"Goldsmith stared unblinking into the camera through his five-minute address, his intense demeanour and ominous message in no way resembling a Bond villain explaining an apocalyptic plan to a terrified world."
thelionandunicorn.com/2025/11/07/r...
It's 30 years since Bovril tycoon James Goldsmith officially launched the Referendum Party in his usual modest fashion - and eventually changed British politics, but not in the way you think @lionunicorn.bsky.social
I once read something in Punch (don't look for it, it's not there any more) recountimg a definitely real conversation with a drunk Scotsman at King's Cross and saying "You must been looking forward to Hogmany" and being told "I don't - it's amateur".
"Can you make me look better than I do on television? I look rather scraggy, like a ghost."
"No."
"Why not?"
"Because you have a head like a skull."
"Does not everyone have a head like a skull?"
"No."
Alec Douglas-Home died 30 years ago today.
thelionandunicorn.com/2022/12/28/2...
"The febrile state of Summer 2024 looks now an oasis of calm, and the late 2010s a mythical, placid political utopia..."
thelionandunicorn.com/2025/09/24/p...
"I should prefer to leave the affairs of the football industry to the industry itself," said home secretary Rab Butler.
But that was then - these days, politicians feel that football needs some interference.
@paulsaffer.bsky.social tells the story.
thelionandunicorn.com/2025/09/14/b...
⚽️"Britain did not suddenly discover sport in 2015 as a response to the twin shocks of the Tory election victory & Clarkson’s sacking from Top Gear. As far back as 2005, Tony Benn was complaining: ‘The real English nature is sport rather than politics’"⚽️
By @paulsaffer.bsky.social👇
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As @lionunicorn.bsky.social turns 10 a look back at a decade of my articles for the site in a decade of British sporting boom - chromicled through Jimmy Hill's goldfish, Alexei Sayle and Peter Purves inventing modern football, Leicester City inspiring Brexit and sport explaining ... everything
In the decade of Lion & Unicorn's existence, sport is the one thing that has undoubtedly thrived.
Which hasn't stopped @paulsaffer.bsky.social looking backwards to Jimmy Hill, Denis Compton and the Spanish Civil War...
thelionandunicorn.wordpress.com/2025/08/30/s...
"To lose one decade may be misfortune, to lose two looks like carelessness. Well, in three years’ time we will have completed our second lost decade since the 2008 crisis.
Who’s laughing now?"
Dan Atkinson, Lion & Unicorn's first poster, on #10Years:
thelionandunicorn.wordpress.com/2025/08/16/a...
"I am as usual but a humble spear carrier."
Robin Day died 25 years ago today.
thelionandunicorn.wordpress.com/2019/01/09/t...
England cricket legend Denis Compton was born #OTD in 1918. Here's his advice for boys who take up boxing:
"Never give in. You may feel tired and a little dazed after a particularly hard round, but remember your opponent will also feel fagged."
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"From all sides, the four-time election winner was pelted with dirt. The fact that the various groups of detractors disagreed as to why they despised him in no way lessened the impact of their attacks."
It's 30 years since the death of Harold Wilson.
thelionandunicorn.wordpress.com/2016/03/12/a...
"He called for the castration of rapists, questioned the innocence of the Birmingham Six, and dismissed his Labour rival as ‘a single girl who lives with her boyfriend and three bastard children, in Cambridge’."
Tory David Evans was born 90 years ago.
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"What everybody tells me they want is for the current leader to accept the inevitable and to stand down."
20 years ago, Robert Kilroy-Silk left UKIP after a clash of egos with Nigel Farage.
@alwynturner.bsky.social tells the story.👇
wp.me/p6lzJb-7n8
"Are not the spectators responsible for most of the hullabaloo?" asked the papers.
Our @paulsaffer.bsky.social remembers how the News of the World made darts a spectator sport.
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The obvious factual errors in the first 15 minutes (eg Bernard Ingham working for Mrs Thatcher in opposition) were too distracting and lets you off the hook as a viewer in buying the more speculative stuff
Our top ten most clicked posts in 2024, featuring Rishi Sunak, Robert Maxwell, Labi Siffre, Diane Abbott, Stephen Milligan, an alternative universe @alwynturner.bsky.social, Michael Heseltine, Roth-Händle, Sherlock and a lot of sausages.👇
"The tubby, middle-aged man nursing his injured dignity is a recognisable sitcom role, and Prescott added to the gaiety of the nation. He was a character. That, above all, is what drove the expressions of nostalgic sadness when his death was announced."
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