We can be both

Comments

10 responses to “We can be both”

1. 

   Lady Mondegreen

   Aug 11, 2026 2:46 PM

   I hope the tour happens as planned and everyone is safe and sound.

   When it’s not transphobia it’s Islamophobia and when it’s not Islamophobia it’s transphobia

   The left’s embrace of these two authoritarian belief systems has rendered me politically homeless. (Which may be good epistemology, but it goes against the grain. Humans ARE tribal.)

   P.S. You met Palin! LUCKY
2. 

   The Whimster Gap

   Aug 12, 2026 1:05 AM

   I wonder if it’s occurred to the good people at 5Ps that one of the reasons why those cities have large Muslim populations is because they have large populations tout court. Granted, Bedford’s not huge, but it’s a pretty substantial bit of the London commuter belt, and so one’d expect it to have a reasonably-sized body of people who’d like to see Cleese do his thing.

   Are the places mentioned disproportionately Muslim? Possibly. Bigger towns are more likely to have bigger immigrant populations, and it takes a couple of generations for people to move around. It’s not exactly a devastating insight.
3. 

   Ophelia Benson

   Aug 12, 2026 3:50 AM

   Lady M – I know! So lucky! And I’ll tell you a thing about Palin: he made very sure to look every single person in line for him to sign the book straight in the eyes and say hello etc. A mensch.
4. 

   Athel Cornish-Bowden

   Aug 12, 2026 6:50 AM

   P.S. You met Palin! LUCKY

   Hah. Be prepared to be even more jealous. I was at school with Michael Palin. Of course, he wasn’t famous then. He and I are just a month apart in age.
5. 

   Peter N

   Aug 12, 2026 8:14 AM

   Athel — let’s hear some stories!
6. 

   Ophelia Benson

   Aug 12, 2026 8:55 AM

   Oooh I am even more jealous!
7. 

   Lady Mondegreen

   Aug 12, 2026 4:02 PM

   Oh maaan. I just knew he had to be a mensch!

   Yes, Athel, I am green with envy!
8. 

   Athel Cornish-Bowden

   Aug 13, 2026 9:40 AM

   Sorry to disappoint you all, but really I have nothing of interest to say about Michael Palin, who was in a different house from me. We may have been in the same group for physics at some point, but I don’t think that was really his thing, and I don’t remember any contribution he made. I did see him in a school show once, which definitely was his thing, but that’s about it. I don’t suppose he has any memory of me at all, and if he does it will be even vaguer than mine of him.
9. 

   Ophelia Benson

   Aug 13, 2026 9:45 AM

   Not disappointing us all, I expected no stories! It’s a fun fact anyway.
10. 

    Athel Cornish-Bowden

    Aug 13, 2026 12:02 PM

    The only other person I knew in my youth who later became famous was David Frohnmayer, who became President of the University of Oregon. When I knew him he was already a Republican (in the days when you could be Republican and respectable), but he didn’t make that obvious, and he could discuss any political subject in a neutral way.

    Once when my first wife and I were driving to Crater Lake we stopped in Medford, and as I remembered that that was where he came from, and as there were only one or two Frohnmayers in the phone book I tried one of the numbers on the off chance. He was in Washington DC, where he was an assistant to Robert Finch (possibly the only decent person in Richard Nixon’s government), so he wasn’t in Medford. However, his mother invited us for lunch.

    Fun fact: on 23rd November 1963 David was the person who told me that John Kennedy had been shot in Dallas the previous day. It has been said that everyone remembers where they were when they learned of Kennedy’s assassination, and who told them. In my case it is true.