TERENCE STAMP (1938 - 2025): AN OBITUARY

Terence Stamp, the silver-haired Cockney who made brooding an art form, has made his grand exit from the stage of mortality at the age of 87, leaving behind a legacy of piercing stares and villainous panache. Born in 1938 in London’s East End, where bombs fell and dreams were rationed, Stamp rose from tugboat stoker's son to cinematic icon, proving that even a lad from Stepney could out-charm the toffs. His death on August 17, 2025, closes a chapter on an actor who, as The Guardian once quipped, mastered the “brooding silence”—a skill he wielded like a velvet sledgehammer.

Stamp’s early career was a meteor shower in the Swinging Sixties. His debut as Billy Budd (1962) snagged an Oscar nomination, with critics fawning over his angelic cheekbones and haunted eyes. He was the face of the era, cavorting with Julie Christie and Jean Shrimpton, snapped by David Bailey for Box of Pin-Ups, the kind of cultural artefact that made lesser mortals feel inadequate. But fame, as Stamp learned, is a fickle mistress. By the decade’s end, Hollywood spat him out with the brutal verdict: “We’re looking for a younger Terence Stamp.” Ouch.

Undeterred, or perhaps just stubborn, Stamp decamped to India, chasing enlightenment with a chain-smoking guru above a public loo—because nothing says spiritual awakening like dysentery and second-hand smoke. His memoirs, Stamp Album and Rare Stamps, recount this period with a wry candour that makes you wonder if he was laughing or weeping. He returned to the screen in 1978 as General Zod in Superman and it's 1980 sequel, delivering “KNEEL BEFORE ZOD!!” with such glorious camp menace that it’s still quoted by nerds and tyrants alike. The role cemented him as the thinking man’s villain, a title he wore like a bespoke suit.

The ‘90s saw Stamp reinvent himself in The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert (1994), playing a trans woman with a dignity that outshone the sequins. His turn in The Limey (1999) was a masterclass in coiled rage, proving he could still steal a scene without breaking a sweat. He popped up in everything from Star Wars: Episode I (a bore, he admitted) to Valkyrie, where he dodged bombs with Tom Cruise and quipped that Hitler missed a chance to spare us his dodgier films.

Off-screen, Stamp was a curious mix of mystic and East End grit. He practiced yoga, peddled wheat-free cookbooks, and launched Escargot Books, because why not add “publisher” to his CV? His personal life—marriages, flings with supermodels, whispers of Princess Diana—was a soap opera scripted by a poet. He didn’t just act; he lived with a defiant twinkle, as if daring the world to keep up. May he brood eternally in that great close-up in the sky.

THE GREAT BRITISH BIN-FIRE

Oh, Britain, what a sorry spectacle you’ve become under the joyless reign of Sir Keir Starmer, that knight of the dreary realm, whose every utterance feels like a lecture from a headmaster who’s just discovered you’ve been chewing gum in assembly.

The nation is a stage, and Labour’s latest production in Birmingham is a tragicomedy so absurd it could only be penned by a playwright with a grudge against reason. Picture the scene: English and British flags, those fluttering emblems of a proud, if battered, identity, are deemed “dangerous” by a Labour-run council, targeted for removal like some offensive graffiti. Meanwhile, Palestinian flags wave unmolested, and Pakistani flags are hoisted high for Independence Day, as if Birmingham were auditioning for a role as a globalist theme park. All this while 21,000 tonnes of rubbish festers in the streets, a monument to Labour’s inability to manage even the basics of civic life. And out there, across the Atlantic, the Trump-Putin summit in Alaska looms like a rogue comet, offering a faint, flickering hope that the world might yet be dragged back from the far-left abyss—perhaps even rendering the EU impotent, toppling Zelensky’s regime, and sounding the death knell for the globalist pipe dream of supra-national governance. Forgive me, dear reader, for I am weary, and this lament is soaked in the despair of a patriot watching his country slide into a bin-strewn farce.

Let’s start with Birmingham, my beloved home, the once-proud heart of England’s industrial might, now reduced to a stage for Labour’s sanctimonious posturing. The council, in its infinite wisdom, has declared English and British flags a menace, as if the St. George’s Cross were a Molotov cocktail and the Union Jack a public health hazard. Never mind that these symbols represent the very nation that funds their salaries; no, they must be torn down, lest they offend the delicate sensibilities of… whom, exactly? The same council, with a straight face, leaves Palestinian flags flapping in the breeze and raises Pakistani ones to celebrate a foreign nation’s independence, all while the streets choke on uncollected rubbish. The bin strike, a festering sore of Labour’s making, has turned Birmingham into a landfill with pretensions, a city where rats hold court and the air hums with the stench of incompetence. Unite union activists, those champions of the working class, have the gall to call for a “real workers’ party” while leaving 21,000 tonnes of garbage to rot, as if the proletariat’s greatest aspiration is to wade through filth.

This is Starmer’s Britain: a place where national pride is a crime, but foreign flags and civic decay are sacrosanct, whilst the man himself looks gormlessly on like he was born to chair a committee on paperclip allocation. His Labour Party, once the voice of the working class, now panders to the far-left globalist crowd with the enthusiasm of a convert at a revival meeting. The working people of the West—those plumbers, builders, and shopkeepers who just want a fair shake and a country they can recognize—are crying out for a return to the centre-right, a politics of common sense, national sovereignty, and pride in their heritage. Yet Starmer and his ilk are hell-bent on dragging us toward a far-left dystopia, where borders are suggestions, identity is a buffet, and the state’s only job is to lecture you on your privilege while failing to empty your bins. The Birmingham farce is a microcosm of this betrayal: a council more concerned with symbolic gestures than the basic dignity of a functioning city.

But hark! Across the ocean, a glimmer of defiance. The Trump-Putin summit in Alaska, held on August 15, 2025, at Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson, is a middle finger to the globalist elite who thought they could choreograph the world’s future. Donald Trump, that orange-hued agent of chaos, and Vladimir Putin, the steely-eyed autocrat, are meeting to discuss the Russia-Ukraine war, a conflict that has exposed the EU’s impotence like a spotlight on a bad actor. Trump’s brash promise to end the war “in 24 hours” may be bombast, but it’s a bombast born of a refusal to kowtow to the supra-national script. The EU, that bureaucratic behemoth, flails in the background, issuing statements about “standing firmly” with Ukraine while its leaders scramble to coordinate a response to a summit they weren’t invited to. Zelensky, ever the defiant showman, rails against being excluded, insisting that Ukraine’s fate can’t be decided without him. Yet the reality is stark: the EU’s “unwavering commitment” is a paper tiger, its sanctions a damp squib, and its dreams of a borderless utopia are crumbling under the weight of their own contradictions.

This summit, for all its risks, is a rare moment of clarity in a world fogged by globalist cant. Trump’s willingness to sit down with Putin, sans the sanctimonious hand-wringing of Brussels, signals a rejection of the supra-national dogma that has shackled the West for too long. The EU’s impotence is laid bare: a union that can’t defend its own borders or agree on a coherent foreign policy is no match for leaders who, whatever their flaws, play to win. If Trump and Putin manage to broker a deal—however imperfect—it could hasten the collapse of Zelensky’s regime, not because of malice but because his Western backers have overpromised and underdelivered. A Ukraine forced to negotiate, perhaps even to cede territory, would expose the fragility of the globalist project, which thrives on the illusion of eternal unity. And with that collapse could come the end of the EU’s grand ambitions, the WEF’s technocratic fantasies, and the whole rotten edifice of supra-national governance that seeks to erase nations in favour of a homogenized, sterile, soulless dystopian superstate.

Yet my heart aches, for the working-class soul of the West is being smothered. In Birmingham, in Bolton, in every town where the St. George’s Cross is treated like a biohazard, the people’s desire for a centre-right revival—a politics of sovereignty, pride, and practical governance—is being drowned out by the far-left’s siren song. Starmer’s Labour, with its obsession with globalist pieties, is not just failing to empty the bins; it’s failing to hear the cry of a nation that wants its identity back. The Trump-Putin summit, for all its theatricality, is a rare crack in the globalist armour, a chance to upend the EU’s smug certainties and remind the world that nations, not bureaucracies, are the heartbeat of history.

So, people of the West, let this be your lament and your rallying cry. Rise against the Starmerites, who would rather hoist foreign flags than honor their own. Rise against the EU, a dinosaur of dogma too feeble to face the future. Rise against the globalist institutions—the WEF, the UN, the whole alphabet soup of unelected meddlers—who think they can dictate your destiny. Support the defiant, like Trump and Putin, who, for all their sins, dare to challenge the supra-national status quo. And pray that this summit, this unlikely collision of titans, delivers a blow to the Zelensky regime’s illusions and the EU’s arrogance, paving the way for a world where nations stand tall, flags fly proud, and the bins—God help us—are finally emptied.

The dream of supra-national governance must die, and with it, the far-left madness that threatens to bury us all. Let’s make it so, with all the despair and defiance we can muster.

THE RANTING BRUMMIE REVIEWS: "THE NAKED GUN" (2025)

The 2025 "Naked Gun" reboot, directed by Akiva Schaffer, arrives like a clown car at a funeral—gleefully inappropriate, overstuffed with gags, and somehow, against all odds, a riotous good time. It’s a legacy sequel that doesn’t so much dust off the Zucker-Abrahams-Zucker (ZAZ) formula as it does strap it to a rocket and launch it into the present, propelled by the improbable comedic might of Liam Neeson and Pamela Anderson. This is a film that knows its place: a gleeful, 85-minute assault on the funny bone, less concerned with reinventing the wheel than with running it over pedestrians in a police cruiser. And yet, for all its adherence to the slapstick gospel, it’s Neeson and Anderson who elevate this farce from mere nostalgia to a masterclass in deadpan lunacy.

The plot, such as it is, follows Frank Drebin Jr. (Neeson), son of Leslie Nielsen’s iconic buffoon, as he bumbles through a conspiracy involving a tech mogul named Richard Cane (Danny Huston, oozing smarm like a discount Elon Musk). Enter Beth Davenport (Anderson), a femme fatale with a voice like a smoky lounge and a brain like a particularly dim chandelier. Together, they unravel a scheme involving a “P.L.O.T. Device” (yes, it’s labelled as such), dodging bullets, bad puns, and Frank’s own trousers with the grace of a drunk giraffe. The story is a clothesline for gags—sight gags, wordplay, and a chili-dog-induced bathroom meltdown that deserves its own Oscar for scatological audacity. It’s not War and Peace, but it’s not trying to be; it’s a Zucker-esque fever dream, and it hits more often than it misses.

Visually, the film is a love letter to the ZAZ aesthetic, all garish colours and exaggerated noir shadows, with a modern polish that keeps it from feeling like a museum piece. Schaffer, a Lonely Island alum, directs with a manic precision, packing every frame with visual Easter eggs and throwaway gags—a coffee cup handed to Frank in every other scene, a “customers served” scoreboard for dispatched henchmen. The action sequences are absurdly well-choreographed, blending slapstick with a knowing nod to Neeson’s Taken-era heroics. Lorne Balfe’s score, riffing on the classic Police Squad! theme, adds a brassy swagger that makes even the most ludicrous moments feel oddly epic. It’s a film that looks like it was born in a comic book and raised in a vaudeville hall, and it’s all the better for it.

Now, to the beating heart of this lunacy: Liam Neeson. The man who once growled his way through Taken with a particular set of skills here deploys a particular set of sills, turning Frank Drebin Jr. into a grizzled, coffee-slurping parody of his own action-hero persona. Neeson’s deadpan is a thing of beauty—his gravelly delivery of lines about the Black Eyed Peas or Buffy the Vampire Slayer is so earnest it could make a stone weep with laughter. Whether he’s karate-chopping goons or lamenting his TiVo’s loss of Sex and the City episodes, Neeson plays it straight, never winking, never faltering, as if he’s auditioning for a Shakespearean tragedy rather than a film where he dresses as a schoolgirl to foil a bank heist. It’s a performance that doesn’t just honour Nielsen’s legacy; it carves out its own, proving that Neeson, at 73, is as much a comedic force as he is a dramatic one.

And then there’s Pamela Anderson, who, as Beth Davenport, steals scenes with the effortless charm of a woman who’s been underestimated her entire career. Channelling Priscilla Presley’s Jane Spencer with a breezy, ditzy allure, Anderson delivers lines like “I see UCLA every day, I live here” with a breathy sincerity that lands like a perfectly timed rimshot. Her chemistry with Neeson is electric, particularly in a deranged love montage involving a Satanic snowman that spirals into Too Many Cooks-level absurdity. Anderson’s comedic timing is impeccable, her every glance and toss of hair a masterstroke of parody. She’s not just playing a femme fatale; she’s playing the idea of one, and the result is a performance that’s as hilarious as it is revelatory. If her work in The Last Showgirl was a comeback, this is a coronation.

"The Naked Gun" is a triumph of commitment to the bit, a film that revels in its own stupidity with such gusto that you can’t help but laugh along. It’s not flawless—the third act sags under the weight of its own plot, and some jokes feel like they were exhumed from a 2000s time capsule—but Neeson and Anderson carry it with such infectious zeal that you forgive the misfires. This is a film that knows exactly what it is: a big, dumb, beautiful return to the kind of comedy that demands a theatre full of strangers cackling together. It’s a B+ effort that feels like an A for effort, and in a world starved for laughs, that’s more than enough.