1. POTUS sings soul He’s done stand-up comedy before and, yesterday, Barack Obama revealed another way in which he might occupy himself should he contrive to lose this year’s election: soul singing. Noting that Al Green was in attendance at an event in New York, the Prez shocked the crowd with a couple of lines from Let’s Stay Together...
Not sounding bad at all, Sir. That’s a potential American Idol finalist right there.
2. Take a trip to Spingfooled… Fans of The Simpsons thought the Channel 4 continuity announcer had made a crashing boo-boo last month when he inexplicably got the name of the show wrong. But then he did it again, and again, and again, and then his colleagues joined in. A merry little Christmas/New Year wager? We asked C4, for whom a spokesperson strenuously denied everything: “Channel 4 would like to make it perfectly clear that at no point has there been any mispronunciation by any of the on-air announcers. Anyone suggesting otherwise is simply hearing thongs. We take very seriously our commitment to shows like The Wilsons.”
3. Whole lotta Quaking goin’ on A cool quarter of a million hits for this musical epic by the teachers and pupils – absolutely all of them, by the looks of it – of Friends’ School, a Quaker school in Lisburn. Contains judo, horses and a spectacular mass finale in the pouring rain. Well done, everyone – now get on with some work.
4. Crow in the snow How much fun is tobogganing? Here’s how much: it’s still a laugh even if you can fly. Some Russian bird demonstrates.
5. Richie pickings The best “cinema buff with far too much time on their hands” clip for months, this: Matthijs Vlot cuts bits out of dozens of films to create a unique cover of Lionel Richie’s uniquely moving 1984 monster, Hello. Exquisitely done and wonderfully pointless.