Of Milo, Meltdown, macaques and Marvel

RIP, Sandra Milo [more Giulietta degli spiriti here]

It's a "snippets post" today, dear reader [in the true spirit of blogging; after all, that's how it all started..]

• Good news: The divine (and immensely talented) Miss Chaka Khan has been announced as the curator of the annual Meltdown Festival at London's South Bank in 2024! I can't wait to see who she chooses to be on the bill, but if the great lady herself deigns to do a concert all of her own, I'm champing at the bit for a ticket...
• Weird news: Happy Up Helly Aa Day! The (allegedly) traditional Viking festival is being celebrated this evening in Lerwick, largest town on the Shetland Islands, by around 1,000 heavily-disguised torch-bearers hauling a dragon-headed galley ship through the streets before ceremonially throwing their fiery torches into it to burn it to the water. That's one way of beating "the Tuesday Blues"!
• Karma news: "Professional cunt" (and hopefully henceforth unemployable "actor") Laurence Fox lost a defamation case against two gay men he called "paedophiles" on Tw*tter.
• Fashion news: a tie by "Mr Fish" [legendary 60s/70s menswear designer who dressed David Bowie and Mick Jagger] found in a charity shop for 99p, a second-hand coat worn by EastEnders' Dot Cotton and a leopard-print hat by milliner-to-the-stars Otto Lucas bought on eBay have gone on display in a fashion exhibition at the Museum of London Docklands.
• Nature news: There's a macaque on the loose in the Highlands of Scotland! That puts bloody squirrels in the shade.

• And finally: Many happy returns to the simply faboo Olivia Colman [50 today], star of just about everything - from Beautiful People to The Night Manager, from Doctor Who to Broadchurch, and much, much more, including not one, but two British Queens, Anne [for which she won the Oscar] and Elizabeth - and she completely stole the show in Marvel Studios' otherwise critically-panned [although I thoroughly enjoyed it] Secret Invasion:

Olivia Colman being the best part of Secret Invasion for 1.5 mins straight

And now, the weather...[only joking]