This week, BBC Four showed clips of the bits edited out of QI – clearly one of the best shows on TV – in a special ‘Elephants’ episode (see below for next transmission time). If you missed it, you’ll have missed this gem… So let me present it to you as a pre-Christmas treat.

[flashvideo filename=”http://sjhoward.co.uk/video/qi.flv” title=”QI (BBC Four)” picture=”http://sjhoward.co.uk/video/qi.jpg” ratio=”16:9″ /]

Browsing YouTube tonight, I feel an acute sense of loss at the ending of The West Wing. It was a truly great show – and which other would make this kind of point on prime time US telly?

[flashvideo filename=”http://sjhoward.co.uk/video/bartlett.flv” title=”The West Wing” picture=”http://sjhoward.co.uk/video/barlett.jpg” ratio=”14:9″ /]

[flashvideo filename=”http://sjhoward.co.uk/video/gays.flv” ratio=”4:3″ /]

Thanks to Helen in Toronto for sending in this very effective ad, which has (understandably) been causing a bit of a stir around her neck of the woods.

[flashvideo filename=”http://sjhoward.co.uk/video/camp.flv” title=”Camp Okutta” picture=”http://sjhoward.co.uk/video/camp.JPG” ratio=”4:3″ /]

The Camp Okutta website is here, and a news article with further explanation is here. It’s a really great ad campaign.

If you’ve found something I might like, send it in! Email simon@sjhoward.co.uk, phone 0845 638 1916, fax 0845 638 1918, or use your mobile to send texts, pictures, and videos to 60300 (start the text part of your message with the word “simon”). Phone and text charges are detailed here.

There are now more videos available through the site: As well as the video posts, you can also access the YouTube videos that I’ve marked as favourites. All of this excitement is available with a click of Videos in the menu at the top of every page. More new stuff is coming soon.

As you’ll no doubt have seen some time ago, the BBC has now apologised over its report that the Queen walked out of a photoshoot with Annie Leibovitz, a story I also reported here. The footage the BBC played to journalists spliced together footage of her objecting to removing her crown with footage of her walking in to the portrait sitting, as you can see in this clip:

It seems extraordinary that the news on BBC One can report something as fact based on some badly edited footage of a BBC One programme. I know the BBC’s verging on Brobdingnagian these days, but when a world renowned news team can’t check out a story based on a programme for the same organisation, I think we’re in trouble. Whatever happened to ‘One BBC’?

It’s an old’un, but a good’un…

[flashvideo filename=”http://sjhoward.co.uk/video/pinter.flv” title=”Sky News (13/10/05)” picture=”http://sjhoward.co.uk/video/skynews.jpg” ratio=”4:3″ /]

As my more astute readers will doubtless have noticed, it’s Sunday. So I thought I’d post something relevant. I haven’t done that for the past four years, and probably never will again, but that’s by-the-by.

I have just come across this new advert from the Mail on Sunday: It’s quite extraordinary. It’s the kind of thing you might expect to be advertising The News of the World, but it would seem that the Mail has finally given up on trying to be respectable, and trying to be “not as bad as” the Daily Mail.

[flashvideo filename=”http://sjhoward.co.uk/video/mailonsunday2.flv” title=”Mail on Sunday Advert” ratio=”16:9″ picture=”http://sjhoward.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2007/06/mailpic.JPG” /]

I don’t think I need to write any further commentary, really.