Latest news with #TheThickofIt
Irish Examiner
15 hours ago
- Entertainment
- Irish Examiner
TV review: I was glad to see the closing credits of Mountainhead
I was in two minds about Mountainhead (Sky Atlantic and NOW). Every now and again I wished this movie was a series but mainly I was glad that I didn't have to spend more than 90 minutes with the main characters. I wanted it to be a series because it's directed by Jesse Armstrong, who was involved with The Thick of It and Succession, two of the best 21st century telly satires. But this one is about four super-rich tech titans, awful men who are happy to set the world on fire as long as their net worth is bigger than the next guy. In this case, the world is literally in flames as the four former frat-boys gather in a Bond-villain mountain retreat to play poker and rekindle their time in The Brewsters. I think that's a fraternity, we're not told. The chief villain is Venis – his social-media platform Traam has just released new features which make it too easy to produce deep-fake videos, which are then used to incite hatred and sectarianism across the globe. His goofy friend Jeff has an AI platform that could douse the flames by identifying any false videos, if only he'd make that technology available to Traam. Overseeing it all is Randall, AKA Papa Bear, which sees Steve Carrell in top Steve Carrell form, playing the original tech God, who likes to name-drop philosophers to justify making money no matter what. The fourth character is the host, Souper, the poorest of the group with a net worth of $550 million. Fans of Succession will like the look and feel of Mountainhead. You've got your fleets of private jets and expensive 4x4s, whisking middle-aged white people here and there. There are put-upon personal assistants making knowing glances at the camera. Everyone is terribly dressed, expensively. But there isn't enough fun. Succession and The Thick of It allowed their characters sufficient humanity and awareness to make jokes about themselves and each other. The four tech bros here are too consumed by themselves to get a decent laugh. There is oodles of acting talent here, but it's wasted with long monologues that could have been lifted from Elon Musk's twitter account. We don't need a telly drama to tell us that super-rich white American nerds are a danger to the planet, we can get that from the news. There are some very funny bits. Souper being parachuted in to head a coup in Argentina is a lovely touch; the bit where Venis tries to bond with his baby boy is gold; the scene around the sauna terrifyingly hilarious. But I was glad to see the closing credits and the back of The Brewsters.
Yahoo
6 days ago
- Business
- Yahoo
Lancashire are tearing themselves apart on and off the pitch
The crisis enveloping Lancashire has deepened, as Dale Benkenstein left the club 'by mutual consent' on Wednesday, just a day before an AGM that promises to be explosive. Lancashire are enduring a desperate season on the field. Relegated from Division One of the County Championship last season, they are winless and a single point off bottom place in the second tier as the competition takes its mid-point break for the Vitality T20 Blast. Promotion, for which they were widely tipped, is slipping beyond their reach. A fortnight ago, Lancashire issued an unprecedented apology to members for the 'disappointing start' to the season, bemoaning the flat pitches at Old Trafford, but crucially backing Benkenstein and his coaching team. That statement was issued at 11.25am, but a little over three hours later in a move reminiscent of a scene from The Thick of It, another missive followed saying Keaton Jennings was resigning as captain of the County Championship team with in-form Australian Marcus Harris taking over. After a draw against Derbyshire and a thumping defeat at leaders Leicestershire in Harris's two games in charge, Benkenstein has now followed Jennings in leaving his post. Steven Croft, the 40-year-old who retired from playing last season, has been placed in interim charge. The messy, muddled triptych of statements act as an emblem for the club's start to a season in which Lancashire have been so bad that barely anyone noticed Yorkshire's slide to the lower reaches of Division One. South African Benkenstein, who enjoyed a fine career as a player, arrived from Gloucestershire, who finished bottom of Division Two in his last season in 2023 and had won just two Championship matches in two years. At Lancashire, he managed just three red-ball wins, all of them in a relegation campaign last year, out of 21 matches. It leaves the club at a low ebb; a far cry from 2022, when they finished second in all three county competitions. To compete on all three fronts is a fine achievement. All the while, a host of Lancashire products thrive elsewhere, such as Nottinghamshire captain Haseeb Hameed, Warwickshire captain Alex Davies, and Surrey's lynchpin Jordan Clark. It is unusual for a county coach to depart mid-season, but this one was greeted with little surprise and few complaints. Now, attention among a restless, angry support base will turn to those who hired him just 18 months ago with such a modest record: Mark Chilton, the director of cricket, Daniel Gidney, the chief executive, and Andy Anson, the chairman. They may feel that the departure of Benkenstein will slightly quieten the music they face at the annual general meeting at 4pm on Thursday, but that seems optimistic. Many will see the coach leaving as mere window dressing. Lancashire are as busy as any county cricket club. On the cricket side, they host men's and women's internationals, a Hundred franchise (which they are partnering with Indian Premier League side Lucknow Super Giants), a men's county team, and a tier-one women's team. They are also developing a playing and training base away from Old Trafford at Farington near Preston. Off the field, at their headquarters they have two hotels, a successful conferencing and events business, and have hosted major concerts. This makes them, and Surrey, the envy of other counties in terms of year-round non-cricket business. The two sides of the business should be able to coexist, but the sense among those close to the club is that the building of the off-field business has contributed to a loss of focus on cricket. Club legend David 'Bumble' Lloyd used his column in the Daily Mail last week to opine on the club's demise. 'There is a feeling, from both within and outside the club, that cricket isn't the main priority,' he wrote. 'Rather the balance sheet is. That is a real concern. We must get back to being a cricket club.' Lloyd described Anson, who is also CEO of the British Olympic Association, as a 'thoroughly decent bloke who is very busy doing lots of other things, so he can't be hands-on', adding that the well-respected board member John Abrahams is the 'only one with any cricket knowledge at senior level'. For context, Lloyd's lifetime in and around the club has led to him becoming one of 29 vice-presidents at Lancashire, and he still works for the club in commentary and commercial roles. He knows the place like the back of his hand, and his words carry weight. Lloyd's words would chime with many of Lancashire's members, who have been vocal in their dissent for some years. As one says: 'Lancashire and Old Trafford have become an events business attached to an inconvenient cricket team, and an even more inconvenient membership alongside that.' The members have a fraught relationship with the club's leaders. Anson has been in charge since 2020, and Gidney was appointed CEO in 2012, making him one of the longest-serving officials in county cricket. He has helped transform Lancashire off the field, has been innovative in his courting of the lucrative Indian market, and has been a great champion of women's cricket. It should be noted that Lancashire won the inaugural Vitality Women's County Cup on Monday, so it has not all been bad on the field at the start of the season. But he has also had a way of angering cricket fans, not least when he told a Lancashire members' forum that some non-host counties were like 'heroin addicts' in their reliance on the England and Wales Cricket Board. This matter is understood to have been raised at meeting of county leaders. On the more extreme fringe of the Red Rose membership was the Lancashire Action Group, which was founded in 2014 and replaced by Lancashire CC Members Group last year. Earlier this month, their leader Alan Higham wrote an open letter looking ahead to the AGM, saying 'the club is struggling – both on the pitch, financially and for the continued support of loyal fans'. They laid out a series of complaints, including the failure of the club to allow members to be represented on the board, and the stifling of dissent. Some of these issues can be expected to dominate proceedings at the AGM on Thursday. But chief among their complaints was 'a loss of focus on Lancashire CCC'. They accuse the club of failing to encourage attendances at Lancashire matches. In 2019, the last season before the pandemic and the inaugural Hundred, Lancashire's Blast attendances averaged more than 10,000. In 2024, not helped by a washed-out Roses match, that dropped to under 5,500. The highest attendance was still the Yorkshire fixture, at 7,699, with the lowest just 3,768. Blast numbers have been declining across the country since the Hundred (and will continue to do so this year, with advanced sales very poor), but Lancashire's is an extreme example. Membership figures have been dropping, too; in 2006, Lancashire had more than 12,000 members. Now they have just 1,400 full annual members, along with a few thousand others in lower categories that allow access to international tickets. This group clearly fluctuates year-on-year; there were a total of 8,604 members for the Ashes year of 2023, but that dropped to 5,022 in 2024. Members are always likely to grumble when a team perform as poorly as Lancashire are now. But for all that the off-field business is well set up, the club's finances are in a tight spot. When their last accounts (for 2023) were published, Lancashire had £32.2 million of debt, which is expensive to service. The club's finances are tied to the England calendar, and are vulnerable to the whims of the weather. In 2023, they hosted an Ashes Test, but two days were badly affected by rain, costing them revenue. Last year, their Test against Sri Lanka was a low-key affair, while the Roses match and T20 international against Australia were both rained off – bad luck, and brutal for the balance sheet. Next year, Old Trafford does not host a Test match of any sort, denying the club income from advance ticket sales, and in 2027 they are due to host a Test, but not in the Ashes. Last summer, concern about the club's cash flow rose among the playing group when there was a delay in their expenses being paid, affecting some players' personal financial position. When contacted by Telegraph Sport about this last year, the club accepted that one payment was delayed, putting it down to a change of system. Concerts, like Test matches, have been a sure-fire money-spinner for Lancashire in recent decades. There are currently no concerts in the diary, which the club say is because they are focusing on cricket. But reports in local and national media earlier this year revealed that Trafford Council, the local authority, had taken Lancashire CCC and mega-promoter Live Nation to court over an incident in which a member of the public was injured at a Red Hot Chili Peppers concert three years ago. The trial will not happen until March 2027, and Lancashire are still able to host concerts while this happens, although it could be that the opening of the Co-Op Live arena in Manchester affects who performs there. Later this year, Lancashire will be offered a route out of their financial difficulties by the Hundred sale. Gidney, Anson and former board member James Sheridan deserve credit for their work on this, which secured them the IPL partner they so desperately sought, Lucknow's billionaire owner Sanjiv Goenka, and a good overall value of £116 million. Lancashire were gifted 51 per cent of the franchise by the ECB, and chose to sell 21 per cent and keep 30 per cent of it, meaning Goenka is buying 70 per cent overall. When the deal is eventually done – and it is not Lancashire or their partners dragging their feet – the club could receive upwards of £40 million and an opportunity to write off some of that debt and build the business further. That can wait, though. The first step out of Lancashire's crisis will be to win a few games.
Belfast Telegraph
23-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Belfast Telegraph
‘Just sprinkle your swearing s*** all over it': How The Thick of It redefined expletives on TV
Armando Iannucci wanted to make something 'rough and ready' about what politics was really like in the 2000s. With a team of talented writers, he created a classic comedy that still resonates today. Katie Rosseinsky dissects the anatomy of its foul-mouthed invective It takes about one minute for a verbal grenade to be lobbed in The Thick of It's first episode. Spin doctor Malcolm Tucker, played by Peter Capaldi, is on the phone, mouthing off about an MP, who, in Tucker's estimation at least, is not just totally rubbish at his job, he's 'as useless as a marzipan dildo'. As insults go, it's lewd but also ludicrous, utterly damning yet surreally silly. And, as the show's creator Armando Iannucci says, it 'sets the tone for everything' to come. Over the course of four series and one Oscar-nominated spin-off film, The Thick of It raised the bar with some of the most creative invective ever heard on television. The political sitcom, which debuted in an appropriately post-watershed late slot on BBC Four on 19 May 2005, ushered viewers behind the scenes in the fictional – but all too realistic – Department for Social Affairs (it would add Citizenship to its cumbersome remit in later seasons).
Yahoo
22-05-2025
- Sport
- Yahoo
Ollie Pope smashes 169 off Zimbabwe to show England selectors his class
There were shades of The Thick of It after Ben Stokes gave his press conference a day out from this one-off Test against Zimbabwe. When the minister – or in this instance the England captain – said Jacob Bethell would be straight back in for the series against India, this apparently referred to the squad and not necessarily the XI. That Stokes sought to make this clarification through the back channels perhaps said more about the task at hand than England's true thoughts on the subject. No captain would ever wish to send a player out believing whatever they achieved would be irrelevant, especially not a vice-captain and selfless cricketer such as Ollie Pope. Related: England v Zimbabwe: men's cricket Test, day one – live Either way, Pope was scarcely destabilised by the prospect of Bethell returning from the Indian Premier League and reclaiming the No 3 berth. Striding out with an already bumper 231 for one on the board, Pope peeled off a slick and unbeaten 169 from just 163 balls. Even factoring in a callow Zimbabwe attack that spent half the day a man down through injury, Test century No 8 can only have felt soothing. Brought up with just over an hour remaining when he carved Sikandar Raza for four, Pope had also made the third century on a day of outright dominance for England that added up to 498 for three by stumps. First came Ben Duckett fizzing his way to his fifth hundred in Test cricket with 140 from 134 balls, then Zak Crawley matching that number with a more watchful 124 from 171. It was Crawley's first time past three figures since the 2023 Ashes and the day he sent Pat Cummins into a tailspin at Old Trafford. This being a rare four-day Test match, the follow-on mark is just 150 runs and, along with the possibility of some rain over the weekend, may explain why Stokes opted against one of his funky day one declarations. Although the England captain may have simply been enjoying watching Pope make merry during the final hour, the right-hander bringing out the uppercut to glorious effect in a session worth 203 runs. It could have been a pretty deflating day for the Zimbabwe supporters on Trentside but after a 22-year wait to watch their side play a Test match in England, none seemed overly vexed on the way out. There was also something for them to cheer late on when Joe Root, freshly past 13,000 Test runs and looking ominous, holed out for 34 attempting to pull 6ft 8in Blessing Muzarabani over the long leg boundary. Craig Ervine, their captain, electing to bowl under grey skies in the morning was also not quite as calamitous as the scoreboard suggested, with Stokes minded to do the same. It was simply too chilly for the Dukes ball to swing during the early exchanges, likewise the surface was too beige and the outfield too quick overall for England's top order not to loosen their belts and tuck in. By lunch England had raced to 130 for no loss from 26 overs. Muzarabani, heading in the opposite direction to Bethell after this Test with an IPL gig pending, showed glimpses of his talent, the odd ball testing Crawley and a return catch when the opener had 10 proving just out of reach. At the other end Richard Ngarava offered a left-arm angle but, like his partner, not enough consistency to build any pressure. The most threatening seamer was probably Victor Nyauchi, a bustling medium-pacer who mixed up his angles well and flirted with Duckett's outside edge after the first interval. But on a day when Zimbabwe needed plenty to go their way, this briefly tricky passage witnessed the precise opposite: Ngarava, running to stop a ball in the deep, suffered a nasty back spasm and soon left the field on a motorised stretcher. The 231 runs that Duckett and Crawley compiled was England's highest ever partnership against Zimbabwe, as well as the third highest by an English opening pair on home soil. It may not have been their most taxing but, coming at the start of a defining nine months for this England team, it offered a reminder of the chemistry that this little-and-large duo have struck up since they were first paired in late 2022. For Crawley it also changed the narrative surrounding his early summer form; form summed by the fact that, when he rocked back and pulled Muzarabani for four early on to reach eight not out, he had already made his highest first-innings score of the season. Thereafter it was mostly a cruise, a knock only ended when he missed a tired sweep and was lbw. There were no such concerns regarding Duckett and on his home ground – a ground with dimensions practically designed for his punchy game – he purred his way to a run-a-ball century. In the end his downfall was self-inflicted, greeting the part-time spin of Wessly Madhevere with a four and six before slapping one straight to extra cover. There was a scare for Pope first ball when Madhevere went up for an lbw. But when the follow-up delivery was scythed past backward point for four, England's vice-captain was away. Whether the carnage wrought thereafter is enough to keep Bethell waiting remains to be seen but Pope has done his best to remain in the thick of it.
Yahoo
20-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
The Thick of It creator reveals scene which cabinet ministers say happened in real life
The creator of the hit political satire The Thick of It has revealed which scene in the series cabinet ministers have confessed to experiencing in real life. Armando Iannucci told Sky News' live event with that the writers would make up scenarios to be "as stupid as they can" - only to be asked later by Whitehall officials how they had found out about it. One episode in particular that was close to the bone involves the fictional mouthy communications director of Number 10, telling a cabinet minister the policy he is due to announce to the media is being cancelled because it is too expensive - and he will have to come up with another one on the spot. Mr Iannucci said: "Sometimes we would come up with stories that were like, we had to invent them, you know, and we thought, let's push it as stupidly as we can. "And then a couple of weeks later, someone from Whitehall would say, 'how did you find out exactly? We thought we'd kept that very quiet'. "And you know, the opening episode has them in the back of a car trying to come up with a policy. Malcolm's rung up and said the policy you've called the press to hear, you cannot go ahead, It's too expensive. "So they've got to come up with a policy that sounds great but will cost nothing. And I've had various former cabinet members say to me quietly, 'I've been in the back of that car'." The Thick of It aired 20 years ago this month, when New Labour was in government. It satirised the inner workings of modern British government, with the focus on the fictitious Department of Social Affairs and Citizenship. Harriet Harman, one of the few senior female figures at the time and now a peer and co-host of Electoral Dysfunction, asked Mr Iannucci if anyone inspired the character Nicola Murray, who was the focus of series three. "I'm asking for a friend, because basically it's like she was so ineffective, but she was so hard working and a nice person. Yes, but she was utterly destroyed by Number 10 and her ministerial colleagues putting the boot in. "I just wondered if she was based on anyone in particular?". Mr Iannucci said everyone in The Thick Of It was "based either on a composite of different things we've heard in different people or on a kind of guesstimate of what this person might be".
