USA Leased Guantanamo Bay from Cuba
In 1903 a permanent naval base was secured in perpetuity by America on the island of Cuba. Although it was never the plan to store candy floss and cuddly toys at Guantanamo bay, I don't imagine even the hawks of the US Navy could have imagined the shameful future this place would have. I've never understood how the Americans managed to maintain a military presence here throughout the Castro years and particularly the Russian missile crisis of the early sixties and yet seemed to be powerless to prevent many of the things they disapproved of. Still they have been able to get on with some top quality abuse of human rights, including, we now know, Waterboarding - a kind of controlled drowning. How many Americans wish they'd never set foot there?
Bruce Forsyth's 80th birthday
This is a cheat because Brucie was actually born yesterday (I'm sure he'd have a response to that) and I missed it, or it would have featured in yesterday's blog. Although Bruce Forsyth has made some terrible television (Bruce's Big Night) he is a genuine showbusiness legend. He has been on stage or tv in some way or other since he was a boy and is still entertaining prime time tv audiences - "an entertainer" is all he wants to be.
I have been lucky enought to work with Bruce on a few occasions - once I interviewed him for a radio documentary about the late Les Dawson and it struck me then that he was one of the last of a generation of "old school" comedians and entertainers. I also discovered, when I edited out all of Bruce's ers and ums and "ewewewers", and stuck them all together, I had what sounded like a bizarre alien ray gun: "erererewewewewerer".
Best of all for me, I got to work with him on a great episode of Have I Got News For You, when Bruce hosted it like a combination of all the gameshows he'd ever done. It was recorded around the time the Labour Government's "45 minute" lie over Iraq's weapons of mass destruction was being exposed. Bruce's joke on the elusive WMD was "It would be nice to see them, to see them...nice!" Here's a bit of the show, and let's raise a glass to Brucie.
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