The Idler (1993)
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The Idler (1993)
''The Idler'' is a bi-monthly magazine, devoted to its ethos of 'idling'. Founded in 1993 by Tom Hodgkinson and Gavin Pretor-Pinney, the publication's intention is to return dignity to the art of loafing, to make idling into something to aspire towards rather than reject. The magazine combines the aesthetics of 1990s slacker culture and pre-industrial revolution idealism. The title comes from a series of essays by Samuel Johnson, published in 1758–59. Ethos On the practice of idling, Tom Hodgkinson writes: History ''The Idler'' was launched in 1993 when its editor, Tom Hodgkinson, was 25. The title came from a series of essays by Samuel Johnson. In it, Johnson wrote on such subjects as sleep and sloth and said: "Every man is, or hopes to be, an idler." The new ''Idler'' took this 18th-century sensibility and combined it with the radical philosophies of the 1990s. Issue One featured a profile of Johnson and an interview with psychonaut Terence McKenna. The ''Idler'' has ...
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Tom Hodgkinson
Tom Hodgkinson (born 1968) is a British writer and the editor of '' The Idler'' magazine, which he established in 1993 with his friend Gavin Pretor-Pinney. His philosophy, in his published books and articles, is of a relaxed approach to life, enjoying it as it comes rather than toiling for an imagined better future. '' The Idler'' was named after a series of essays written by Dr Johnson from 1758 to 1760. Biography Tom Hodgkinson was born in Newcastle, England. He is the brother of journalist and author Will Hodgkinson; their father is the science and medical writer Neville Hodgkinson and their mother is the prolific non-fiction writer and journalist Liz Hodgkinson. Tom was educated at Westminster School and Jesus College, Cambridge, during which time he played the bass guitar in the Stupids-influenced thrash band Chopper. He lived in North Devon until 2013. He currently lives in London. In the early 1990s, he worked at a Rough Trade Records shop in London, where he ha ...
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National Health Service
The National Health Service (NHS) is the umbrella term for the publicly funded healthcare systems of the United Kingdom (UK). Since 1948, they have been funded out of general taxation. There are three systems which are referred to using the "NHS" name ( NHS England, NHS Scotland and NHS Wales). Health and Social Care in Northern Ireland was created separately and is often locally referred to as "the NHS". The four systems were established in 1948 as part of major social reforms following the Second World War. The founding principles were that services should be comprehensive, universal and free at the point of delivery—a health service based on clinical need, not ability to pay. Each service provides a comprehensive range of health services, free at the point of use for people ordinarily resident in the United Kingdom apart from dental treatment and optical care. In England, NHS patients have to pay prescription charges; some, such as those aged over 60 and certain state ben ...
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Chris Donald
Chris Donald (born 25 April 1960 in Newcastle, England) is the founder of, and one of the principal contributors to, the British comic magazine '' Viz''. Biography Donald attended West Jesmond Primary School,http://www.communitychannel.org/content/view/2666 and then Heaton Comprehensive School, where he failed his A-levels. His Arts teacher John Dixon, who Donald recalls as never being present during art lessons, claims to have seen the original draft ''Viz'' cartoon drawings and advised Chris "to give it up, and find a proper job!" The forerunner of Viz was in fact a series of small comic booklets, titled "The Fat Crusader", drawn on the back of Esso Blue invoice pads and secretly circulated around classrooms at Heaton School – first amongst pupils, and later penetrating the staff room – between 1976 and 1978. In October 1978, having failed to achieve sufficient qualifications to continue his "education", Donald began work as a clerical officer at the DHSS central office in ...
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Situationist International
The Situationist International (SI) was an international organization of social revolutionaries made up of avant-garde artists, intellectuals, and political theorists. It was prominent in Europe from its formation in 1957 to its dissolution in 1972. The intellectual foundations of the Situationist International were derived primarily from libertarian Marxism and the avant-garde art movements of the early 20th century, particularly Dada and Surrealism. Overall, situationist theory represented an attempt to synthesize this diverse field of theoretical disciplines into a modern and comprehensive critique of mid-20th century advanced capitalism. Essential to situationist theory was the concept of the spectacle, a unified critique of advanced capitalism of which a primary concern was the progressively increasing tendency towards the expression and mediation of social relations through objects. The situationists believed that the shift from individual expression through directly li ...
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Raoul Vaneigem
Raoul Vaneigem (; born 21 March 1934) is a Belgian writer known for his 1967 book ''The Revolution of Everyday Life''. He was born in Lessines ( Hainaut, Belgium) and studied romance philology at the Free University of Brussels from 1952 to 1956. He was a member of the Situationist International from 1961 to 1970. Biography Vaneigem and Guy Debord were two of the principal theorists of the Situationist movement. Vaneigem's slogans frequently made it onto the walls of Paris during the May 1968 uprisings. His most famous book, and the one that contains the most famous slogans, is ''The Revolution of Everyday Life''. In it, he challenged what he called "passive nihilism", a passive acceptance of the absurdities of modernism which he considered "an overture to conformism". According to the website ''nothingness.org'', The voice of Raoul Vaneigem was one of the strongest of the Situationists. Counterpoised to Guy Debord's political and polemic style, Vaneigem offered a more poetic ...
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Joanna Blythman
Joanna Blythman (born 1956) is a British investigative food journalist and writer and a commentator on the British food chain who has covered subjects including salmon farming, supermarkets, intensive pineapple production, bird flu and the causes of obesity. Blythman was born in Springburn in Glasgow, the daughter of lecturer in Education, Marion Blythman and socialist campaigner and Scottish republican songwriter Morris Blythman. As of 2006, Blythman has won five Glenfiddich Awards for her writing, including a Glenfiddich Special Award for her first book, ''The Food We Eat'', and the Glenfiddich Food Book of the Year Award in 2005 for ''Shopped'', as well as a Caroline Walker Media Award for ''Improving the Nation's Health by Means of Good Food'', and a Guild of Food Writers Award for ''The Food We Eat''. In 2004, she won one of BBC Radio 4's Food and Farming Awards, the Derek Cooper Award. In 2007 she was awarded the Good Housekeeping award for Outstanding Contribution to ...
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The Sunday Times (UK)
''The Sunday Times'' is a British newspaper whose circulation makes it the largest in Britain's quality press market category. It was founded in 1821 as ''The New Observer''. It is published by Times Newspapers Ltd, a subsidiary of News UK, which is owned by News Corp. Times Newspapers also publishes ''The Times''. The two papers were founded independently and have been under common ownership since 1966. They were bought by News International in 1981. ''The Sunday Times'' has a circulation of just over 650,000, which exceeds that of its main rivals, including The Sunday Telegraph, ''The'' ''Sunday Telegraph'' and The Observer, ''The'' ''Observer'', combined. While some other national newspapers moved to a Tabloid (newspaper format), tabloid format in the early 2000s, ''The Sunday Times'' has retained the larger broadsheet format and has said that it would continue to do so. As of December 2019, it sells 75% more copies than its sister paper, ''The Times'', which is published fro ...
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Tony Barrell (journalist)
Tony Barrell is a British journalist, known for his humour and his exploration of the unusual and the unexplained. He is the author of the 2017 book ''The Beatles on the Roof''. Barrell has also written many major features for the '' Sunday Times'', and has contributed to ''The Times'', '' The Idler'', and ''Cornucopia'' magazine, among other publications. He has frequently written about celebrities, as well as people with fringe interests and beliefs such as cult members, alien abductees and battle re-enactors. He was born in Crawley in West Sussex. Barrell has interviewed actors such as Gillian Anderson and Johnny Depp, comedians such as Vic Reeves, Paul Whitehouse, Matt Lucas and David Walliams, artists such as Sir Peter Blake, Marc Quinn, Keith Tyson and Rolf Harris, and musicians and bands such as Jimmy Page, Dido, Joan Baez, Ronnie Wood, Andy Summers, Donovan, Celine Dion, Mike Oldfield, Sandie Shaw, Garbage, Dixie Chicks, the Finn Brothers, The Beautiful South, A ...
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ABC (band)
ABC are an English pop band formed in Sheffield in 1980. Their classic line-up consisted of lead singer Martin Fry, guitarist and keyboardist Mark White, saxophonist Stephen Singleton and drummer David Palmer. Developed from an earlier band, Vice Versa, ABC achieved ten UK and five US Top 40 hit singles between 1981 and 1990, and their 1982 debut album, ''The Lexicon of Love'', was a UK number one. Their early-1980s success in the US saw them associated with the Second British Invasion. Now essentially a solo project for Fry, ABC continues to tour and released a ninth studio album, ''The Lexicon of Love II'', in 2016. History Formation ABC has its roots in the band Vice Versa, a Sheffield band formed in 1977 by synthesizer-players Stephen Singleton and Mark White. Their debut gig was as the support to Wire at the Outlook club in Sheffield.Frame, Pete. (1999) Pete Frame's Rockin' Around Britain: Rock'n'roll Landmarks of the UK and Ireland, Omnibus Press They founded their o ...
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Fiona Russell Powell
Fiona Russell Powell (born 2 April 1962) is a British journalist. She is best known for her series of interviews throughout the 1980s in ''The Face'' magazine. For a brief period in the mid-1980s, she performed as a member of pop group ABC in videos and onstage to support their cartoon-synth album '' How to Be a ... Zillionaire!'' (1985). She was credited originally as "Fiona" in early recordings of material for this album, but eventually performed under the stage name "Eden". Early life and career Growing up in Dore, Sheffield, she had known ABC from their early days as an electronic three-piece called Vice Versa. In 1982, aged 20, she began writing for ''The Face'' as a features writer, concentrating mostly on music and became known for her irreverent mickey-taking interviews with leading pop stars of the day. ABC After the success of ABC's debut album ''The Lexicon of Love'' and the disappointing reception to their follow up ''Beauty Stab'', ABC's Martin Fry and Mark W ...
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Damien Hirst
Damien Steven Hirst (; né Brennan; born 7 June 1965) is an English artist, entrepreneur, and art collector. He is one of the Young British Artists (YBAs) who dominated the art scene in the UK during the 1990s. He is reportedly the United Kingdom's richest living artist, with his wealth estimated at US$384 million in the 2020 ''Sunday Times'' Rich List.Richard Brooks,It's the fame I crave, says Damien Hirst, The Times, 28 March 2010 During the 1990s his career was closely linked with the collector Charles Saatchi, but increasing frictions came to a head in 2003 and the relationship ended. Death is a central theme in Hirst's works. He became famous for a series of artworks in which dead animals (including a shark, a sheep, and a cow) are preserved, sometimes having been dissected, in formaldehyde. The best-known of these was ''The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living'', a tiger shark immersed in formaldehyde in a clear display case. He has also made " ...
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Louis Theroux
Louis Sebastian Theroux (; born 20 May 1970) is a British-American documentarian, journalist, broadcaster, and author. He has received two British Academy Television Awards and a Royal Television Society Television Award. After graduating from Magdalen College, Oxford, Theroux moved to the United States and worked as a journalist for ''Metro Silicon Valley'' and ''Spy''. He moved into television as the presenter of offbeat segments on Michael Moore's ''TV Nation'' series and later began to host his own documentaries for the BBC, including '' Louis Theroux's Weird Weekends,'' '' When Louis Met...'', and several BBC Two specials. Early life Louis Sebastian Theroux was born in Singapore on 20 May 1970, the son of English mother Anne (née Castle) and American father Paul Theroux, a noted travel writer and novelist. His paternal grandmother, Anne Dittami, was an Italian-American grammar school teacher, while his paternal grandfather, Albert Eugène Theroux, was a French-Canadia ...
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