book by last Friday and finished it on Monday. The book is really interesting and an easy read 鈥� as you would expect from the editor of Wired. But I鈥檓 not convinced it needed a whole book. The original article covers the essence of the argument and there is a very good section on Choice and Finding Content which I found provoking and informative. What鈥檚 the point of all this content if you can鈥檛 find it or you can鈥檛 lead people to it? It is a fundamental question in this digital age and the biggest challenge to all of us in digital media.

That (rather) minor criticism aside, I enjoyed the book and I learned something. While I didn鈥檛 throw it away half way through 鈥� I rather scan read it to the end.

If digital media is something you are interested (and particularly the economics of digital media I suggest you start with the Wired article before progressing to the book.

You can also follow Chris鈥檚 progress on

Join me and my guests on Sunday from 8.30 am for this week's edition of Sunday Sequence.

UNETHICAL EMBRYOS?: The use and abuse of the human embro has been much in the news this week, both in the Republic and in Britain. The High Court in Dublin will decide on Tuesday whether documents signed by a husband four years ago consenting to fertility treatment for his now-estranged wife constitute consent by him to have three frozen embryos taken out of storage and implanted in her uterus. Meanwhile, researchers at Newcastle University reported a breakthrough enabling sperm grown from embryonic stem cells to be used to produce offspring -- leading to the inevitable tabloidization of the story in the claim than science is about to make men redundant. We'll examine both stories with Carol Coulter, legal affairs correspondent of the Irish Times, the cell biologist Professor Colin McGuckin from Newcastle Univeresity, and Josephine Quintavalle from the lobby group Comment on Reproductive Ethics.

EXCOMMUNICATION: Last week, a cardinal called for Catholic scientists involved in stem cell research to be excommuniced. But is excommunication a threat anyone takes seriously anymore? Is it a medieval control mechanism with no place in the modern world? The theologican Father Tom Norris from St Patrick's College, Maynooth, joins the writer and broadcaster Lavinia Byrne, and Diarmaid MacCulloch, professor of ecclesiastical history at Oxford University. We'll also invite the philosopher Peter Cave to mark the 350's anniversary of the 'excommunication' of one of the greatest minds of the Enlightenment -- the Jewish philosopher Baruch Spinoza.

SEXIST CRIMES: Much of today's crime is rooted in men's attitude to women. That's one of the conclusions of a new report by the independent think tank The Crime and Society Foundation at King's College, London, which also contends that systemic misogyny and sexism across British society must be confronted. The report's author, Richard Garside outlines his research findings, with a response from Goretti Horgan, chair of the Northern Ireland Anti-Poverty Network.

THE LIFE OF GALILEO: Judith Elliott reviews David Hare's production of The Life of Galileo by Bertolt Brecht, at the National Gallery in London.

BEIRUT: As Israel steps up its offensive to free two Israeli soldiers seized by the militant Islamic group Hezbollah ("the party of God"), we examine the history and objectives of Hezbollah with Amal Saad al-Ghorayeb, a professor at the Lebanehse American University, and author of Hezbollah: Politics and Religion.

THE PRAYING AGNOSTIC: Sir Anthony Kenny joins us live on Sunday's programme to talk about his new book, What I Believe. A former Catholic priest, who left the priesthood in 1963 after losing his faith, he became one of Britain's leading postwar intellectuals, serving as both Master of Balliol College, Oxford, and President of the British Academy, and distinguishing himself as an academic philosopher and author. I'll ask him why, as an agnostic, he still sometimes prays.

You can listen to Sunday Sequence online, on digital, on FM and on Medium Wave.

Meet , a Republican Congressman representing Georgia's 8th District. He has campaigned for the Ten Commandments to be placed in courthouses, schools and other public buildings across the United States -- a major flashpoint in America's culture wars. Foolishly, as it turns out, the congressman agreed to be interviewed by on the Comedy Central channel. The interview, which you can watch , is painfully funny. And the moral of the tale is this: Thou Shalt Not Campaign For A List of Commandments Thou Can't Remember.

Thanks to for the link.

We'd a punch-up on the radio today. Sort of. One of our callers was distressed when she happened to see a Punch and Judy show in Portrush which featured a hanging scene, complete with gallows. The puppeteer, from , joined us to defend the Punch and Judy tradition against the suggestion that it might encourage impressionable young children to mimic the violence they see on the stage.

Apparenty, is rooted in Pulcinella, a hook-nosed, cowardly buffoon who was a popular character in Italian touring comic plays of the 14th century. Now you know. But does this kind of slapstick comedy really represent a threat to the moral health of the nation's children? Is Mr Punch any more culpable than Tom and Jerry? And what about the long traditon of pie-throwing humour? Or the violent scenes in some of the Shakesperean plays we sometimes require young people to read as part of their schooling? Violence has played a role in theatre since the . And comedians and comedy writers have been making us laugh at people slipping on banana skins (and more subtle variations of that classic comedy vehicle) for centuries.

On the other hand, we know that young children often copy what they see -- on television particularly. And I can see someone raising other concerns about some of the stereotypes a character like Punch may perpetuate -- carrying a stick, with a hunched back, a hooked nose, and a rasping voice. In any case, Liz was clearly not as when she witnessed some of his antics on the beach in Portrush. Her concerns are worth examining in the wider context of how we, as a society, deal with subtle ways in which violence is justified or normalised.

As part of that examination, we also need to consider the views of those who believe that comic-book representations of violence may play a in challenging the active expression of violence by children and young people.

Speaking of violence and role-models, Zinedine Zidane will be appearing on French television to talk for the first time about what provoked his headbutt on Marco Materazzi. We still don't know what the Italian player said to the French caption just before the incident. Some 大象传媒 programmes have hired lip readers to translate the footage. Five Liev's deaf lip reader thought Materazzi said "you're the son of a terrorist whore", while the experts for the Ten O'Clock News think the word "liar" was used followed by "an ugly death to you and your family" -- this on the day the Zadine's mother had been taken to hospital.

Even if those insults were used, would they justify -- or even mitigate -- ZZ's assault on Materazzi? A question for tomorrow's show.

I knew it would only be a matter of time before Michael O'Shea and his DIY coffin made the . We were talking about eco-burials on yesterday's show , and Michael phoned in to tell us that he's saving himself some money by constructing his own coffin from plywood, at a cost of just 拢75. He says he's storing the coffin in his garage.

There's really no knowing what a radio phone-in audience will bite on. During today's Not the Nolan Show, they could have called to respond to the in Belfast on Saturday night, or the government's to spend 拢3.3m replacing paramilitary murals in Protestant areas across Northern Ireland, or the terrific progress being made by little following a life-saving bone-marrow transplant, or even that nasty at last night's football World Cup final when France captain Zinedine Zidane was sent off for headbutting Marco Materazzi (only to subsequently win the Golden Ball for the World Cup's best player).

But, no. Our listeners became preoccupied instead with whether I had properly pronounced , the name of the motorised rickshaws that are now competing for the taxi business in Brighton. Should I have said 'tuck-tuck' or 'took-took'? The listeners texted and called to challenge and counter-challenge. Eventually, we thought we'd get Dominic Ponniah, executive director of TucTuc Ltd, the company behind the new scheme in Brighton, to end the confusion and tell us how he pronounces it. He says, 'took-took'; but then we'd listeners who've been on holidays in Sri Lanka, Thailand and India calling to tell Mr Ponniah that he is mispronouncing the name of his own company. If that came as a surprise to the executive director of TucTuc Ltd, he took (or tuck) it all in his stride with very good grace.

The best comment of the morning came from Sharon. I had asked Joel Taggart, our sports correspondent, what Marco Materazzi could have said to have provoked ZZ into what is now surely the most famous headbutt in football history. Joel thought Materazzi might have commented on the France captain's follically-challenged status. Sharon disagreed: she thought Materazzi had told Zidane that Billy Piper was leaving Dr Who.

Well, that was a busy programme this morning. We'd a most unusual on the show. Bishop Henry Richmond from the Church of England will be speaking at the county Fermanagh demonstration on Wednesday, and he gave our audience a sense of what he plans to say.

He'll tell those at the 'field' that the Roman Catholic Church of today would, in so many respects, meet the theological ambitions of the Protestant Reformers; that the Order should engage directly with the Parades' Commission and with residents' groups; called on his brethren to show an openness to dialogue with those who disagree with them; and even smiled optimistically at my suggestion that Orange hospitality might one day be extended to a contingent of Hibernians marching alongside Orange lodges on the Twelfth. At the end of the interview, I speculated that the bishop may be in for an interesting time at the Fermanagh demonstration on .

While on the platform on the Twelfth, Bishop Richmond will join with his brother Orangemen in voting through the traditional Resolutions. An additional resolution is worth noting on this, the 90th anniversary of the Battle of the Somme -- the most important battle in the history of Orangeism in Ireland. The resolution includes these words:

We would encourage continued efforts to ensure that those soldiers from what is now the Republic of Ireland, who similarly served with honour in the 10th, 16th and 36th Divisions and other units, and whose memories have for too long been neglected, are not forgotten, and we commend the Irish Postal Service for issuing a stamp commemorating this notable anniversary

This may be the first time an of the Irish state has been commended at a Twelfth of July commemoration. Unless you know otherwise.

In an earlier post, I revealed that I share a name with an ace reporter in a graphic novel. Captain Hazzard's sidekick is a journalist called William Crawley. At the time, one commenter, Leo, suggested that I set up a blog to see how many other namesakes I have.

Which brings me to the dreamy spires of Oxford -- in this case, St Anne's College, Oxford. Having just returned from the at Queens' College, Cambridge, I was surprised to discover, quite accidentally, that I am to join the faculy of the Summer Institute at St Anne's later this month. If you scroll down the list of teaching , you will find my name and a slightly out of date bio. Yet I've never been invited to speak at the Annenberg/Oxford Summer School.

The summer school programme has confused me -- I'm guessing -- with the who is currently director of the Media South Asia project at Sussex University, and who was previously an editor in the 大象传媒 World Service and a former head of the 大象传媒 Eastern Service.

I know this because I've been in e-mail contact with my namesake following a previous confusion. A couple of month's ago, I received a request from a publisher for a blurb comment to adorn the back cover of a new book by the Indian High Commissioner to Kenya. I had a fair idea that they'd the wrong man on that occasion, though I confess I was sorely tempted to pen a few words just to see if they would make it to publication.

Join me and my guests on Sunday from 8.30 am for this week's edition of Sunday Sequence.

WOMEN BISHOPS: The Church of England has given the green light to women bishops, but is it also giving a red light to the bishop of Rome? The broadcaster Christina Rees, a member of the Church of England General Synod who has long campaigned for women priests and bishops joins Catholic journalist Sitra Abbott to assess the ecumenical implications.

ORANGE BISHOP: One of the speakers at this year's Twelfth of July demonstrations will tell us what he plans to say - and it could leave some Orangemen seeing red. Bishop Henry Richmond will tell his Orange brethren that the preachers of the Protestant Reformation would be "amazed" at the extent to which some of their ideals have been realised in the present Roman Catholic Church.

COULD DO MORE: Abdul Bari Atawan, the editor of Al Quds, and Labour MP Shahid Malik disagree about whether Tony Blair was right to suggest that Britain's moderates Muslims are not doing enough to root out extremism.

GAY ADOPTION: Eileen Fegan, an academic lawyer at Queen's University, and Free Presbyterian Minister David McIlveen, debate the government鈥檚 decision to extend adoption rights to gay and unmarried couples in Northern Ireland.

LADS MAGS: Eilish Rooney, a lecturer in community development at the University of Ulster, and Richard Sullivan, deputy editor of Sunday World's northern edition, respond to a Labour MP鈥檚 proposal that Lads Mags like Zoo and Loaded should be banished to the top shelves of newsagents.

THE WRITING ON THE PRISON WALL: Malachi O鈥橠oherty reports from an imaginative new programme in the education department at HMP Maghaberry, which offers creative writing courses to prisoners in the belief that writing can redeem the repeat-offender.

DESIGNER COMMUNION: Designer dresses, hair extensions, sunbeds, and chauffeur-driven limousines: Fiona Forde reports on the changing face of First communion in the Ireland of the Celtic Tiger.

THE LIFE OF GALILEO: Our London critic Judith Elliott has been to see David Hare's production of The Life of Galileo by Bertolt Brecht at the National Gallery.

You can listen to Sunday Sequence online, on digital, on FM and on Medium Wave.

While exploring possible future trends in radio broadcasting at this week's Radio Festival, Bob Worcester recommended that we all carefully reflect on by Roger Parry, published in Monday's Financial Times. Parry writes:

Our homes are to be the site of a revolution as dramatic to the economics of entertainment as the arrival of the gramophone, radio, 鈥渢alkies鈥� or television itself. The Box of the second decade of the 21st century will not be colloquial UK shorthand for the television set but the description of a ubiquitous bit of kit 鈥� central to every home.

A multi-platform, mult-media revolution won't come cheap. Will people be prepared to pay for it, or will they be willing to live with regular advertising pop-ups?

You know how this works by now. Here's the deal: you get a free book and you write a short review (a couple of paragraphs) after this posting. All you have to do to claim your book is e-mail your name and address (I won't share your details with anyone else) and agree to write a short comment on this blog telling me what you thought of the book. One book per person only; though you might suggest a second choice in case your first choice has already been taken. Send your e-mails to: william.crawley@bbc.co.uk with the subject heading "July Book Bag". Please don't try to claim a book by leaving your details in a comment here. I'm going to limit my give-aways to three books, so get your bid in quick.

Read the rest of this entry

A final word about the Radio Festival. That, incidentally, is the famous Mathematical Bridge, which links both halves of Queens' College, astride the River Cam.

It was at a river-side drinks reception on the final evening of the festival that I met my fellow 大象传媒 blogger Jeff Zycinski, the head of Radio Scotland. Jeff is extremely good company and we compared notes on blogging and broadcasting. He gives me a name-check in his blog and suggests that I boasted about my page impressions 'in the most unseemly way'. 'Sadly', he continues, 'I did not have any facts at my disposal about the number of kindly souls who read this diary so naturally I just made them up.'

Clearly, I remember the incident differently; but, then, I was sober. I also remember Jeff telling me he saw his blog as the first draft of his memoirs, and we all know how reliable that genre of literature can be. In truth, though, I think he's still smarting from my innocent question about whether Zycinski is a highland or lowland clan.

Jeff's summary of the Festival is very entertaining -- especially his account of the session on comedy I mentioned earlier. He writes: '

The final day at the Radio Festival in Cambridge was all set to end with a few giggles and maybe a decent guffaw, but things didn't go quite to plan. The penultimate session was centred around the famous Cambridge Footlights, the university club that spawned talents such as John Cleese, Peter Cook and Rory McGrath.'

'Indeed Rory was there in the flesh and joined on stage by the current Footlights president Tom Sharpe (no, not the comic novelist, but a fresh-faced young student). The discussion got bogged down in notions of class and snobbery. I'm afraid young Tom rather lost the sympathy of the audience when he made reference to the "lower classes" After that his body language resembled that of a young boy trying to fold himself into invisibility.'

Worse was to come when we were treated to a live performance by one half of a comedy foursome called The Cowards. As we all waited for punchlines that never came I'm afraid I regressed into Glasgow Empire mode with an expression that colleagues told me was a mixture of bafflement and anger.

He wasn't alone in that reaction.

Just got back from the , the annual conference of the UK's radio industry. This year's festival was held in Cambridge, with delegates staying at two colleges: King's and Queens'. Each session was introduced (superbly) by Jeremy Vine, with presentations and contributions from some of the biggest players in commerical and public service broadcasting. JV is a very funny guy, and I was surprised at how much he knows about music. (He's something of a Talking Heads anorak.)

The 大象传媒 Director-General, Mark Thompson started the ball moving on Monday evening with the Guardian Media Group Lecture, and was questioned by Matt Wells, the Guardian's media editor. We had sessions on the future of radio, new technologies, finance and funding (I skipped that one), changing trends in society and in our audiences, the relationship between performers and radio (with Neil Tenant from ), the long and creative parntership between radio and comedy (with the Cambridge Footlights taking a bow) -- and, of course, the inevitable session on podcasting.

The radio industry is obsessed with podcasting at the minute, mostly because industry players aren't sure how to respond to this development or how it's likely to develop further. Clearly, the industry needs to move beyond merely organising seminars to reflect on whether podcasting is an opportunity or a threat (summary: it's both, for all kinds of reasons). The 大象传媒 is engaged in a network-wide podcasting trial at the moment, and will be turning next to public value (and other kinds of) tests; but I have no doubt that podcasting is here to stay, that it will transform listening tastes and styles significantly, and that it will have a massive impact on the radio landscape. Like many people, I receive In Our Time, from Radio 4, by podcast each week -- one of the world's most popular podcasts -- and Radio Ulster's Nolan Show podcasts -- a daily highlights compilation -- are proving increasingly popular. Ricky Gervais is now the global King of the Pod, with a a show, made in co-operation with the Guardian, that attracts an audience of millions.

My personal highlights from this year's Festival:

Matthew Bannister gave a presentation on creativity in radio broadcasting. Brilliant. Hilarious. Informed. Incisive. If it was on a podcast, I'd download it now and listen to it again.

Sir , the chairman and founder of MORI, was captivating in his analysis of the future of radio in the UK -- and I say that as someone who hated statistics at school. He's one of those rare people who can join cultural dots together to form a big picture.

were our live entertainment on the final evening of the Fesival. Just perfect. I see they'll be guesting with at his Croke Park concert on the 9th.

The funniest session was funny-peculiar, rather than funny-ha-ha. It featured a conversation about comedy on radio, with the comedian Rory McGrath, a former Cambridge Footlighter, taking part. To end the session, they invited two current Footlighters to perform three sketches, which they read from notebooks while standing ten feet apart behind mic-stands, and which failed to ellicit a single laugh from the audience. It was like Waiting for Godot (without the laughs).

In our final session, the old and the new of Radio 1 were on the stage: Colin Murry (whose on-air partnerships with Edith Bowman is now ) interviewed Tony Blackburn about his long career in radio. Tony B (makes him sound like a Spice Girl, doesn't it?) was the first voice heard on Radio 1 when it was launched in 1967 -- we got to hear the opening of the first show again and Tony walked us through his life, from Radio Caroline to his current daily gig on . Yes, he's as nice as he appears. And, yes, you can't help wondering when you see his up close.

Join me and my guests on Sunday from 8.30 am for this week's edition of Sunday Sequence.

MAKING HISTORY: You can hear the discussion we recorded at Broadcasting House on Thursday evening, with historians, teachers and broadcasters reflecting on the challenge of dealing with history on radio and television.

TRIDENT: The Mail on Sunday columnist Peter Hitchens, Dr Andrew Dorman, a defence analyst at King's College, London, and Morag Milne from the Church of Scotland disagree about the moral case for replacing Britain's independent nuclear deterrent.

MIXED ESTATES: Laura Hayden reports on a creative inititative by the Housing Executive to accommodate people in mixed relationships: two new integrated estates where couples in mixed-faith relationships can live in an atmosphere of harmony and solidarity.

MEGAN'S LAW: Should the UK introduce an American-style Megan's Law, which gives the public access to information on convicted child sex offenders living in their local area? This week, the Northern Ireland Sex Offender Strategic Management Committee gave more details than ever before about the geographical location of sex offenders here. Its report revealed there are almost 700 registered sex offenders living in Northern Ireland with the greatest number based in north and south Belfast. We debate the policy with William McAuley, the strategy and policy co-ordinator of the Sex Offender Strategic Management Committee , Val Owens of the Probation Board, and Olwen Lyner from the Northern Ireland Association for the Care and Resettlement of Offenders.

ANGLICANISM IN CRISIS: Ruth Gledhill, religion correspondent of The Times, assesses the implications of Dr Rowan Williams's response this week to the US Episcopal Church's refusal to comply why the recommendations of the Windsor Report.

CHRISTOPHOBIA: Speaking in the current edition of The Spectator, Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O'Connor has spoken out against what he calls "Christophobia" -- an anti-Christian bias -- in the media. We examine the claim with journalist and Catholic commentator Peter Jennings and Maggie Brown, a media writer with The Guardian.

THE SOMME: Our London critic Judith Elliott was among the first to see a new exhibition on the Somme which has just opened at the National Army Museum.