Accidental Republic blog

The BBC have today announced Lieutenant Columbo is to be the new presenter of their flagship current affairs programme, Question Time. Columbo, who is rumoured to be 103 years of age will take over the role from 79 year old David Dimbleby in September. The appointment is widely seen as a surprise move by the […]

The other day I happened across a recipe for a martini, a drink I’ve heard a lot about but never tried. The recipe turns out be quite simple which is the way I like my recipes. A martini is mostly gin as it happens. With a bit of vermouth and some ice and a wedge […]

It has been suggested to me by a number of well-meaning folk that I need to develop stories around my products and business – narratives that help to explain and contextualise what it is I’m doing and offering. Sequences of words and images that put together correctly become paths of common understanding that offer easy […]

In many of life’s rich experiences it is clear that language – that means by which we attempt to fumble towards a degree of empathy with one another – just isn’t up to the task. Not only is it not up to the task, in certain instances, it is revealed to be an absolute herring […]

Have you noticed on those ‘Thought for the Day’ radio pieces how many times pastors, priests, chaplains and bishops et al are, we are led to believe, “reminded of Jesus”. Be it contemplating how difficult it is to prize a lid off a jar of jam, achieve the precise balance between teabag, water, milk and […]

The media seem to be saturated at the moment with apocalyptic stories of robots taking our jobs, robots generally assuming unheard of levels of power and influence in worldly affairs and robots getting preferential treatment in the allocation of allotments. Personally I don’t buy any of it for one very good reason. HAS EVERYONE FORGOTTEN […]

Are there still shops in the world bravely holding out against the cold dead hand of corporate blandness? Is there a candle still flickering in that forgotten side street known as Independent Passage? We put the question because we at Accidental Republic are on the looky-outey for quirky boutiques that might want to stock our […]

The suavely dressed man was running his finely manicured fingers along a rail of my t-shirts at the Wilderness Festival when my forensic-like radar clocked him. He reminded me of someone I’d seen before. His effortless urbanity and cool demeanour suggested we could be playing out a scenario from a Nescafe advert if only I hadn’t […]

My mother came to visit me recently and prone as she is to delivering broadsides of devastating wisdom, she left me with this one to ponder: “There is only ham”. “If you think about it. What else is there?” I perhaps ought to give some context to this insight. She had been ruminating on providing […]

  A few weeks ago a well-meaning friend of mine bought me a bunch of flowers to cheer me up. I was naturally puzzled but decided to give it a go. Unfortunately the flowers did nothing to cheer me up. I watched them intently. In truth the whole idea perplexed me. How could they cheer […]