HA! HA! HA! Excellent, Steve. Joe - I have no idea who Gyles Brandreth is...nor Bryan Cox either. I have heard of Sir David Attenborough. The Insidious Doctor Fu Manchu is a character in some old adventure stories which pit courageous British heroes Nayland Smith and Doctor Petrie (think of Holmes and Watson) against a Chinese mastermind and evil genius from those glorious days of "The Yellow Peril", when Chinese villains were all the rage in British literature. Here is a brief summary: "London, 1913—the era of Sherlock Holmes, Dracula, and the Invisible Man. A time of shadows, secret societies, and dens filled with opium addicts. Into this world comes the most fantastic emissary of evil society has ever known… Dr. Fu-Manchu. Denis Nayland Smith pursues his quarry across continents and through the back alleys of London. As victim after victim disappears at the hands of the Devil Doctor, Smith must unravel his murderous plot before it is too late." And as for the inestimable Joan Jett, she is an American hard rock and heavy metal singer...the veritable queen of her trade, with a long and remarkable musical career, and not a small amount of genuine talent....as well as a very good instinct for how promote herself in a world that is almost entirely dominated by male performers, managers, etc. Good for her, I say! Not my usual kind of music at all, but I have to say she does it with great panache.
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