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Joe Riley

Joe Riley is arts editor, columnist and leader writer for the Liverpool ECHO. The Life of Riley is a wry look at existence - local, national and international (and occasionally into outer space) - as seen by the UK's senior serving arts critic and the ECHO's longest-serving journalist.

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January 2007 Archives

Those Who Can,,,,,,

Posted by Joe Riley on January 31, 2007 9:43 AM

A business manager has become one of the first non-teachers to gaina new qualification which will allow her to become a headteacher.
So, to be even more precise, here is a non-teacher who is one of the first in the UK to complete the National Professional Qualification for headteachers.

Barrymore Bounces Back

Posted by Joe Riley on January 23, 2007 9:05 AM

Michael Barrymore totally redeems his professional reputation in Scrooge, now touring to Liverpool Empire. A nasty shock to those who wrote to me in advance hoping he would fail and castigating the ECHO for carrying an interview in advance of the show's opening. Perhaps, if the same bigots bother to visit the production, they will realise that the theme is all about change and forgiveness.

Monday Miseryrail and Shopping and L**king

Posted by Joe Riley on January 22, 2007 9:00 AM

Today, by some strange calculation of miscellaneous statistics, is the most depressing day of the year. The one on which most people are likely to be absent from work. True to form, Miseryrail has played its part.

Best Bitch In Show

Posted by Joe Riley on January 18, 2007 12:03 PM

Am I in the minority, being agog at the national pastime of gaping at Big Brother and its generally low-life exhibits?
You can see Best Bitch in Show by tuning in just once a year to Crufts (20,000 dogs, 170 types).
But, chances are, most of the bitches at Crufts will have breeding, largely lacking at Maison Grand Frere, where the calibre of certain female contestants is an insult to dogs.
In encountered BB but once en route to David Attenborough and Blue Planet, where the stars of the show were molluscs of considerably more instinctive intelligence than the Channel 4 inmates.

The Law Is an Ass (part 2); Inflation?; A Head Rolls; Black Hole

Posted by Joe Riley on January 16, 2007 8:55 AM

A Young prisoner in Yorkshire, who tried to commit suicide, has won £575,000 in compensation. The Prison Service has refused to say whether the inmate was claiming his human rights had been breached by being rescued.
Meanwhile, in the greater scheme of such bonkers things, Liverpool (Walton) prisoners were awarded a staggering £2.8m in compo last year - by far the highest total in the UK. Indeed, the Liverpool bill accounted for two thirds of the total UK pay-outs..
Human rights? There should be more talk of human wrongs.

Dame Lorraine?

Posted by Joe Riley on January 11, 2007 11:49 AM

Yes Dame Lorraine does have a certain ring to it.
A friend who is a prominent national journalist opines that the appointment of Tranmere Rovers executive chairman Lorraine Rogers as the first woman chairman in the 166-year history of the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Society is another step along the road to a possible damehood.

Yes, the law is an ass - and there are bad smoke signals coming from Wales.

Posted by Joe Riley on January 10, 2007 2:44 PM

A sad, pathetic little man runs up a £9,000 bill on chatlines, using a stolen sim card.
The owner of the card (ie the victom of the crime) gets a 300-page payment demand.
The man is ordered to pay back just £500.
The owner, a hardworking businesswoman, is left to find the rest, risking financial ruin.

Heaven and Hell, Home Baking and Do Ya Ken?

Posted by Joe Riley on January 8, 2007 4:31 PM

I have just been to a requiem mass for a long-standing family friend. In so far as these things can be said to go well, it did.

SH,,,(you know who)

Posted by Joe Riley on January 4, 2007 4:09 PM

The incredible debate over the 'niceties' of Saddam Hussein's execution continue. Does history tell of similar sensitivities when the corpse of Benito Mussolini was placed upside down on meathooks, or when the Nazi criminals were hanged after their war crime trial?.
No debate then then of possibly offending their "followers."
So just when you thought Saddam might have been a mass murderer who possibly deserved whatever the fates had in store, along come today's new thinkers whose ideas of justice range from life imprisonment to virtual rehab.

A taste for Scouse

Posted by Joe Riley on January 3, 2007 3:08 PM

PS First, let me say that I sense an orchestrated letters campaign to support the Royal Court pantomime, Snow White. Been around too long not to recognise the symptoms. Surely it wouldn't have anything to do with ther fact that it scored 6/10 in the Echo review (which is still one point higher than average). We live in a PR led world where anything short of 9/10 (like school homework) is regarded as an insult...there again, look at the state of most school homework.

Brickbats and Bouquets

Posted by Joe Riley on January 2, 2007 2:44 PM

Ever since Cilla Black ill-advisedly ad-libbed in a Liverpool production of Jack and the Beanstalk (How shall I kill the giant, kids? answer: sing to him, Cilla) I have found panto completely unpredictable.

This page contains an archive of all entries posted to Life of Riley in the January 2007. They are listed from oldest to newest.

February 2007 is the next archive.

Many more can be found on the home page or by looking through the archives.