blogging tip of the day

Here's something I was discussing at work earlier and which might prove useful: how to link to a YouTube clip at a specific starting time. Basically you take the URL for the clip and append #t=XmYs to the end of it, substituting the appropriate numbers of minutes and seconds for X and Y as appropriate.

So I can now take you straight to the Michael Portillo "erect" moment, which is handy. I can also, for instance, skip the rest of the Not The Nine O'Clock News Question Time sketch and take you straight to the funny bit. For those of you too young to remember, that's Clive Jenkins that Richard Davies is impersonating (and Nye Bevan that he's referring to, though of course even I am too young to remember him). Jenkins was a ripe target for impersonation: here, via some similar YouTube magic, is Monty Python's Graham Chapman doing a similar job in 1972.

Jenkins (the real one) can be seen in this slightly surreal pin-up gallery of 1970s/1980s trade union leaders; I've also nicked the image from that page and put it on the left here for you, just in case you can't be arsed to click on the link. Apparently the eventual winner of Trade Union Idol was former leader of UNISON and Buddy Holly lookalike Rodney Bickerstaffe.