I keep seeing walking pads everywhere - the smaller, more agile version of a treadmill that is designed for walking rather than running, and getting your steps in rather than completing a marathon. Naturally with the start of a new year and resolutions being made and broken, it makes sense for a lot of conversation to centre on health and fitness but I really am seeing these small machines everywhere, …

There is so much content on Disney+ that it's easy to overlook some gems, and I'm glad to have uncovered one of them - Inside Pixar. The documentary series is twenty short episodes that delve into different aspects of making Pixar movies. Lots of behind the scenes insight into various roles, from artists to writers, but also less creative roles such as the admin assistant, the facilities manager, and even …

The Only Fools and Horses Musical has been around for a few years now but left the West End for a UK tour last year and finally I have managed to see it. Written by Paul Whitehouse and Jim Sullivan (son of original creator John Sullivan), the musical features all the characters you know and love, including that yellow three-wheeled van, and brings them together for a two hour extravaganza. …

The second series of Silo finished on Apple TV recently and ooh it was a great ride. It picked up right where the last series ended, with our intrepid hero Juliette Nichols (portrayed endlessly brilliantly by Rebecca Ferguson) finding a new Silo - an abandoned Silo, or so it seems. Needless to say, spoilers follow if you haven't watched the series yet, so head over and finish up the ten …

I finally got around to watching Boybands Forever, a three part documentary on the BBC that aired late last year. I had planned to watch it over Christmas but a few scenes into the first episode, I thought it might be a bit depressing - turns out these boybands haven't all had the best of experiences. So I waited until January, when we're all experiencing the blues anyway, so why …

I'm one of those that is skeptical of AI, both the impact it can actually have on the future, but also from the point of view of being wary it may destroy the future (Terminator movies, anyone?). So whenever I see one of those memes doing the rounds of an AI getting a question ridiculously wrong or failing to understand basic alphabet or numerical concepts, I take great joy from …

I've gotten into a manageable habit with my Sims obsession - it used to be that I could sit down of an evening and start playing, and then suddenly the hours have gone by and I've got nothing else done other than topped the career path of a specific character. Nowadays, I dip in regularly but only for a short period of time, and it's a nice way to play …

There's a lot of noise about The Sims around at the moment, as the lifestyle management game is turning 25 this year. Have I really been playing The Sims since 1999? I can't remember being an early adopter but I definitely remember the first game very vividly, so maybe I have. The recent announcements are some sizabale updates to the base game, and a new Behind the Sims video stream, …

My album adventure for 2025 got off to a roaring start last week, although it's not until week two that I've managed to nab an album actually released this year. The rules of the game (for those who haven't been paying attention) are that the 'new' album is from this year or the last, whilst the 'old' album has the rest of human history to be selected from. Two albums …

I meant to post this before Christmas but didn't get round to it, then thought I would wait to top it up with all the festive fun that I watched as well. Except, it didn't really feel like there was that much exceptional stuff on over Christmas? I've mentioned the gameshow nostalgia already, and I loved the Gladiators Celeb special, but in terms of drama and comedy, there wasn't much …

My dad shared this post with me - 11 must-see astronomy events in 2025 - which covers great things to look up for, lunar eclipses, shooting stars, and the planets doing all kinds of wonderful things. The post is geared slightly towards a North American audience, so I went looking to see if there was anything similar for UK stargazers. Of course, the Royal Observatory has me covered. Find out …

I can't stop thinking about this news item on the BBC, complaining once again about the incorrect headline summaries Apple's Artificial Intelligence is creating based on their stories. In particular here, it claimed Luke Littler won the darts championship before he had (although he later did which I think wasn't a surprise to anyone). It also claimed Rafael Nadal had come out as gay, based on a story about a …

Only Connect traditionally has special episodes over the festive period, usually featuring previous teams returning just for the thrill of the game rather than for any particular prize. There are normally four specials, but this year there were eight, which allowed for the quiz show to try out something a little bit different. Our hostess with the mostess Victoria Coren Mitchell explains it best: The initial rounds of the quiz …

Apple TV+ are offering access to their streaming services this weekend for free, worldwide. From 3rd to 5th January, you can watch any of the titles available, giving everyone a great chance to dip in and see what all the fuss is about. There's some incredible programmes and films on there, and I thought it my duty to help narrow down what should be watched in the short window of …

For the last few years, I've taken a laid back approach to resolution making and new year resets, given how hectic the outside world has been. There's no need for any extra pressure, is the wisdom behind this, and that remains true. However, on a personal level, last year really didn't go to plan at all, and whilst I did achieve some of the things I set out to do …

This festive period seems to have been all about the nostalgia, with the TV rammed full of reboots of old gameshow favourites. We've seen Wheel of Fortune have a festive edition hosted by Graham Norton and featuring a slightly useless Richard E Grant. We've had a revamped Bullseye hosted by Freddie Flintoff and guest appearance from everyone's favourite dart player Luke Littler. We've even had Blankety Blank back with Bradley …

I stumbled across this little gem on TV over the weekend - 60 Songs: BBC Two at 60 - which is a lengthy compilation of random songs from the archives of the channel, in celebration of their anniversary. It's a real mixed bag of stuff, a surprising jukebox containing performances from the likes of Beyoncé, Alicia Keys, The Kinks, Blur, Sam Smith, and so many more. Lots of genres from …

I always find it slightly surprising that I've been doing this album thing for such a long time, next year will be the tenth year of this adventure. Two albums a week, 100 albums a year, and we're closing in on the big 1000! The worst part of the year is having to narrow down the list to the top five, but actually this year it wasn't too hard - …

This year I have continued reading voraciously, and although I did make progress on the bookshelf backlog, it still seems like the count of unread books goes up rather than down. I've enjoyed listening to a lot of audiobooks this year and discovered the wealth of reading material available digitally from the library, which hasn't necessarily helped things! Anyway, as is now traditional, these are ten of my favourites from …

ITV recently aired a show called Tiktok: Top 100 2024. I probably don't need to explain what the programme was about, the title leaves very little to the imagination. It was hosted by comedian Joel Dommett, who did a lot of the heavy listing, as he counted down the top 100 videos, alongside sharing facts and figures about what else is successful on the video sharing app, and how rich …

One of my favourite things about the festive season is revisiting all the great films and TV specials that have gone before. The vast array of choice is only growing with each passing year but there are some classics that will never not be aired over Christmas. Love Actually, the Vicar of Dibley's Christmas Lunch Incident, and these unaired bonus clips from Peter Kay's Car Share. I’d have it every …

Just wanted to share this video as it's some really solid drone work and a nice glimpse inside the White House. Not going to get political or anything, but it might be the last sensible thing to come out of that building for the next four years! I do admire good drone controllers because you want super smooth visuals and in a video like this, the turning circle needs to …

In my grumpier Grinch moments over Christmas, I get annoyed at the playlists and festive collections of songs that feature 'Christmas' songs that I don't think count. Those songs that are slowed down versions of absolute tunes for festive adverts, but otherwise have no connection to December. To rectify the situation, I set about creating a proper playlist, and in 2017 released the first volume. 2021 saw Vol 2 released …

If you tuned in to the Royal Variety Performance on ITV last week, you'll have enjoyed a scene from the new Mischief Theatre project: A Comedy About Spies. You bet your ass I bought tickets to that show immediately that I heard about it. It's been a while since there's been something new like this from the group, and it should be the original Mischief members up on stage which …

Wham! Last Christmas Unwrapped is an unwieldy title for a one-off TV episode that was mesmerising, surprising and joyful from start to finish. The hour long show manages to pack in a brief history of Wham the band, before and after, as well as the history of the song Last Christmas, the rivalry with Band Aid, and remembering George after his death in 2016. A lot, you might think, but …

It's an expectation at this point, to go into the Strictly Come Dancing final, and now you're going to be in floods of tears. This one took a little while to get me, but once the emotional showdance VTs started, I was there, I was with Motsi, any notion of appearing cool was out the window. It was nice to have four finalists again, and although we all sort of …

Semi-final time and wow, what a spectacle this was. Right from the start it felt like a final, the standard was so high, the drama was enormous and the emotions were real. This was the first time the couples had to learn two full routines in a week (if we're not counting the sambathon madness), and you could tell that the extra pressure was starting to take it's toll. Meanwhile, …

There's been a lot of furore around recently over the new version of Do They Know It's Christmas, featuring a megamix of all the previous artists combined together. It seemed an odd idea, and it's not really gone over very well, and barely made an impact on the music charts. So why not go back to the original and best version of the song and revisit how it all came …

Stumbled across this during a late night YouTube music trawl and love, love, love it. I'm not sure what it's for or why it's happening but I'll take more collaborations like this please!

Apple Music has been doing annual reviews for a while now, looking at the songs you've listened to in the year and highlighting your most listened to albums and artists for a good summary of twelve months of music. I'm always disappointed in my Music reviews though, because I don't listen to enough variety or repetition (outside of musicals) to make it worthwhile. A lot of my listening happens via …

I've been very intrigued by the news that came out recently of Iga Swiatek's one-month tennis ban for failing anti-doping tests, the way this has been handled versus others. As a long-time Simona Halep fan it was frustrating to see her sitting in the sidelines for multiple years whilst the case was investigated, and it's not been a barrel of laughs since she returned to the courts - what with …

Whilst Strictly Come Dancing is drawing towards its conclusion for 2024, the latest series of Dancing With the Stars in the US has crowned its champion. For the last couple of years, after the big move to Disney, we've been able to watch all the dances regularly each week on YouTube, and all I can say is I agree with the people that think the result wasn't the right one. …

This show got off to an incredible start for me, because we have only just watched Little Shop of Horrors and lo and behold, they open the main show with a fantastic group dance based on that very musical. Best timing ever. Follow that up with the appearance of Miranda, who promised to be in the audience in November and just managed to squeeze it in before December hits. Well, …

Just in time for Musicals week on Strictly, I managed to squeeze in an actual musical viewing. Here & Now - The Steps Musical made its debut in Birmingham, and I rocked up to take in one of the shows. It was brilliant! I love Steps, their kind of wonderful guilty pleasure of music that you know isn't exactly great art but is one heck of a crowdpleaser. That sums …

More facts dropped by Claudia at the top of the show - every couple left in the competition has scored at least one 10. But at this point we hadn't seen a 40, despite the sheer quality across the board. No gimmicks this week, just seven couples trying to get through to the quarter finals, and musicals week. As they descended to the floor, I realised how empty it is …

We all know that Bake Off viewers have mixed feelings about the show - it's still a comfortable entertaining watch, and the bakes look absolutely delicious, but it just continues to get more and more complicated and drift further from what made it special in the first place. I wrote about this in October 2022, and everything said then still stands. However, one positive change to the show is the …

Oh Blackpool you say? Well why not. Did anyone actually count the number of times it was mentioned during the weekend? Still, the lights looked good, the floor was sprung, and the Pet Shop Boys were there! Seriously, I loved this dance so much, it's some of my favourite group dance work in a while! Anyway, on with the competition! Chris & Dianne - American Smooth The extra dancers were …

Bad Monkey is not a hugely enticing name for a TV show to me, and even now I’m not 100% sure how it ties in to the story. There is a monkey in it, but most of the time it seemed to be a pretty good one. The star of the show is not, as it turns out, the monkey, but actually Vince Vaughn who puts in a really star …

There's no theme this week so the dancers are just doing their own separate things, but with one thing on their mind (apparently) - getting to Blackpool. The B word is so over-used at this point in the competition that you really just want this week over so we can get there and get it done with. But apart from that, another great week of dancing gets underway! Tasha & …

Icons week is finally here after quite the build up. It feels odd going from one theme week directly to another, but actually if you dig into it, this isn't so different to other weeks - a variety of different songs by a variety of different artists. The big news this week was poor Amy, taken ill at the end of last week's show. The legend is on the mend …

I knitted a couple of these fingerless mittens last year and they all disappeared, gobbled up by adoring fans I like to think. So after a couple of recent froggings, I figured it'd be nice to knit up something super quick and easy and one that I could keep for myself this winter. Just like last time, I have no idea what I'm doing when it comes to the thumbs, …

This is a bumper edition of the television roundup from recent weeks (and months), it's been a little while since I did a collection of recent viewing but also I've been under the weather which means the volume of episodes ticked off has seen an upsurge as well. Let's get straight on with it! Based on a True Story The first episode didn’t grab me but I stuck with it …

Halloween! The timing of this theme week feels a bit off as Halloween isn't actually until Thursday, five days after this special goes out. But never mind, we're always ready for a bit of costume and make-up. It can be a challenging week this one, because if you don't recognise the couple it can be harder to connect to them, but I don't think that will be a problem this …

I previously wrote about the new feature in Apple Podcasts that auto-generates transcripts, with mixed feelings about it. A great improvement, and a step forward for accessability, obviously, but the accuracy and layout of it weren't exactly what I would have gone for. I said at the time: As a creator, that’s all you actually have to do, read it and check it. You can opt out and provide your …

It was quite nice this weekend that there was no theme, there was no drama, no injuries, it was just straight on with the business at hand. Judges appear, couples down the stairs, let the games begin! JB & Amy - Jive Using polaroids as a learning tool is interesting, I know it was to tie in with the theme of the dance, but actually seems to work quite well. …

A recent addition to Apple Maps is the option to create a Custom Route, and this is a great integration for me. It's not new technology to be able to plot a potential walking route for yourself, I've been using various options for a while. Being able to plan where you're going, how far a route is, how long it might take, whether it crosses busy roads, etc. it's all …

This week, the action seemed to get straight underway, and I was glad of it because had started watching the show late and didn't want it to go on all night! Nick was back on the dancefloor after a flurry of injuries, and so we get a bit of bonus movie week in a non-theme weekend. Let's go! Shayne & Nancy - Cha Cha Meh, not bothered by this one. …

It's no secret that I love Miranda Hart so it's been a joy for me to see her out and about in the last week or so, emerging from a period of severe illness to release a new book about her experience and learnings. I was lucky enough to see the lady in question at the Cheltenham Literature Festival last night, and just want to celebrate that fact. She was …

I've wanted to write about Knit in a Box for ages. I love, love, LOVE this concept. A subscription box, you get a surprise pattern with all the yarn, buttons and accessories you need to complete it plus a few small gifts scattered in here and there. It's beautifully presented and really the kind of thing that just makes you happy. There are subscription options (frequency and type, ie. children's …

I've been gradually discovering some of the fun things that the latest iOS and watchOS releases can do, but one of the main ones in Apple Fitness suddenly became very handy recently. I was under the weather recently, and I suddenly remembered the new feature that allows you to pause your activity rings on the Apple Watch. That's right, PAUSE! This has been a feature people have been asking for …