Rakie Ayola

"There are some people that will see this and say that it's a woke version of a Welsh family" Extraordinarily phrased question to Rakie Ayola re new show The Pact by @BBCBreakfast pic.twitter.com/7R5pzcqdUN

— le Monstrous Carbunc (@lowerformofwit) October 24, 2022

Watach the vidoe above. Ladies and gentlrmen we have a new Welsh Born Icon. Rakie Ayola, born Cardiff 1968. You go girl! I will be all over The Pact.

''Woke,'' as wielded in this case, is a manipulative term, used to present something inherently positive and unproblematic in a negative light. Was on the end of it myself this weekend, but that is a story for another day.

Ricky Valance

Ricky Valance has died. Born David Spencer in Ynysddu, Monmouthshire, Wales, he was best known for the UK number one single "Tell Laura I Love Her", which sold over a million copies in 1960 making him the first male Welsh singer to have a UK number one single hit.

We have a new Welsh Born Icon.

Mr Jones

This movie has got a limited theatrical release currently, and we can stream it on Amazon.

Here is the Wikipedia entry on the protagonist Gareth Jones. Read it at once, I can scarcely take it in. We have a new Welsh Born Icon in  Gareth Richard Vaughan Jones, straight outta Barry in 1905.

He's not the Messiah. He's a very naughty boy!

I was sad to hear that Terry Jones, founder member of Monty Python and director of three of Python’s celebrated feature films, has died aged 77, but cheered to learn that (as he came into the world in Colwyn Bay) I can anoint him as 2020's first Welsh Born Icon.

For what it is worth a friend of mine was behind him in a queue at some museum or gallery years ago and reported that he was a very pleasant chap.

π

After yesterday, we have yet another Welsh Maths Icon, William Jones, born in Anglesey in 1675, was the first recorded mathematician to use the symbol π in its present sense.

The Man Who Invented Pi

The history of the constant ratio of the circumference to the diameter of any circle is as old as man's desire to measure; whereas the symbol for this ratio known today as π (pi) dates from the early 18th century. Before this the ratio had been awkwardly referred to in medieval Latin as: quantitas in quam cum multiflicetur diameter, proveniet circumferencia (the quantity which, when the diameter is multiplied by it, yields the circumference).

It is widely believed that the great Swiss-born mathematician Leonhard Euler (1707-83) introduced the symbol π into common use. In fact it was first used in print in its modern sense in 1706 a year before Euler's birth by a self-taught mathematics teacher William Jones (1675-1749) in his second book Synopsis Palmariorum Matheseos, or A New Introduction to the Mathematics based on his teaching notes.

....... read on.....

Robert Recorde

He did more the just invent =.

A Welshman, Robert Recorde invented the = symbol.

He was also the 1st to use the + symbol whilst adding.

— BenjimanCymru 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁷󠁬󠁳󠁿🇺🇸🇪🇺🇫🇷 (@TheBengwin) April 24, 2019

Well I never! Robert Recorde; a Welsh Born Icon.

Deffrwch Cymry cysgld gwlad why gan

What a day to be Welsh yesterday was.

We watched Wales beat Ireland to win the Grand Slam in the afternoon, and then went to see Andy Fairweather Low at the Hideaway in the evening.

Andy Fairweather Low (born Ystrad Mynachwas 1948) was quite brilliant. He is appointed as 2019's third Welsh Born Icon.

Skinflix

Netflix's Sex Education jocks and cheerleaders (raised in the Welsh valleys)

The high school campus is bathed in golden sunshine, the kids play American football on the lawns and varsity jackets are the cool uniform of choice.

Welcome to British school life according to Netflix.

Sex Education is a comic coming-of-age drama starring Gillian Anderson as a sex therapist and Asa Butterfield as her mortified teenage son. It is also an attempt by the US streaming giant to steal the BBC’s crown as the home of British-made entertainment.

The series was filmed in Penarth, South Wales, with a British cast and crew. But the first viewers of the show, which launched this weekend, were left baffled by the curious interpretation of the British education system.

Sex Education: a Welsh born icon. Well I never!

Bertrand Russell

Wikipedia

Bertrand Arthur William Russell, 3rd Earl Russell, OM FRS (18 May 1872 – 2 February 1970) was a British philosopher, logician, mathematician, historian, writer, social critic, political activist, and Nobel laureate. At various points in his life, Russell considered himself a liberal, a socialist and a pacifist, but he also admitted that he had "never been any of these things, in any profound sense." Russell was born in Monmouthshire into one of the most prominent aristocratic families in the United Kingdom.

In the early 20th century, Russell led the British "revolt against idealism". He is considered one of the founders of analytic philosophy along with his predecessor Gottlob Frege, colleague G. E. Moore and protégé Ludwig Wittgenstein. He is widely held to be one of the 20th century's premier logicians. With A. N. Whitehead he wrote Principia Mathematica, an attempt to create a logical basis for mathematics. His philosophical essay "On Denoting" has been considered a "paradigm of philosophy". His work has had a considerable influence on mathematics, logic, set theory, linguistics, artificial intelligence, cognitive science, computer science (see type theory and type system) and philosophy, especially the philosophy of language, epistemology and metaphysics.

Bertrand Russel: a Welsh born icon. Well I never!

A Welshman, an Iraqi and an African walk into a bar

Introductory Essay on the Pelagian Controversy

§ 2. The Pelagian heresy is so designated after Pelagius, a British monk. (Augustin calls him Brito, so do Prosper and Gennadius; by Orosius he is called Britannicus noster, and by Mercator described as gente Britannus. This wide epithet is somewhat restricted by Jerome, who says of him, Habet progeniem Scotiæ gentis de Britannorum vicinia; leaving it uncertain, however, whether he deemed Scotland his native country, or Ireland. His monastic character is often referred to both by Augustin and other writers, and Pope Zosimus describes him as Laicum virum ad bonam frugem longa erga Deum servitute nitentem. It is, after all, quite uncertain what part of "Britain" gave him birth; among other conjectures, he has been made a native of Wales, attached to a monastery at Bangor, and gifted with the Welsh name of Morgan, of which his usual designation of Pelagius is supposed to be simply the Greek version, Pelagio.)

I am minded to accept Pelagius as a Welshman whose given name was Morgan, anoint a 73rd Welsh Born Icon, and throw myself on the mercy of the court for identifying him as English in 2005 (Icons passim).

Triple Tipple

These spindrift pages have been following Gareth Evans' career since 2009. Judging by the trailer for his latest, I will be watching it scared witless through my fingers when in debuts on Netflix later this month.

Filmed in Wales and featuring Michael Sheen. To save time let's anoint the movie, Sheen and Evans simultaneously to Welsh Born Iconhood.

Matthew Rhys

Mathhew Rhys (born Matthew Rhys Evans in Cardiff in 1974) broke out his Welsh accent after collecting the best leading actor in a drama series trophy at the 70th Emmy Awards. You can see it one minute and fifty seconds into the video above.

We have a new Icon.

Just for completeness, please note that when we saw him in New Theatre on tour with Peter Gill's National Theatre touring production of Cardiff East 1997, it was his debut professional stage engagement. Mum and dad saw that as well. There is no getting away from them lately.

David Jones and RG Jones

I read David Bowie's first recording found in bread bin, set to sell for £10,000 yesterday.

The seller says, "Our agent, Eric Easton, who also managed the Rolling Stones, asked us to do a demo so he could try and get us an audition at Decca.

"So in early 1963 I booked into RG Jones' small studio in Morden. In preparation for the demo, David and our guitarist Neville Wills wrote two to three songs."

Intrigued by Morden being round the corner I looked RG Jones up - http://rgjones.co.uk.

The Rolling Stones, Tom Jones, Yardbirds, Eric Clapton, David Bowie, Springfields, Englebert Humperdink and The Bee Gees all recorder in Morden as well. Then in 1968 RG decided to move the legendary studio to Central Wimbledon and the building in Morden was destroyed to make way for Merton College.

I think in RG I have discovered a new Welsh Born Icon.

Ronald Geoffrey Jones was born in Caerphilly in South Wales. From an early age he loved designing and building gadgets. Entirely self-taught, he was equally skilled at carpentry and metalwork and was very quickly able to construct a power amplifier and other pieces of electronic equipment.

Known as Geoff, Reg or RG, his first job on leaving school was for a company called Milton. He became a salesman for the company and from a caravan, in which he also lived, he sold his wares in town markets all around Wales. Getting himself heard above the other market traders was hard work and he soon began to turn his mind again to electronically amplified sound. Totally undaunted by his lack of training in electronics, he procured all the necessary components and had soon assembled a system. Two large horn loudspeakers, the flares constructed entirely by him out of bits of timber, were mounted on top of the car which towed his caravan. Inside, he installed a microphone connected to an amplifier powered by four twelve volt batteries and a rotary (48V to 230V) convertor. It worked! The young RG Jones was now able to advertise himself effortlessly to the crowds giving him a distinct advantage over the other retailers. Such was the success of his enterprise that his employers asked him to build a further fifteen more systems to equip the rest of the Milton force. So by the tender age of just eighteen, the same year Queen Elizabeth II was born, with the BBC just barely formed and Stalin just in power, the young RG Jones went into business for himself.

Comrade Detective

In the thick of 1980's Cold War hysteria, the Romanian government created the country's most popular and longest-running series, Comrade Detective, a sleek and gritty police show that not only entertained its citizens but also promoted Communist ideals and inspired a deep nationalism. The action-packed and blood-soaked first season finds Detectives Gregor Anghel and Iosef Baciu investigating the murder of fellow officer Nikita Ionesco and, in the process, unraveling a subversive plot to destroy their country that is fueled by-what else-but the greatest enemy: Capitalism.

I watched the first episode last night on Amazon Prime. It's hysterical. Cardiff's increasingly ubiquitous Jon Ronson introduces it along with Channing Tatum. Enough to elevate him to Welsh Born Icon status. That's two in a month after a year of silence.

Dr William Price

BBC Blogs

Wales has had its fair share of eccentrics over the years but none was more bizarre or more flamboyant than the mercurial and fascinating Dr William Price of Llantrisant.

This Chartist and republican, a man who ate no meat, drank mainly champagne, eschewed the wearing of socks and prescribed a vegetarian diet for his patients instead of medicine, has a much more significant claim to fame, however. For this was the man who, effectively, opened the way for legalised cremation in Britain.

Born on 4 March 1800 at Rudry near Caerphilly, Price was the fifth child of the Rev William Price. His father wanted William to enter the church but the young man had different ambitions. He wanted to become a doctor and was, accordingly, apprenticed to a local surgeon, Dr Evan Edwards. He was just 13 years of age and after a number of years, following the death of his father, managed to enroll himself at St Barts in London.

Price was clearly a man of huge intellect. He passed his examinations in just 12 months and became a member of the Royal College of Surgeons before the age of 22. After further study in anatomy and physiology he returned to Wales to live and work in 1821.

In 1827 he moved to Nantgarw, just up the valley from Cardiff and became surgeon to the ironmaster Francis Crawshay.

A strain of eccentricity, even of insanity, ran in his family and this quickly began to show itself in his behaviour. He dressed in a white tunic with green trousers and red waistcoat and developed a liking for outlandish costume, notably a fox-skin headdress with the legs and tails hanging down over his shoulders and back. His hair was worn long in plaits and, in these early years, he had the rather disconcerting habit of racing, stark naked, over the hills around Pontypridd.

William Price had little time for many of the standard medical treatments of the day, things like bleeding and purging, believing that a vegetarian diet was far more important than anything else. He was dogmatic in his medical practice, refusing to treat patients who would not give up smoking.

An advocate of what was, in effect, an early example of the health service - he believed that patients should pay him when they were well and he would then treat them when they fell ill - Price was elected as the private medical practitioner to a group of workers at the local chainworks. They paid him with a weekly deduction from their wages.

Dr William Price was no ordinary man. He had little time for marriage, feeling that it was an institution that did little more than enslave women. He did believe, however, in free love. As if to prove his point he fathered several illegitimate children and fell out with church authorities over this issue on many occasions.

He became fascinated by the old druidic rites and even held druidic ceremonies at the rocking stone outside Pontypridd. He even began to build a druidic temple in the area, thus infuriating the local Methodists who went as far as to accuse him of trespass.

William Price was a supporter of Chartism, some accounts saying that he attended Chartist meetings in a cart pulled by a pair of goats. Having moved to Llantrisant, he was made leader of the Pontypridd and District group and, following the disaster of the Chartist march on Newport in 1839 was forced to flee to France. Legend declares that he left dressed as a woman and that a police officer even assisted him up the gangplank of his ship - unlikely but hugely entertaining.

Price lived in Paris for several years before returning to the Pontypridd area in 1846. He again fled to the continent in 1860 when a warrant for his arrest - he had refused to pay a fine - was issued. This time his exile was for a further five years.

Returning to Wales and to Ty'r Clettwr at Llantrisant, Price promptly installed his 16-year-old housekeeper, one Gwenllian Llewellyn, as his mistress. Despite his advanced age (he was then 83-years-old) he fathered a son by Gwenllian, naming him Iesu Grist, Welsh for Jesus Christ.

When Iesu died in 1884, aged just five months, Price cremated his body on an open pyre in a field at Llantrisant. Whether the good doctor was opposed to the traditional act of Christian burial or whether he was more interested in the druidic rituals of the past, is not known. However, what is clear is that, dressed in his flowing druids robes, he timed the cremation to coincide with the conclusion of chapel services in the town.

As might be expected, the local people were wild with indignation at what they saw as pure sacrilege. They attacked Price and were only prevented from assaulting Gwenllian by the pack of large dogs that Price kept at his home.

William Price was arrested and charged. However, in a sensational trial, held in Cardiff, Justice Stephens acquitted Price, a judgement and a decision that led almost directly to the passing of the Cremation Act, thus making the burning of bodies legal in Britain.

After fathering several more children, Dr William Price died on 23 January 1893. His body was cremated in front of many thousands of spectators - some estimates being as high as 20,000 - who flocked to Llantrisant to witness the event. Several tons of coal and wood were piled up underneath the corpse in order to make it burn more effectively.

They say that all the pubs in Llantrisant ran dry on the day of that cremation. Price had organised everything, even selling tickets to the event - bizarre and outlandish, right to the end!

A New Welsh Born Icon; the first inauguration of 2017.

A man entire

I listened to David Nott, probably the world’s most experienced war surgeon, on Desert Island Discs as I drove back from Cardiff to London today.

During the past 20 years, he has taken unpaid leave from his NHS work to provide medical assistance all around the world. The list of places he has visited reads like a summary of troubled conflict zones in the 21st century – Bosnia, Sierra Leone, Afghanistan, Darfur, Haiti, Gaza and Syria all feature.

He was born in Carmarthen. His father, who was half Indian and half Burmese, was an orthopaedic surgeon and his Welsh moth was a nurse.

What an admirable and inspirational man, I am happy to claim him as a Welsh Born Icon.

Listen to the show here.

Lee Selby with Floyd someone or other

New world boxing champion Lee Selby is hoping he can enjoy a Welsh homecoming by making his first defence of his IBF featherweight title in Cardiff towards the end of the summer.

Selby produced a dominant technical decision over Russia’s Evgeny Gradovich at the O2 arena on Saturday evening. The fight was stopped in the eighth round due to a cut above Gradovich’s left eye and Selby was handed victory with scores of 79-73, 79-73, 80-72.

“There is talk of me fighting back in Cardiff in late August early September and hopefully I can defend again in December before the end of the year,” said Selby.

There is a World Champion from Barry who trained - among other places - at the Royal Oak in Splott. My cup overfloweth; a Welsh Born Icon.

update: it may have been somewhere other than the Oak, though still in Splott. Grumpth!

John Graham Chambers

John Graham Chambers (12 February 1843 – 4 March 1883) was a Welsh sportsman. He rowed for Cambridge, founded inter-varsity sports, became English Champion walker, coached four winning Boat-Race crews, devised the Queensberry Rules, staged the FA Cup Final and the Thames Regatta, instituted championships for billiards, boxing, cycling, wrestling and athletics, rowed beside Matthew Webb as he swam the English Channel and edited a national newspaper.

As I am travelling and semi-detached from the interwebs, you may have a Welsh Born Icon nominated by my brother John. They certainly crammed a lot into whatever little time they had on the planet, those Victorians.

Geraint Watkins

Wikipedia

Watkins was born in Abertridwr, near Caerphilly, Wales.

The 1980s and beyond found Watkins playing accordion and piano with The Balham Alligators, a band that has helped to keep the music of Louisiana alive in London's pubs, of which he is a founding member.

After time in the early 1970s at Portsmouth Art College, he returned to Cardiff and played with Red Beans And Rice and Juice on the Loose. The band, Red Beans And Rice, attracted attention and moved to London to further their career. When they disbanded Watkins played solo performances in London's pubs and with various bands, such as Southside United (with which he recorded an album), the Cable Layers, Klondike Pete and the Huskies, the band of Southend's, Micky Jupp on the 'Be Stiff Route 78' tour. He went on to record an album, Geraint Watkins & The Dominators (1979), produced by Andy Fairweather Low. Session work followed: recording and/or performing with Dr. Feelgood, Rory Gallagher, Andy Fairweather-Low, The Fabulous Thunderbirds, The Blues Band, Box of Frogs, The Stray Cats, Carl Perkins and Eric Clapton amongst others.

Route 55 now has a patron saint as well as an anthem. A new Welsh Born Icon is also inducted.

Easy to say "Bon temps rouler."

ROCKIN' THE CLAUDE HOTEL CARDIFF - RED BEANS AND RICE. Be still my beating heart.

Pino

D’Angelo Debuts Long-Awaited Album, Featuring Pino Palladino.

The first time I listened to Black Messiah, the new D'Angelo album I found myself thinking Prince could have knocked it out in fifteen days, never mind fifteen years. Now I've spent a bit more time with it I am starting to realise how dense and intricate it is; a grower I think.

Pino Palladino has bass, writing and production credits on the record as far as I can tell from casting round the interwebs for background.  (I have no idea how to conjure up this information in iTunes. Back in the day I was an avid reader of LP liner notes but these days they seem to have disappeared into the ether making it very difficult to tell who is actually playing on anything.)

"Born in Cardiff to an Italian father from Campobasso, Umberto Palladino and Welsh mother Ann Hazard" in 1957, I have always been aware of Pino P and I am amazed I have never written about him here.

He has played with everyone see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pino_Palladino. I don't have room on the  'blog even to begin to cover it, You'll have to read up on him. A new and true Welsh Born Icon.