Bristol airport’s new ‘multi-faith area’ is a hut next to a roundabout a mile from the terminal. A spokesman defended the pod, which has been likened to a 1970s bus shelter, and Daniel Sugarman, from the Board of Deputies of British Jews says: ‘It has brought people of all faiths together to note how very strange this is.’

*****

Just when you thought the mid-East crisis couldn’t get any worse, Anne Boyer,  up-your-bum poetry editor of The New York Times Magazine, has resigned over the paper’s coverage of ‘the Israeli state’s US-backed war against the people of Gaza’. If this ‘leaves a hole in the news the size of poetry,’ she says, ‘then that is the true shape of the present.’ As the Telegraph’s Michael Deacon remarks, it’s not yet clear what effect this will have on the conflict.

*****

HeadsUp. Stuff subbed short

FBI seizes $1 billion in fake Marc Jacobs and Louise Vuitton handbags, wallets and sunglasses.

Which? names Co-op’s £22.75 champers best in Christmas taste test. Aldi’s £22 offering is second

North Korea boasts successful launch of spy satellite into orbit at third attempt

Customer returns box of condoms to store in New Jersey. Claims they’re too small

*****

Nostalgia Alert: Sir Larry Lamb was well known for his appreciation of fine wine and single malts but in his younger days he was partial to beer. One contemporary in Manchester (and, Lord knows, there aren’t many of them left) recalls him seeking refuge in the pub after a particularly challenging first edition. He swiftly sank two restorative Boddies and announced: ‘Right. Now we know we like it, we’ll have some.’

*****

Ridley Scott, criticised for alleged inaccuracies in his new Napoleon film, says: ‘When I have issues with historians, I ask: “Excuse me, mate. Were you there?  No? Well, shut the fuck up then.”’

*****

So, full time then, Wayne Barnes, World Cup final rugby referee, who has just retired. Barrister Barnes, who, incidentally, attended the same school as a boater-wearing Goss groupie, became England’s youngest elite ref at 25. He had to yellow card Martin Johnson soon after the England skipper had won the World Cup. ‘That’s the only fucking decision you’ve got right so far,’ growled Johnno as he left the pitch.

*****

A Goss Groupie writes: ‘Our dentist has given my wife and me separate appointments both at 2.30. Is he extracting the piss?’

*****

The €1.9 million auction price achieved for Napoleon’s black beaver bicorne hat must have French families rooting through attics across the country: le petit caporal had 120 of them.

*****

SportsUniverse with Rockard Rambleshanks our StarshipTrooper who boldly goes etc

Amateur ref files obligatory FA Misconduct Form after booking player in Finchley and Golders Green Saturday League match: ‘He called me a speccy ginger twat when I didn’t award him a penalty.’ 

Netflix documentary showing Becks scoring from half way prompts 6.4% increase in Premier League long shots

Tahiti footie champs AS Pirae make 19,691-mile round trip to compete in French Cup

Ramsbottom CC women’s team, which won every game last season, set to join men’s Lancashire League

*****

WankerOfTheWeek: Nella Rose, toxic ‘star’ of  I’m a Celebrity. If the current PrettyLittleThing Influencer Awards’ YouTuber of the Year stays in the jungle, she’ll be WankerOfTheWeek next week as well.

*****

PMQs Question: Why does Penny Mordaunt always look as if she’s just realised she’s left a tap running?

*****

Welcome to the international stage, Javier Milei, 52, new president of Argentina and a very rum cove. The pro-Trump economist and chat show host has little experience in government. He has a penchant for threesomes, believes the poor should be free to sell their body parts and says he receives political advice, via telepathy, from his dead dog. Milei, whose biography was called, fittingly you may think, El Loco, also has little time for his countryman, the Pope. He’s a ‘fucking Communist turd,’ says El Presidente.

*****

The Slicker. Business &Finance with Fred Needleshanks

Louis Vuitton unveils new handbag, made to order from crocodile leather in five colours with solid gold chain and added diamonds. $1 million to you, mush.

Amazon to sell cars on the platform, starting with Hyundai in 2024.

Boeing secures three times as many aircraft orders as rival, Airbus,  at Dubai Airshow.

*****

Former First Lady Rosalynn Carter, who has just died, was married for 77 years. That’s impressive enough. But President Carter knew her for all but one day of her 96-year life: he saw her the day after his mother, a nurse, helped to deliver her.

*****

Following my snippetette about Orca whales attacking boats, my yachtie, Jim lad, with the red, rough hands and a faraway look tells me that sailors are attempting to solve the problem by ‘playing full-volume east European thrash metal music’. Early days but it seems to be working.

*****

WankerOfTheWeek: The Beeb’s Richard Bilton who travelled 20,000 miles on flights to Dubai, Alaska, California and Berlin, producing an estimated 5.4 tonnes of CO2, for a Panorama prog which aimed at answering why ‘despite all the green promises, we’re using more fossil fuels than ever before.’

*****

HeadsUp: Stuff subbed short

Aussie cop convicted of threatening to shoot colleague if he revealed spoilers to Top Gun: Maverick

Rolex and Patek Philippe prices drop amid falling demand for expensive watches

Canada’s capital, Ottawa, known as ‘the city that fun forgot’ hires nightlife czar

*****

Puteketeke crowned New Zealand Bird of Century: iconic kiwi is mere also-ran

*****

My snifteroo about Sir Alex Ferguson, fine wine connoisseur, brings to mind another knight of the realm, Sir Larrold Lamb, also a bit above his station, wine-wise. He once went to New York to press the flesh  of the ginger nut in charge of that Express outpost. This hapless hack was tasked with choosing a suitable red from the extensive list as they dined in an upscale eaterie. Larry held his wine up to the light, sniffed, swirled, slurped and slurred: ‘I wouldn’t wash my car in this, Mr Parry.’

*****

PleaseSayIt’sBollocks: Dior had created a £184 ‘scented water’ for babies to dab on their chubby little wrists. It’s part of Baby Dior’s skin care line which also flogs a £78 cleanser.

*****

Daredevil David Kirke, who has just died at 78, is rightly lauded for completing the first bungee jump: 245ft off Clifton Suspension Bridge, dressed in top hat, morning suit and clutching a  bottle of champagne on April Fools’ Day in ‘79. But the Goss’s favourite prank is when he flew over the Channel in an inflatable kangaroo, narrowly missing a jumbo jet. Mind you, encouraging fellow members of Oxford’s Dangerous Sports Club to ski down the piste on an ironing board, a rowing boat, a grand piano and even a Louise XV dining suite, complete with wine waiter, comes pretty close.

*****

LetterOfTheWeek: John Ratcliffe, of Sudbury, Suffolk, to the Sunday Times: How sad that we are losing pubs as a social hub. I met every one of my girlfriends/partners/wives in a pub. Such a loss. Andrew Leslau, of Henley-on-Thames, replies: I wonder if they feel the same way.

*****

PleaseSayIt’sBollocks: A book club in Venice, California, has just finished James Joyce’s Finnegans Wake - after 28 years. The monthly meeting tackled only two pages a time from the notoriously impenetrable book. It was described by one member as ‘628 pages of things that look like typographical errors’. What next? The group have started again from the beginning.  

*****

Caine’sCorner. Hunter S. Thompson, chronicler of Hell’s Angels and pioneer of ‘gonzo journalism’, kept his ashtray on a crate of live dynamite. No surprises, then, that he had his remains blasted out of a cannon at his $3million funeral funded entirely by Johnny Depp. NMPKT

*****

StrangePeopleTheYanks: As Yuletide approaches, American website Cable TV: Chief of Cheer is advertising what it says is a ‘dream job’. The successful applicant will be paid $2,500 to watch 25 Christmas movies in 25 days and rank them in categories including ‘nostalgia’, ‘heartwarming storytelling’ and ‘holiday cheer’.

*****

A ‘rival’ gossip columnette reports that Tracey Emin missed the reopening  of Soho’s Colony Room Club. An aide confesses: ‘Tracey was supposed to come but she got her dates wrong: she turned up three days ago.’ Can this sort of thing really happen in polite society?

*****

PleaseSayIt’sBollocks: Looking for someone to look after your chickens when you’re away? Just check them into a ‘hen hotel’, advises the Telegraph. ‘Hennels’ offer luxury boarding with classical music, fresh fruit and veg and room to roam. For only £3 a day pukka poultry checking in to Hen Weekend have soft bedding and unlimited access to a Wendy house.

*****

For a wee laddie from a Govan tenement, Alex Ferguson surprisingly became something of a wine snob. Woe betide any gaffer who failed to meet his standards when offering a post-match tipple. Harry Rednapp got away with Blue Nun because he was Harry and was ‘having a giraffe’. But when Jose Mourinho uncorked a bottle of plonk, Sir Alex accused him of serving ‘paint stripper’. Chelsea owner Roman Abramovich was horrified and a case of Tignanello, a legendary ‘Super Tuscan’ red (incidentally, Meghan Markle’s favourite), was rushed to Old Trafford.

*****

StrangePeopleTheYanks: The airport-as-mall trend is taking off in the States. It’s now possible to dine, shop and visit art installations at airports without bothering to get on a plane. The new $2.8 billion Terminal C at Orlando International has launched a visitor programme allowing access to its luxury facilities. Airports at other US cities have similar schemes while Portland and New York’s La Guardia are spending billions to catch up.

*****

Forget the Beeb, one of the reasons that Israel receives such worldwide support is biblical prophesy, says Bloomberg.  ‘Christian Zionists’ interpret an Old Testament passage as meaning ‘the return of Christ would take place once the Jewish diaspora returned to Palestine’. In the 1890s prominent Americans, such as JP Morgan and John D Rockefeller, lobbied the White House to set up a Jewish homeland. Fifty or so years later it came to pass.

*****

WankersOfTheWeek: The National Trust, which is distributing an ‘inclusivity and wellbeing’ calendar to volunteers featuring Diwali, Eid and Ramadan but not Christmas and Easter.

*****

The late Silvio Berlusconi’s taste in art was distinctly dodgy. Heirs of the former Italian PM are sorting his 25,000 paintings, many bought from late-night telesales shows. Average value? $800 each. My art ‘expert’ in the beret and paint-daubed smock says the cost of exterminating the woodworm infesting the ‘collection’ is ‘exceeding the paintings’ value’.

*****

HeadsUp. Stuff subbed short

San Francisco has 25 million sq ft of vacant office space.

Taylor Swift  first person to have seven songs nominated for Grammy song of the year. 

Pod of Orca whales sinks yacht in Strait of Gibraltar. Crew rescued.

World marks Transgender Awareness Week

*****

That shameless schmoozer Jeffrey Archer is reported to be about to hold his last Fizz ‘n’ Pie Christmas party. For 40 years the great, the good and the, frankly, reprehensible have turned up to be gladhanded at the Archers’ penthouse overlooking the Thames. Revellers are asked: Would you like some Krug (never mere champagne)? Guests who want a widdle are directed: Go past the Picasso and it’s the door on the left. So posh.

*****

Wading (and I use the verb advisedly) through more guff in the Drone I come across a reference to Tallulah Bankhead. What a girl! The actress, who claimed to be ‘ambisexturous’ and ‘pure as the driven slush’, was once accused of seducing boys at Eton. My favourite tale: inveigled by an admirer to meet in an hotel room, she said: ‘You go on. If I’m not there in five minutes, start without me.’

*****

StatsLife: Stand by for a growing Youthquake! And the figures are astonishing, says the New York Times. While birth rates are tumbling in richer nations, Africa’s population is expected to double over the next 25 years to 2.5 billion. In 1950 Africans made up 8% of humanity; by 2050 it will be 25%, including a third of all 15 to 24-year-olds.

*****

The first combat ever to take place in space. That’s the grim milestone to mark the escalating Gaza crisis as Israel’s Arrow defence system shot down a rocket outside of the Earth’s atmosphere. The missile, launched from Yemen by
Iran-backed Houthi rebels, flew almost 1,000 miles to the Israeli port city of Eilat (where, incidentally, Dumpster has vacationed). Who’d have thought Yemenis would be involved in this ominous ‘first’?

*****

Violence flares in a rundown area of Edinburgh. Good story for the Evening News. Wait, here’s a dramatic pic of a protester hurling a petrol bomb. Splash! Trouble is, the snap is 10 years old; it was taken, not in the deprived Niddrie district of the Scottish capital but in Kyiv, nearly 2,000 miles away, during street protests against the then Russia-backed government. Chastened newspaper execs are forced to apologise on Facebook, followed by a front page apology in the next edition. Nightmare!

*****

Chinese philosopher Sun Tzu, he say: ‘If you wait by river long enough, bodies of enemies will float by.’ Drone soothsayer G.R. Petulengro-Frame, he say: ‘Suella Braverman won’t last week as Home Secretary.’ Finally, 13 months later this prediction comes true.  William Dumpster, he say: ‘If you read Goss long enough, I’ll tell story about Bernard Shrimsley and lady astrologer.’ (Oh, no you won’t — Ed).

*****

Caine’sCorner. The new biopic Napoleon (in cinemas soon) obviously highlights the emperor’s passionate relationship with Josephine, who hadn’t a tooth in her head, by the way. He was particularly obsessed with her mysterious sexual technique called zigzags. Trouble is, no one knows what it was. Ooh, er, missus. NMPKT

*****

Will Lewis’s elevation to CEO of The Washington Post prompts my cub reporter in the queue at Starbucks on K Street to text a reminder that other Brits fly high in the American media. Former BBC boss Mark Thompson has just switched from The New York Times to CNN and in February Emma Tucker moved from the Sunday Times to become first female editor-in-chief of The Wall Street Journal. Incidentally, Tucker is distinctly underwhelmed by the WSJ’s work ethic. ‘What do they do all day?’she’s been heard to ask plaintively.

*****

SportSession with Rockard Rambleshanks, our water polo whizz who has hidden depths

Czech footie ref books 16 players after whole team and five subs take off shirts in co-ordinated goal celebration.

Chelsea owner Todd Boehly is prone to storming into dressing room to berate players after a poor result. Contrast with previous boss Roman Abramovich who preferred to send the gaffer a slightly sinister one-character text: ?

Tiger Woods and Rory McIlroy are backing a new sports league that’s reinventing golf as a high-energy, made-for-TV entertainment.

*****

HeadsUp. Stuff subbed short

Electric plane flies from Vermont to Florida … in 16 days. The CX300 had to make 24 stops to recharge batteries. 

This year ‘virtually certain’ to be hottest in history, says EU climate agency.

Demand for lithium, used in batteries for mobiles etc, expected to soar 20 times by 2040. Yikes: current supply can’t even meet demand now.

*****

Democracy is alive and well! Yes, really. More people will vote in elections in 2024 than in any year since records began in the 1960s. National ballots take place in more than 30 countries, including the US, UK, India and South Africa plus parliamentary elections in the EU. Two billion are eligible to vote, around two thirds of the democratic world.

*****

Sad to see the death of Crawford McAfee, at 80. Good operator, good man, good neighbour. A fellow hack who lived a few doors from him in Heald Green, Cheshire, in the seventies recalls a whimsical tale involving Crawfie’s wife, Pam. She was reading a book in which the heroine’s breasts were described as looking like poached eggs. ‘Are my breasts like poached eggs?’ she asked McAfee. ‘No, hen,‘ he replied, ‘yours are more like scrambled eggs.’

*****

TheSlicker: Money&Business with Fred Needleshanks

Danish shipping firm Maersk cutting 10,000 jobs after 92% profits drop. Seen as worrying indicator for global trade in 2024.

Amazon’s Jeff Bezos leaves longtime Seattle home for $79 million Miami mansion to be nearer his space company. Joins 740,000 who moved to Florida in 2021-22.

Energy drink-maker Celsius is one of the world’s  fastest-growing businesses. From a $280 million valuation in 2018 it’s exploded to $13.4 billion today.

*****

How true our recent Quote of the Day, ‘Antisemitism is a light sleeper’. Apart from huge demos here, police in France, which has the third largest Jewish community in the world, have recorded more than 1,000 attacks on Jews. Teenagers have been filmed singing: ‘We’re Nazis and proud of it.’ Germany, too. Not surprising after Angela Merkel’s ‘open door’ to mainly Muslim migrants, you might think. But, chillingly, Ozlem Topcu writes in Der Spiegel: ‘The greatest danger to Jews in Germany still comes from German neo-Nazis.’

*****

LetterOfTheWeek. Martin Boreham, of Oxfordshire, to The Times: In your article on reopening a Cornish tin mine, you state that eight million cubic metres of water need to be pumped out. In future could your reporter please use the correct unit of measurement and tell us how many Olympic swimming pools that is.

*****

WankersOfTheWeek: All those Middle East ‘experts’ and useful idiots who parrot that a ‘two state solution’ is the answer to the Gaza/Israel crisis. There’s a flaw: the Palestinians only want a one state solution. 

*****

PleaseSayIt’sBollocks: The United  Nations holds a two-day human rights ‘social forum’ in Geneva under the chairmanship of Ali Bahreini, the ambassador from Iran. Yes, Iran. That’s the evil regime which suppresses, kidnaps and tortures opponents. As Maurin Picard says in Le Figaro, it’s like appointing an arsonist as fire chief.

*****

My snippet about self-deprecating Roger Moore inspires a fan to recall the following chat show exchange. Host: ‘Did you go to RADA?’ Moore: ‘No. But my right eyebrow did.’
*****

Two questions about Jeremy Bowen, the Beeb’s grandly-named International Editor: has he a stock of those dark polo shirts he’s been wearing since the start of the Gaza conflict? And should an impartial observer, such as he, question aloud, mid broadcast, whether Israel’s response to the Hamas attack was ‘justifiable’. 

*****

London’s most expensive hotel suite is finally open — after six years’ construction. Claridge’s four-bed, 16,000 sq ft penthouse will set you back £60,000 a night. It includes a dining table inset with a disc of malachite, a giant onyx fireplace, a bathroom with lacquered silver leaf ceiling, a glass piano pavilion on the terrace for the £120,000 Steinway and 35 Damien Hirst artworks. Occupancy is expected at 30-40% a year.

*****

Cricket’s ODI World Cup has exposed the frightening air pollution in Indian cities. Air quality in Delhi has been rated at 500 on the Air Quality Index — the UN Environment Programme says an AQI of 50 or below is safe. It’s the same in Mumbai. Joe Root reports: ‘You couldn’t get your breath. It was like eating the air. It was unique.’

*****

We could be a year away from the election but has Rishi given up already? It seems so, says Alice Thomson in The Times. She confides that after the PM met ministers for informal drinks one said: ‘It felt like he’d already checked out, his wheelie was at the door and he was looking forward to a few foreign sightseeing trips.’ A backbencher adds: ‘We call him Sunk.’ Watch this space!

*****

Veteran BBC producer Trevor Hill, who has just died at 98, may have launched the careers of Ben Kingsley, Billie Whitelaw, Robert Powell and Julie Andrews, not to mention Pinky and Perky and Sooty and Sweep, but drew a blank with young Roger Moore, advising him to forget acting and concentrate on modelling. Many years later, as Live and Let Die was being launched, the new Bond wrote to Hill: ‘Still can’t act but an earning a living.’

*****

HeadsUp. Stuff subbed short.

Celebrate the 400th anniversary of Shakespeare’s First Folio, the inaugural publication of his works, without which 18 of his iconic plays would have been lost.

WFH gone mad. Super computer Lee Robinson  takes two flights and an Uber from his Iowa home to his San Francisco office fortnightly. Eight hours door-to-door.

Europe’s cocaine market is exploding in size: 306 tonnes of the drug seized in 2021, five times more than a decade ago. Traffickers target Dutch and French ports.

___________

Socialite and interior designer Nicky Hallam unveils his latest list of things he finds ‘common’. This year’s selection, printed, as always, on a tea towel, includes strawberries, podcasts, remote-controlled lawnmowers, Grayson Perry, ‘Aperol anything’, Drone columnists’ verbal diarrhoea and saying ‘more-ish’.

*****

Marks and Spencer’s Christmas TV ad depicts the colours — red, white and green — of the Palestinian flag burning in a fire. Cue faux global outrage. But they are also the colours of the Italian tricolore. Was the UK ambassador called in for a ritual bollocking at the Palazzo della Farnesina in Rome? Did that perky blonde PM call an emergency Cabinet? Did Il Papa pronounce from a balcony overlooking St Peter’s Square? Did the footie ultras of Lazio start ripping up seats? We know the answer. 

*****

Don’t envy former Telegraph editor Will (now Sir William) Lewis, new publisher and CEO of the Washington Post. Since he acquired the iconic newspaper for $230 million in 2013, Amazon’s Jeff Bezos has been very patient as its digital audience fell 28% and it is on course to lose $100 million this year. Now Bezos has written to staff assuring them of his commitment to the Post but emphasising the importance of turning a profit. We all know what that means: Mush! Mush!

*****

My first manifestation as a gossip scribe was under the byline The Chiel. It was a reference to Rabbie Burns: ‘A chiel's amang ye takin' notes —and, faith, he'll prent it.’ So it was good to see The Goss’s most faithful and industrious snout pictured at David Laws’s funeral surveying the scene … and takin’ notes. 

PleaseSayThisIsBollocks (a new series): ‘Alongside sat Camilla in a champagne-coloured Bruce Oldfield dress embroidered with the names of her grandchildren and images of her Jack Russells, Beth and Bluebell’ — Quentin Letts, Daily Mail.

*****

Superagers: that’s the majority of Drone readers, people aged 70 to 85, who still have the cognitive abilities of someone around 25 years younger. But how to ensure you retain membership of this happy breed? According to research in Spain, two of the best things you can do are playing music and getting a divorce. Eh?

*****

Nidelven Bla, a semi-solid blue produced near Trondheim, Norway, is winner of the 2023 World Cheese Awards, beating 4,000 other varieties. Second was a Belgian hard cows’ cheese ahead of a Swiss hard cheese. Neither fromage snob nations, Britain and, particularly, France, troubled the scorers.

*****

HeadsUp. Stuff subbed short.

Kim Kardashian’s $4 billion underwear company, Skims, launches men’s range online: 25,000 orders in first five minutes

Mobile phone use may affect semen quality, study suggests

77% of adult Americans sent a sext this year and 88% received one — survey

Fans camping near  Buenos Aires stadium for five months to bag front row seats for Taylor Swift gig.

OldJokesHome: Neil Diamond was called Neil Coal until the pressure got to him.

*****

Scorching summers and wildfires are changing the holiday calendar.  July and August are so last summer: most popular months next year are May and June, says a survey of 2,000. Tui has already extended package offerings in Turkey and Greece into November; EasyJet will offer extra flights to Rhodes that month.

*****

Contrails. That’s one answer to climate change. The white lines planes leave in the sky account for 35% of aviation’s addition to global warming. Google and American Airlines used AI (!) to discover that minor changes to flight paths could reduce contrails by 54%. If that were scaled up, at effectively zero cost, aviation’s global warming impact would be cut by 20%.
*****
O tempora, o mores: An abandoned town of half-finished mansions near Shenyang, China, has been reclaimed by local farmers, France 24 reports. Cattle now wander among the buildings and manicured gardens have been ploughed up and planted with crops. These are stark symbols of the country’s deflating housing bubble.

*****

Forget celeb influencers and Gen Z icons, half of college students name ‘old’ Bill Gates, 68, as their ideal of financial success. Jeff Bezos (40%) was second; Elon Musk (35%) third. Only person in the top six who isn’t a current, or former, CEO is Taylor Swift. She is a billionaire, though.

*****
StrangePeopleTheYanks: The Silver Crest Donut Shop in San Francisco has set some sort of record: it’s been open 24 hours a day since 1970. Its owner, George, 84, who works nights, even refused to shut during the pandemic. His wife, Nina, does the day shift. Presumably, they meet up for a free ‘donut’ now and again.

*****

The excitable Hibernian who pens an inferior column on the newspaper I am discouraged from mentioning has already broken a seasonal record concerning pantomimes and cliches. Oh yes he has.

*****

Retro Rambleshanks’s Yesterday Once More exposure of bullying, sexism etc involving female news reporters on the Express prompts a victim to confide that the all-male news desk once banned them from drinking/fraternising with subs, who were much more congenial, because it was ‘disloyal’.

*****
HeadsUp. Stuff subbed short.

South Korean girl group STAYC mistakenly wear Glasgow Rangers shirts, complete with McEwans Lager ads, at Dallas gig thinking it’s Texas Rangers baseball kit. 

Two ‘pristine’ coral reefs - one eight football fields long - discovered off Galápagos Islands.

Rolling Stone journo Jesse Rosenfeld, critic of Netanyahu administration, denied press accreditation by Israel which claims RS ‘not a news organisation’.

__________

Crap, isn’t it, that the charity and emergency responders with ‘cross’ in its title doesn’t use the word ‘Christmas’ in its, er, Christmas cards? Still, Happy Wokeness to all our readers.

*****

Drone* Exclusive: Biden Back In White House. Clallam Says: Go With Joe. Of more than 3,000 counties in the US, only Clallam in Washington State has voted for the winner of every presidential election since 1980. In a survey there of ‘a range of people — committed Biden voters, committed Trump voters and those who were hoping for anyone but Biden or Trump’ every one thought Biden would win the county again in 2024 — and the election itself. * The Run-Up podcast, actually.

*****

SportDigest with Rockard Rambleshanks, our ice hockey star who wants to know what the puck’s going on

Rangers trialist Gordon Ramsay’s claim to have been good footballer exposed by ex-teammate Derek Ferguson: ‘He couldn’t kick his own arse.’

Swiss ski competition organisers accused of stealing snow from glacier near Zermatt threatened by climate change.

Basketball’s Magic Johnson fourth US sports star, after Michael Jordan, LeBron James and Tiger Woods, to become billionaire.

Bazball (‘noun: a style of cricket in which batting side plays in a highly aggressive manner’) added to Collins Dictionary.

__________

Depressing stat: Fourteen years after George W Bush’s presidency ended, he is, at 77, still a month younger than Trump and three years junior to Biden, both of whom are frontrunners for 2024. 

*****

StrangePeopleTheYanks. Americans have many bizarre names for ghosts. Skookum, for instance, or bugaboo, catawampus or duppies. Then there are swoons, plat-eyes or tommyknockers. Those familiar with To Kill A Mockingbird will recall a ‘hot steam’, described as ‘someone who can’t get to heaven, just wallows around on lonesome roads’.

*****

WankerOfTheWeek. Dominic Cummings. Where would you like me to start?

*****
LetterOfTheWeek. Beryl Whyatt, of Welwyn Garden City, to The Times: We helped a friend, married to a doctor in Pakistan, to wind up her father’s affairs when he passed away. Months later, we invited them for dinner. We didn’t expect a bottle of wine but neither did we expect the rolled-up carpet he carried in over his shoulder or the box of mangos. 

*****

TheSlicker. Finance and City with Fred Needleshanks

Amazon shares leap after e-commerce giant’s Q3 revenue hits $143.1 billion - up 13% and higher than analysts’ forecasts.

Apple, which saw Mac sales slump 7% last quarter, is fighting back by upgrading its processing chips. ‘They’re scary fast,‘ a spokesperson reports, breathlessly.

Meta spends $25 million a year on security for Mark Zuckerberg and $2.3 million flying him around.

__________

GOSS ARCHIVE