Craig Brown’s new book, “One On One”, is a brilliant daisy-chain of 101 true encounters (ie. not parodies): George Bernard Shaw crashes his bike into Bertrand Russell, who in turn butters bread for (and flirts with) Sarah Miles. Elsewhere in the chain Cecil Beaton is offered LSD by Mick Jagger and Marilyn Monroe gets sexy with Nikita Khrushchev.

I wondered if a YouTube version was possible: a chain of relatively unusual celebrity juxtapositions, moving pictures only. I’ve started the chain with nine linked videos. Craig Brown starts and ends with Hitler; I’ve chosen the logical starting point of Elvis.
The videos are in the main body of the post.

If you’d like to join in, please do! (If not, I’ll play on my own…) Some less unusual clips might be needed to link up the more bizarre ones; I’ve already included some fairly obvious ones, and I’ve already cheated a little by including Dick Cavett (Michael Parkinson could be useful further along the chain). It can zig-zag back and forth in time and can include people famous in any field – the more unusual and unscripted the encounter the better.

The links so far are:
Elvis plays on the beach with Tom Jones…
…Tom Jones is backed by Morecambe & Wise…
…Morecambe & Wise banter with The Beatles…
…The Beatles are K.O.’d by Muhammad Ali…
…Muhammad Ali spars with Michael Jackson…
…Michael Jackson and Prince are dragged on stage by James Brown…
…James Brown interviews Alfred Hitchcock…
…Alfred Hitchcock discusses murder and Mother with Dick Cavett…
…Dick Cavett welcomes a mud-splattered Crosby, Stills and Jefferson Airplane literally straight in from Woodstock, alongside an unmuddied Joni Mitchell…

You might not know what to make of this - a 10 minute musical based on the Tyne and Wear Metro system. I've decided I love it. My favourite bit is 2m5s in: "It's alreeeet."

M-M-M-M-M-M-Metro!

Remember these? Conjure up the magic of Christmas past with two of Santa Lewry's greatest gifts to the world - the official Word Advent Calendars...
2007:

http://www.wordmagazine.co.uk/content/word-magazine-advent-calendar
2008:

http://www.wordmagazine.co.uk/content/official-2008-word-magazine-advent...

Fans of co-retronauts C.W. Stoneking and The Jim Jones Revue may also be interested in Kitty, Daisy and Lewis - at least as an astonishing live act.
They're a family from north London (3 offspring + parents) so steeped in old Americana it's unnerving - and they're also massively talented multi-instrumentalists.
At the Thames Festival yesterday they followed C.W. Stoneking, and both acts seduced a huge crowd of maximum diversity. It was mid-century Memphis till the mighty Ska Cubano whisked us off to Havana.
Meet the family:

Apart from being a genre-straddling musical genius, Leonard Bernstein was also a great talker.
Here is an excerpt from his "The Unanswered Question" lecture series at Harvard.
Lengthy theorising about music can often make me just want to go and mosh to something dumb and primal like the Stooges, but I do love Bernstein's interpretation of a section of Beethoven at the start of the clip:

The Godfather of Soul meets the Master of Suspense and asks him about his movie, "Homicidal":

(Any other footage of unlikely interactions between heroes?)

Here's James Last's version of Hawkwind's "Silver Machine".
Happy New Year everyone!