http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mVR486PwEFk

As you’ll see from the above video, I’ve agreed to swim 10k in just over two weeks for Marie Curie Cancer Care. Please sponsor me!

10k is a long way – for those of you in London, it’s roughly the same as swimming along the Thames from the London Eye to the Millennium Dome. It’s 400 lengths of my local pool.

So, please sponsor me! If you gave just 5p per length, that’d be £20, or enough to pay for an hour of nursing care for a terminally ill patient. Even £1 – 1p for every 10m – would pay for a patient information pack.

If you’re still not convinced, look at the video below which explains a small part of the work that Marie Curie nurses do.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Oykbix0C-E0

I’ll give you regular updates on my progress over the next couple of weeks.

Thanks for your support.

It is surely impossible any West Wing fan – or, indeed, anyone who isn’t a West Wing fan, to keep a straight face whilst watching this from Season 4. If you don’t own it, you can currently buy the whole 43 disc box set for under £40. That’s 26p an episode – how can you resist?

A bit of Tim Minchin to wish everyone “Merry Christmas!”

Five reasons why this video (whilst it makes an important and valid wider point) irritates me:
1. It doesn’t acknowledge that both A (on the left) and B (on the right) are both, ultimately, working for profit rather than purely for the benefit of patients.
2. It doesn’t acknowledge that A likely employs salaried doctors like B, with similar issues.
3. It doesn’t acknowledge that since A opted out of providing out-of-hours care, B has stepped in to provide it. In fact, it’s B who’s illustrated at walking out at the end, just when B’s colleagues are kicking into action.
4. It suggests that non-partner doctors hold less professionalism, and are less concerned with patient welfare. Such doctors include many GPs, as well as virtually all secondary and tertiary care physicians and surgeons.
5. It doesn’t acknowledge a single advantage of the corporate model. A’s approach may well be preferable as a whole, but B’s approach is not without merit, and it’s idiotic to suggest that it is.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oAn8KWJ26M4

I believe this is a BBC film from 1965 about the effects of nuclear war that was suppressed from broadcast. It’s powerful stuff.

I found it fascinating, as I used to be really interested in American Cold War public information films, and the contrast between this and the whole ‘Duck & Cover’ malarky is stark to say the least. I can certainly appreciate why its broadcast was suppressed at the time!

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Also available on Daily Motion
Full details of 10²³ campaign here

I’m being paid to share this remarkably inspiring celebrity-filled video with you – featuring everyone from Tony Blair to June Sarpong, and Stuart Rose to Annie Lennox. Getting all these people to contribute seems quite an impressive achievement, and I hope you enjoy watching.

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Also available on YouTube

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The BBC’s I’d Do Anything is one of my guilty pleasures in life…

The uninitiated amongst you may not know that this is the third in a series of programmes during which Andrew Lloyd Webber picks a new West End star. The earlier versions were How Do You Solve a Problem Like Maria? and Any Dream Will Do. The shows are particularly notable for the exit sequence, during which the person voted off the show just moments previously has to perform with the other Marias / Josephs / Nancys “saying goodbye in their own special way”, as Graham Norton puts it each week.

Anyway, I love it. Here’s a compilation clip from the exit sequences so far this series. (Given that my finals are just weeks away, yes, I probably should have been doing something more useful with my time…)

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