Quintin Jardine's blog

Last night I made it to the end: of the second series of True Detective. In truth I lost touch with the plot around half way through and even after a Poirot-like summing up in the final episode I still couldn’t join all the dots. Even today questions remain. For example: How could an actor as large as Vince Vaughan manage to be two-dimensional in one of the lead roles? Did Bezzarides have a Christian name? If so what was it? However I was not at a loss when the producers stuck to one of the rules of film to which there are few exceptions: it rarely ends well for Colin Farrell.

On July 27, I posted about some annoying nuisance calls I’d been receiving. They’ve continued ever since, but finally I’ve managed to trace the source.

They come from an outfit called Money Help Marketing, in Sale. They specialise in what they call Lead Generation, in other words, freelance cold-calling. Their website is http://moneyhelpmarketing.co.uk and their number is 0333 002 0139.

I’ve asked them, politely so far, to stop. If they don’t I will have my revenge by calling them every hour on the hour, leaving the line open and playing them selections from Kinky Friedman’s Greatest Hits. If ‘Old Ben Lucas’ doesn’t do it, I may have to employ my own specialists.

I had an email this morning from National Rail, telling me they miss me, and offering me a £5 discount if I renew my Senior Railcard, which I let lapse last year. That would bring the cost down to £25, and would get me one third off fares for a year.

I have a senior railcard in Spain, a Tarjeta Dorada. It costs €6, gets me a 40% discount, and pays for itself on one trip from  Figueres to Barcelona.

Say no more.

A couple of nights ago, I watched a programme on Sky Arts. It isn’t usually a channel of choice, but there was a reason. On offer was an hour and more of Les Paul and his Trio, filmed live in the Iridium Jazz Club on Broadway during the old man’s 90th birthday celebrations in 2005.

Three years earlier, Eileen and I had a holiday in New York. On day one, I looked through a What’s On mag in the hotel, and found Les’s weekly Monday gig advertised. I was surprised, as I’d assumed he had been playing the celestial Gibson for a few years. We booked, and enjoyed the best evening of our trip.

The Iridium is a compact venue and watching the TV show was just like being back there. Les didn’t make it through 2009, but he was playing almost to the end. If you have access through catch-up TV, I urge you to download it, to see a latter-day miracle at work.

So farewell, Cilla. RIP

There’s been chatter on Facebook by folk complaining about the prominence given to her passing by sections of the UK media who normally pay scant attention to the celebrity world. To them all I can say is that Cilla was greater than the  physical space she occupied, while the opposite is true of most celebs. For people like her even Guardian readers will shed the occasional tear.

Sitting with my grandson yesterday, looking at photos on the iPad. He reached out and swiped the screen, to move on to the next image. Rex is not yet 18 months old.

I’m not saying that he’s a genius . . . not yet. When Mia was two she could call up a video on her dad’s tablet. But it sure is a sign of the times.

That’s the worst spell of weather I can imagine, and it’s what we’ve been having in Gullane for the last couple of days. We have custody of the grand-dog and even he is complaining.

So what’s this with Hulk Hogan, the ‘wrestler’,  who it was said ‘wouldn’t know the difference between a wrist-lock and a wrist-watch’? Abruptly fired from the WWE after excerpts from a covertly (and possibly illegally) recorded tape, in which he used some fruitily racist language, were leaked on the internet.

Sack him for sure, but the recording is eight years old, and much of its content was known already. It is the subject of an imminently pending court action by Hogan, an action for $100million against a sleazy website called Gawker, which paid cash money for it. Also it was supposedly sealed by the court.

I’m not in the slightest interested in what a geriatric grappler may or may not have said in what he thought was the privacy of his friend’s wife’s bedroom, but I would like to know: who leaked the recording? I imagine the court will too.

Has anyone else been receiving automated calls from a woman telling you that you need to book a Green Deal Assessment before 2016? I have, even though I’m registered with the Telephone Preference Service and shouldn’t be receiving cold calls.

After about a dozen of these intrusions, finally I did as I was told and pressed ‘2’ to book my assessment while they are ‘in my area’. Hopefully someone will turn up at my door, so that I can tell them to fuck off, face to face. I’ve tried with the computer, but it doesn’t work.

Sasha died at noon today: he was 18 years old, a good age for a Tonkinese. For the last week he had become increasingly listless, uncomfortable and clearly unwell, making the trip to the vet, and his diagnosis, inevitable.

I stayed with him until the end, and beyond. When you commit yourself to a pet, it’s part of the job, an obligation and a way of showing the same affection that he has given to you. 

Sash was a character, a scrapper in his younger days but never given to bringing home friends and dismantling them in the hall. He lived an independent life but was always an integral part of our household, and a vocal one too.

I’ll miss him like hell, and I’m sad when I dwell on the fact that I’ll never again hear him yell for food, or attention, or anything else. But I don’t feel bad, because we both knew that I’d got the moment right. He was in a bad place, it couldn’t get any better, and no way was I going to let it get any worse.

So long, buddy, and thanks for the laughs, the loyalty and the love.