- The Knowledge
- Posts
- Agatha Christie’s unlikely hobby
Agatha Christie’s unlikely hobby
🐙 Nighy’s insecurity | 🙀 US Democrats | 🐘 Animals larking about
Life
Bill Nighy: allergic to his own performances. JC Olivera/Getty
Please don’t make me watch myself
Most people find Bill Nighy “immensely watchable”, says Henry Mance in the FT – except Bill Nighy. At 74, the actor still can’t sit through his own performances, and goes to great lengths to avoid doing so. At premieres, he’ll walk down the red carpet and then head out for dinner, “popping back if needed for a curtain call”. When he had to re-record some dialogue for his latest film, The Beautiful Game, he was given special dispensation to do it without watching the visuals. The director of Emma even considered making a special version of the movie, just for him, with all his scenes edited out. The only exception he has made was for Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest – and that was because his face was completely unrecognisable, as it was covered by computer-generated tentacles.
Nighy has never been one to embrace the trappings of fame and fortune – he has never owned a computer, insists on being sent hard copies of scripts, and loves the physicality of books. “Sorry to all people who make Kindles,” he says. “But somebody gave me a Kindle once, it just made me so unhappy, the whole idea of it was so meagre and dull.” But he does allow himself some luxuries. He buys what he describes as “a lot of socks”, travels by cab, and eats out every night. “I’m on my own,” he says, “and why wouldn’t I? I know it’s probably decadent, but I do.”
Nature
Researchers have long puzzled over why animals play, says Sallie Tisdale in The Atlantic. Play-fighting, as practised by everything from gorillas to gerbils, has a practical application. But other activities have no discernible “adaptive advantages” – they seem to represent “an animal simply having fun”. South American fur-seal pups “will goof around in tidal pools even though this risks an attack by sea lions”. Elephants have been widely observed sliding down muddy embankments, “appearing to deliberately collide with other elephants climbing up”. One grainy online video shows a Russia crow carrying a jar lid to the top of a roof, climbing in, then “snowboarding down”. And before orcas picked up their recent habit of ramming yachts, they were gripped by a weirder trend of “wearing dead fish on their heads”.
Quirk of history
No waves here: Christie at her home in 1950. Daily Mirror/Mirrorpix/Getty
Although Agatha Christie is remembered as a somewhat “stodgy” character, says Mental Floss, she had a “little-known and radical hobby”: surfing. She picked up the habit in 1922, while accompanying her husband Archie on a world tour to promote an exhibition celebrating the achievements of the British Empire. When they arrived in South Africa, they were shown the local custom of surfing on Cape Town’s Muizenberg Beach and were instantly hooked, returning to the beach whenever they could. Practising later that year in Honolulu, she progressed from lying prone on a surfboard to standing up – becoming only the second British person known to have done so, after Prince Edward (later Edward VII, albeit briefly).
Advertisement
Not feeling 100%? You’re not alone – according to YouGov, 46% of Brits believe health is the most important issue facing the UK. Luckily, it’s never been easier to take control of yours. Whether you’re looking for the latest weight loss pen or hair loss treatment, or in need of the morning after pill or an STI test, LloydsPharmacy Online Doctor has you covered. Get discreet care at your convenience, with a five-minute online assessment and multiple fulfilment options. For a limited time, readers of The Knowledge can get an exclusive 10% off their consultation. Simply add the code KNOWLEDGE10 to your basket at checkout. T&Cs apply. Take control of your health today!
Inside politics
Laura Dern as Katherine Harris, Florida’s Republican secretary of state, in Recount (2008)
High-minded Democrats need to toughen up
There’s a great moment in the 2008 movie Recount that illustrates “an essential difference between Republicans and Democrats”, says Joe Klein in The New York Times. The film is about the legal mayhem in Florida after the 2000 presidential election. The “courtly” character representing Democratic candidate Al Gore insists on doing everything by the book, declaring solemnly that “the world is watching”. His Republican counterpart, fighting for George W Bush, takes a much more down-and-dirty approach. “This,” he says, “is a street fight for the presidency.” Well, we all know who won. And what was true then remains true today: “Democrats float toward an almost helium-infused state of high-mindedness; Republicans see politics as a no-holds-barred cage match.”
Just look at the Democrats’ recent history. In the 2020 election, it was a group of former Republicans, the Lincoln Project, that created the “nastiest, most effective anti-Trump ads”. Michael Dukakis and John Kerry were both “distressingly saintly” in their respective presidential campaigns. One reason Democrats are so “congenitally weak” is that they are the party of the “so-called helping professions” – teachers, social workers, speech therapists and so on. “In general, these are not people comfortable throwing a fierce left hook.” They are also the party of identity politics, making them overly “sensitive to insensitivity”. The problem with all this is that voters ultimately want a president who “won’t hide beneath the table when trouble comes round”. If Democrats want to win the election in November, they need to toughen up. To paraphrase Bill Clinton: “Strong and wrong usually beats weak and right.”
Books
Sefton Delmer making a propaganda broadcast to Germany from the BBC in 1941. Kurt Hutton/Getty
The party-loving reporter who invented fake news
Sefton Delmer was “the man who invented fake news”, says Roger Boyes in The Times. The German-born journalist was appointed Berlin correspondent for the Daily Express in 1929. As the Nazis picked up support, he managed to “infiltrate their inner circle” by befriending stormtroopers and hosting endless parties. He interviewed the Führer and travelled on his plane; he taught his parrot to squawk “Heil Hitler”. He became such an established member of stormtrooper leader Ernst Röhm’s entourage that people saluted him as if he were an aide-de-camp. “I saluted back, rather more negligently, with arm half-bent, as befitted my rank,” he recalled. “It was wonderful fun.” All this helped Delmer understand “what makes a dictatorship tick” – and, more importantly, what kind of messaging could undermine it. When World War Two broke out, he returned to Britain and launched a fake pirate radio station to broadcast German-language propaganda into Nazi Germany.
For his shows, Delmer assumed the persona of Der Chef (the chief), a Prussian supposedly in contact with the top brass and “furious with the abuse of privilege he saw around him”. Some of his tales were based on real leaked intelligence; others were “sadomasochistic stories” dug out from scientific texts which he linked to “alleged perverts” in the Nazi hierarchy. He told made-up stories of Nazi officials’ affairs and brutality against soldiers in military hospitals. Off-air, he would stoop to the dirtiest of tricks, such as sending letters to the parents of dead German soldiers purporting to be from their children, saying they had in fact deserted and were living prosperously in safe countries.
How to Win an Information War by Peter Pomerantsev is available here.
Quoted
“The relationship between the Welsh and the English is based on trust and understanding. They don’t trust us and we don’t understand them.”
English rugby administrator Dudley Wood