Stephen Fry, tech blogger

September 20, 2007 4:21 AM

Stephen Fry just started blogging.His first post? A post on the iPhone, the history of PDAs and the nature of technological innovation and desire, that's roughly the length of a medium-sized novella.
posted by flashboy (127 comments total)

He's making me want to open my wallet and buy gadgets. Bastard! Must... resist...
posted by -harlequin- at 4:29 AM on September 20, 2007

Yeah sure he's all erudite and perceptive just now but give him a month and he'll be making lolcats posts and ripping off BoingBoing like the rest of us.
posted by oh pollo! at 4:29 AM on September 20, 2007 [7 favorites has favorites]

This is a seriously quality essay.
posted by Happy Dave at 4:29 AM on September 20, 2007

Had no idea he was such a geek. You're right, that's a looong post. Haven't finished it. Probably won't.
posted by zardoz at 4:29 AM on September 20, 2007

*Squeee!* Reading this blog entry the same week that I've started reading The Ode Less Travelled is mind-blowing.

Oh, and ... Top Gear: Star in a reasonably priced car
posted by maudlin at 4:37 AM on September 20, 2007

*OMG CREAMS JEANS, TURNS MONOSYLLABIC*
posted by goodnewsfortheinsane at 4:38 AM on September 20, 2007

Also: HIV & Me, Oct 2 on the Beeb (although I'm pretty sure I've seen a promo that said Oct 1?). Is it me or does this title misleadingly suggest that Fry has HIV?
posted by goodnewsfortheinsane at 4:41 AM on September 20, 2007

oh pollo! I beg to differ. If you had seen him hold forth on QI, you wouldn't say that.

He can write a blog entry as long as that on almost any topic. He has a photographic memory and a voracious appetite for infromation. He's also a vast database of anecdotes.

You never know, he may end up being the uberblogger; the best there ever was. He certainly has the intellect and the proclivity for it.

In the UK, he is quite rightly regarded as some sort of national treasure. An unimpeachable source.
posted by chuckdarwin at 4:43 AM on September 20, 2007 [1 favorite has favorites]

goodnewsfortheinsane, like many people his age, he's probably lost seveal friends to the disease.
posted by chuckdarwin at 4:44 AM on September 20, 2007

Metafilter: AND THERE’S NO OFFLINE MODE!!!!

And he signs with his signature!

*only shuts the hell up to read Moab is my Washpot while watching DVDs of QI and Secret Life of the Manic Depressive on separate screens*
posted by goodnewsfortheinsane at 4:45 AM on September 20, 2007

Stephen Fry is about the only person who could write a blog with paragraphs several cubits long and still have it read from top to bottom.

Great spot. Thanks.
posted by randomination at 4:47 AM on September 20, 2007

I got that, chuckdarwin, but not every viewer will be immediately familiar with Fry's personal life. And the title does, after all, refer to himself. No qualms, just something I noticed. More importantly:

he may end up being the uberblogger

This is a very real and scary possibility. He's got it all: annoyingly astute, carnivorously curious, with endless patience with people and an intense fondness for culture both "high" and "low", whatever those words might mean. I think you're on to something there.
posted by goodnewsfortheinsane at 4:51 AM on September 20, 2007

chuckdarwin..fer chrisakes - i was joking.
posted by oh pollo! at 4:53 AM on September 20, 2007

We are not worthy of Stephen Fry.
posted by East Manitoba Regional Junior Kabaddi Champion '94 at 4:59 AM on September 20, 2007 [1 favorite has favorites]

I got that, chuckdarwin, but not every viewer will be immediately familiar with Fry's personal life.

Little chance of that here - his life has been picked over on the telly in excruciating detail (ex: his Jewishness on Who Do You Think You Are? his therapy thing (which I didn't watch) The bipolar thing... etc).

I know more about him than is probably reasonable for anyone to know about a stranger, even a famous stranger. Most of this is either his doing or his publicist's or the beeb's (or some combination thereof)... but I do know that he spent most of his life in celibacy until he came out, and has been with the same man for years... see? Too much info.

(oh pollo! I am sorry I missed your joke)
posted by chuckdarwin at 5:00 AM on September 20, 2007

While we're speaking of Stephen Fry, Gadgets, and links, here is a link to a Stephen Fry gadget. I plan to get one :)
posted by -harlequin- at 5:01 AM on September 20, 2007

The P1i is what happens when “oh, that’ll do” becomes the corporate motto.

...to say “well my WinMob device does all that your iPhone can do” is like saying my Barratt home has got the same number of bedrooms as your Georgian watermill, it’s got a kitchen too, and a bathroom.”

I can't believe he knows about Ubuntu Linux too. Is there anything this man can't do?
posted by TheophileEscargot at 5:01 AM on September 20, 2007 [1 favorite has favorites]

Me. But I don't hold it against him.
posted by maudlin at 5:02 AM on September 20, 2007 [2 favorites has favorites]

This line on the HIV & Me site:

"Come back soon for exclusive videos and to find out why Stephen felt compelled to make the documentary."

does sound more like it's related to people close to him than a revelation about himself. But yes, the first time I saw a trailer for the documentary, I did a quick, horrified double take - "Oh God, Stephen Fry isn't HIV positive, is he?". I really, really, really hope it's not the case.

And yes, Fry clearly has the potential to render all other blogging utterly redundant.

(Yes, even more redundant than it is already.)
posted by flashboy at 5:03 AM on September 20, 2007

He should post this review on Amazon.com
posted by Flashman at 5:05 AM on September 20, 2007 [1 favorite has favorites]

he may end up being the uberblogger

This is a very real and scary possibility.

I suspect he'll be too busy actually doing things out in the Real World :) This blog will be great reading (and almost certainly will be sold as a book at some point), but he has a finger in a lot of pies already.

OTOH, maybe stuff like the filming in the middle of rural Norfolk commonly has a lot of downtime that he plans to spend blogging?
posted by -harlequin- at 5:08 AM on September 20, 2007

oh god Stephen Fry

That's all I got, I just

fuck

christ I love Stephen Fry

I will be reading this blog quite a bit, I think.
posted by Greg Nog at 5:19 AM on September 20, 2007

Stephen Fry is about the only person who could write about the iPhone without making me want to punch him, hard, in the face.
posted by Alvy Ampersand at 5:20 AM on September 20, 2007

Stephen Fry, Tech Blogger. It doesn't sound right, at first. Then you read the blog. And it's the most natural thing in the world.
posted by tommasz at 5:24 AM on September 20, 2007

/chubbies up.
posted by Jofus at 5:31 AM on September 20, 2007

Am I the only one who thinks he is utterly, insufferably smug on QI?
posted by patricio at 5:44 AM on September 20, 2007

I stumbledupon this show, Qi, which I had never seen, of which Stephen Fry is the host, and which is very intelligent and funny.
posted by Turtles all the way down at 5:50 AM on September 20, 2007

The article's not that long, about 6400 words... and it's reviewing several tech gadgets. Most tech sites publish reviews of single things that are much longer and much less readable. They hide the length by breaking it up across multiple pages to increase their ad hits. They've been far less successful at hiding the bad writing.

Definitely a good read. I had no idea who this fellow was, but between the Top Gear interview and this article, I'm impressed.

I am also required to don my <pedant> tag and say: per Wikipedia definitions, it would qualify as a short story, but would need to be about triple that length to qualify as a novella.</pedant>
posted by Malor at 5:51 AM on September 20, 2007

I should have previewed, patricio! And yes, I think he is usually utterly and insufferably smug, but he's probably one of the few people for whom this is justified.
posted by Turtles all the way down at 5:52 AM on September 20, 2007

Site appears to intermittently (if not entirely) down right now :(
posted by public at 5:55 AM on September 20, 2007

Well, if anyone deserves to be smug, it's Fry, who knows the secret of contentment.
posted by maudlin at 6:05 AM on September 20, 2007

Dammit, we broke his blog.
posted by rtha at 6:07 AM on September 20, 2007

Say, it just so happens that the new season of QI starts Friday night. Time to put up that Really Big Antenna so I can get the BBC signal here in Maine.
posted by SteveInMaine at 6:13 AM on September 20, 2007

I had no idea Stephen Fry was such a geek, and now I love him even more.
posted by emmastory at 6:21 AM on September 20, 2007

We have sent him a free MeFi account, right?
posted by Wolfdog at 6:21 AM on September 20, 2007

The about page is pretty special.
posted by srboisvert at 6:31 AM on September 20, 2007

Say, it just so happens that the new season of QI starts Friday night.

It's already on my Sky+

I love watching the two great British archetypes play out every week: Fry's "uptight Anglo" versus Alan Davies' "loopy Celt".
posted by chuckdarwin at 6:34 AM on September 20, 2007

Which one of you buggers broke it?

See this is why we can't have nice things.
posted by gomichild at 6:48 AM on September 20, 2007

Patricio it seems that yes, yes you are the only one...

*goes back to watching QI series 1 to 4 back to back*
posted by merocet at 6:49 AM on September 20, 2007

Say, it just so happens that the new season of QI starts Friday night.

Marvellous. I get rid of the TV and they go and pull a stunt like that.
posted by vbfg at 6:52 AM on September 20, 2007

did we break it?
posted by daveyt at 6:55 AM on September 20, 2007

I keep thinking the Stephen Fry the intellectual giant can't be the same as Stephen Fry the hilarious actor...but it is. WTF.
posted by DU at 6:58 AM on September 20, 2007

Stephen Fry is a great bunch of guys.
posted by vbfg at 7:00 AM on September 20, 2007 [5 favorites has favorites]

It's down. Probably up on Digg or something.
posted by sveskemus at 7:05 AM on September 20, 2007

Excellent. Now if we can just get either of the Sedaris kids to blog life would be perfect.
posted by Ber at 7:26 AM on September 20, 2007

I keep thinking the Stephen Fry the intellectual giant can't be the same as Stephen Fry the hilarious actor...but it is. WTF.

intellectual != funny?
posted by twistedonion at 7:55 AM on September 20, 2007

Is there a mirror of it anywhere? I get an instant denial when connecting.
posted by mathowie at 8:05 AM on September 20, 2007

I love Stephen Fry so very much.

Can we have him on Metafilter too, please? I'll throw in the five bucks.
posted by cmyk at 8:07 AM on September 20, 2007

I get an instant denial when connecting.
That sounds like a social problem.
posted by Wolfdog at 8:12 AM on September 20, 2007 [1 favorite has favorites]

Agreed on the Meta invitation, although tbh he's a long time nethead so it's quite conceivable he's had a login at some point in the past. He's got a facebook page after all.
posted by barbelith at 8:13 AM on September 20, 2007

Ooo! Good idea, Ber. David won't but Amy might!
posted by Don Pepino at 8:16 AM on September 20, 2007

He's got a facebook page after all.

I think I just burned my fingertips on my keyboard. Yes, he's there on page 3 of Stephen Frys, but his profile is locked up tighter than [something witty that I can't think of right now].

Thou shalt not poke Stephen Fry.
posted by maudlin at 8:17 AM on September 20, 2007

Can we have him on Metafilter too, please? I'll throw in the five bucks.

I'm up for this if it means we get some sort of AJAX thingy that will popup a message that says "WRONG" when people post something predictable but incorrect.
posted by srboisvert at 8:20 AM on September 20, 2007 [1 favorite has favorites]

When I was an extremely callow young journalist, I had to interview Stephen Fry on location about his TV role in the P. G. Wodehouse series.

He had just been quizzed by about 456 other TV journalism hacks, and I was making a mess of my own time with him (nothing serious, I was just flustered and clumsy.)

He caught my creeping embarrassment, leaned forward with a big, warm smile and said "By the way, thank you for calling me "Mr Fry" when you started your interview - that was a most professional touch!".

Just a tiny moment of unsolicited kindness to give a floundering stranger some confidence. Pure Fry, basically.
posted by Jody Tresidder at 8:23 AM on September 20, 2007 [11 favorites has favorites]

In his BBC documentary about manic depression (from which he suffers), he goes into graphic detail with regards to his compulsive shopping habits. I expect this is an extension of those.
posted by Reggie Digest at 8:25 AM on September 20, 2007

Seriously, who is Stephen Fry and why is it so great that he's blogging?
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 8:26 AM on September 20, 2007

He's that guy in every British movie you've ever seen.
posted by Reggie Digest at 8:30 AM on September 20, 2007

Stephen Fry is the guy who comes up when you google Stephen Fry, and you can read the blog yourself to determine whether it's great.
posted by Wolfdog at 8:30 AM on September 20, 2007

Stephen Fry is not like bevets. You cannot just *invoke* him.
posted by asok at 8:31 AM on September 20, 2007

I think I just burned my fingertips on my keyboard. Yes, he's there on page 3 of Stephen Frys, but his profile is locked up tighter than [something witty that I can't think of right now].

Thou shalt not poke Stephen Fry.

Discussed here, fwiw.
posted by vbfg at 8:35 AM on September 20, 2007

Stephen Fry is the guy who comes up when you google Stephen Fry, and you can read the blog yourself to determine whether it's great.

Forgive me if I wasn't clear, but that's not what I'm asking

I'm asking people in this thread, who clearly like Stephen Fry, to explain who he is and why they think it's great that he's blogging.
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 8:43 AM on September 20, 2007

Brandon, he's a talented, funny and very smart British actor. More on Wikipedia.

Here in the UK, he's seen as something of a national treasure, as he has played several roles that loom large in the national psyche, notably Jeeves in 'Jeeves and Wooster' and various roles in the Blackadder series.
posted by Happy Dave at 8:49 AM on September 20, 2007

Brandon, even from America I can tell he's a national treasure in the UK. A smart, witty, very funny man that does lots of parts in movies and narration. I never thought he'd be the kind of person to start blogging, but to hear he's gone on for over 6000 words about gadgets kind of blows my mind.

Lemme see if I can come up with anything remotely close among american actors... Imagine if James Earl Jones started a blog this week and in his first post, he wrote exhaustively about RAID controllers.
posted by mathowie at 8:51 AM on September 20, 2007 [7 favorites has favorites]

Because he's not only a talented comedian and actor who's been involved in a large number of Britain's greatest recent comedies - but he's also no mean author, and his comic novels are rarely short of hilarious, while still subtle in a way that, say, Pratchett isn't. Coupled with a formidable intelligence, erudition, recall and sense of self-effacement he's ideal for the task - if blogging becomes habit forming for him - we all win.

not that I'm a fanboi or anything
posted by Sparx at 8:53 AM on September 20, 2007

What he is, Brandon, is essentially everything good about Britain, rolled up into one extremely clever man. Kinda like the 21st-century English equivalent to Mark Twain in the American 19th century.
posted by Greg Nog at 8:55 AM on September 20, 2007 [4 favorites has favorites]

If anyone clicked and couldn't get in, it appears to be back up now.
posted by Happy Dave at 8:56 AM on September 20, 2007

And he's the Jim Dale of Harry Potter audiobooks in the UK.
posted by jaimev at 8:57 AM on September 20, 2007

I haven't read the article yet.

When I heard Fry in A bit of Fry & Laurie f.i. I grew quickly tired of his ornate precious language and his tongue in cheek thesaurus freek-out mode. 'Treacly' and 'cloying' are words that came to mind.
That didn't make search out his novels.

Is it just me who has a distaste for his use of language?

English is a second language to me so chances are that my language sense is a bit off
posted by jouke at 9:02 AM on September 20, 2007

jouke, not to freek you out or anything, but yeah, your language sense is a bit off.
posted by Greg Nog at 9:06 AM on September 20, 2007

When I load the site in IE, it's fine. In FF, it's a lofi look.

*goes off to read article*
posted by rtha at 9:13 AM on September 20, 2007

Certainly, Fry's trademark vocabulary-fetishism - especially in his earlier Fry & Laurie years - can be bit of a love-it-or-hate-it affair; I can easily see how it comes off a self-satisfied, showy thesaurus-fiddling.

But there's so much more to Fry, and that aspect of him was just one character type that he played (a lot, admittedly) in a sketch show. In himself, he's seems to be simply a very bright man with a very elegant grasp of the language, who isn't afraid of seeming clever - while still wearing his erudition lightly. Which is, sadly, a rare enough trait these days.
posted by flashboy at 9:26 AM on September 20, 2007

Flashboy: sounds as if I should read something by him.
posted by jouke at 9:33 AM on September 20, 2007

If anyone can get through and post in his forums, it appears that is the preferred method of contact to let Mr. Fry know how much you appreciate his blog (and offer him a mefi pony invite).
posted by misha at 9:36 AM on September 20, 2007

Cool, thanks for the education ya'll!
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 10:03 AM on September 20, 2007

I'm asking people in this thread, who clearly like Stephen Fry, to explain who he is and why they think it's great that he's blogging.

When an author, playwright, librettist, scholar, director, actor, voice artist, comedian, presenter, documentary subject, and professional wit of Fry's stature turns his hand to something new, people who like his work might be interested.
posted by chuckdarwin at 10:11 AM on September 20, 2007 [2 favorites has favorites]

Oh damn, I know that somewhere my girlfriend's head exploded at the thought of semi-regular Stephen Fry content being posted freely to the web about geeky topics.
posted by Molesome at 10:16 AM on September 20, 2007

The thing I like about him most is his deep abiding friendship with Hugh Laurie, even though their careers have followed such different tracks since the days of A Bit of Fry & Laurie and Blackadder. I saw an interview with him recently and he was full of warmth toward Hugh which was wonderful to see. It would be easy for a lesser man to be bitter.
posted by patricio at 10:32 AM on September 20, 2007 [1 favorite has favorites]

I think we broke his blog :(
posted by spec80 at 10:38 AM on September 20, 2007

jouke: yes, I'd have to recommend The Hippopotamus. I hope Fry's blogging doesn't distract him from writing more novels.
posted by mubba at 10:54 AM on September 20, 2007

patricio, he's the godfather to all three of Laurie's kids, that says something about their relationship.
posted by tommasz at 10:57 AM on September 20, 2007

Ugh, Stephen Fry is such an insufferable bastard. I hate him.




I kid, I'm just not used to seeing such universal acclaim for someone here. I really look forward to his blog coming back up so I can read this.

BTW, the Top Gear appearance that maudlin linked is a lot of fun.
posted by quin at 11:05 AM on September 20, 2007

I, too, am madly in love with his thesaurusophilia and word wizardry (in English at the least, see below (!)). And when he fucks up he fucks up so well - anyone remember that scene in Manic Depressive where he rings this family's doorbell in California and heartily exclaims, "Welcome! ... Wait, that's what you say."

Fun fact for jouke: Fry learnt a respectable amount of Dutch while shooting Discovery of Heaven. He was on Parkinson not too long after and simply out of nowhere he starting spouting such gems as "Het is een lekkere taal" and "In de oorlog moesten de mensen bloembollen eten".
posted by goodnewsfortheinsane at 11:10 AM on September 20, 2007

He's blogging? He claims he doesn't have time to write his Doctor Who episode and he's *blogging*? Bastard.
posted by webmutant at 11:13 AM on September 20, 2007

I still can't get through to the main site, but the Coral Cache mirror seems to be working alright.
posted by zsazsa at 11:25 AM on September 20, 2007

Heh, gnfti, Fry talking Dutch. That must have been strange.
It is a lekkere taal though. g-g-g-ave g-g-g-uturale taal.

Such a pity they made that movie in English though. I would have loved a good depiction of the upper class gereformeerd Donner family.
Instead we got Fry.
ok, ok, I'll revise my distaste for Fry.
.... tomorrow!
posted by jouke at 11:27 AM on September 20, 2007

Please do. I am evangelical about but very few things in life, but I will stand up right here and say that every Good Mefite needs a bit of Fry in their life.

And, sub rosa - I never really got the "guttural" thing. Sure, there's a lot of velar fricatives - but don't a whole bunch of other languages have those as well? And, more importantly, I'm convinced people would have the same reaction to dental fricatives in English if, you know, we (as a planet) weren't already thso thucking bombarded wisth sthem all thse tshime. </victimcomplex>
posted by goodnewsfortheinsane at 12:09 PM on September 20, 2007

He claims he doesn't have time to write his Doctor Who episode

Gwah wait what?

I would personally pay him myself to write that.

(Also, I will also be, um, putting up my really really big antenna to pick up QI tomorrow, now that I know it exists. Yes.)
posted by kalimac at 12:33 PM on September 20, 2007

Since his name is invoked in "Thou Shalt Aways Kill" ("Thou shalt not question Stephen Fry"), that means that "Thou Shalt Always Filter" must now add the line:
"Stephen Fry - Just a site."

Thou shalt always keed.
posted by wendell at 12:35 PM on September 20, 2007

Whenever we see House on the tube, my wife thinks, "I can't believe that guy is British" and I think "Where the hell is Stephen Fry?"
posted by jaysus chris at 1:14 PM on September 20, 2007 [1 favorite has favorites]

FWIW, he's guest blogged on the huffington post a few times.

glad he's up on his own site.
posted by CitizenD at 1:40 PM on September 20, 2007

Oh my. He's rather charming on that Top Gear episode.

Slightly offtopic derail:

When Fry is talking about living at the peak of human knowledge in the Top Gear piece, the host mentions something about Aviation and how we have already peaked somehow in our technical expertise and begun down the other side of the curve. Fry agrees and says that is one of a very few rare examples, but neither go into detail about how we "peaked".

Can anyone explain?
posted by lazaruslong at 1:48 PM on September 20, 2007

That episode of Top Gear was broadcast on November 2, 2003. The Concorde's last commercial flight was on October 24, 2003, so that may have been what they were referring to.
posted by maudlin at 1:55 PM on September 20, 2007

can't see anything there, server seems to be down., so I'll be watching Secret Life of the Manic Depressive instead
posted by kolophon at 2:08 PM on September 20, 2007

lazaruslong:

They were referring to the end of the Concorde era - today you can no-longer book commercial airline flights faster than the speed of sound.
posted by -harlequin- at 2:09 PM on September 20, 2007

Ahhhh. Gotcha.

Thanks!
posted by lazaruslong at 2:17 PM on September 20, 2007

Concorde. Stupid wasteful beautiful miracle. I miss Concorde. It was one of the things that made me feel like we were living in the future.

.
posted by howfar at 2:22 PM on September 20, 2007 [1 favorite has favorites]

I kid, I'm just not used to seeing such universal acclaim for someone here.

You've missed the Wozniak threads then.

If the two of them ever team up on something, the internet might explode.
posted by Arturus at 2:46 PM on September 20, 2007

Thanks - love him.

A Scot I know recently told me that he had had the pleasure of having dinner with Fry once, maybe 15 or 20 years ago. They were are Cambridge (?), Oxford (?) (can't remember) and he was the guest of honor at some all-college event. He'd been seated next to some very dull athlete/prep-school guys, and managed to excuse himself and come sit at my friend's table where people were joking around more. Friend says he was every bit as charming, smart, and conversationally considerate as we all would like to think.
posted by LobsterMitten at 2:50 PM on September 20, 2007

LobsterMitten. Given Stephen Fry's Cambridge education, and his repeated expressions of hatred for all things Oxonian, I'd guess it was probably Cambridge.

Although if his books are anything to go by, I'm surprised he wasn't more interested in the prep-school athletes.

I think "prep-school" means something different outside the UK. Here it usually means a private school for boys between the ages of 8/9 and 12/13. Stephen Fry's novels frequently focus upon the idea of the beautiful youth, and his play "Latin! Or Tobacco and Boys" is a satire of English prep-schools with consensual pederasty as one of its main themes.
posted by howfar at 3:43 PM on September 20, 2007

howfar - yeah, when my friend started telling the story I was braced for some kind of tale of Fry seducing a hot young thing. But no, I think he was just finding the company tedious. (By "prep school" I meant an elite privately-run boarding school that runs from ages 5 or 6 up to age 18, for university preparation - possibly what you call a "public school"?.)
posted by LobsterMitten at 3:59 PM on September 20, 2007

Ok, after just now being introduced to it, I can say with a great deal of certitude that QI is easily one of the more brilliant things I've seen.
posted by quin at 4:18 PM on September 20, 2007

A public school is the private school you go to after a prep-school. My God we like to make things complicated for ourselves. (I went to neither, but my father was a scholarship boy at a public school, and vowed to educate his children in the state sector all the way).

As far as Stephen Fry goes, I was just showing off really. I never imagined that he'd actually be interested in seducing a teenage boy. It's much more interesting than that. While his apparent longing for the seeming innocence of adolescent sexuality isn't anywhere out of the ordinary in terms of my experience of human beings, to find a mainstream writer with the courage to make it one of his main themes is, in the modern era, unique. It is even more surprising when one considers the "national treasure" tag that he possesses, and the state of paedophile panic that occupied Britain in the late 1990s. The spoilt prodigal of the Daily Mail is so indulged that he has written freely, openly and movingly about the significance of gay adolescent sexuality in the mainstream media for over 20 years.

He has been astonishingly honest about a very complex, sensitive and risky issue, which is one of the things I respect him for. His work often runs deeper than his fluent and apparently glib style might suggest. He's more subversive than he seems. Damnit, the guy's fucking great.
posted by howfar at 4:21 PM on September 20, 2007 [1 favorite has favorites]

Looking back, I should add that Stephen Fry hates the Daily Mail, much though they may laud him, and has described it as both "the worst paper in Britain" and "a wretched snotrag". My earlier post may have been unclear. Forgive me.
posted by howfar at 4:34 PM on September 20, 2007

I'm baffled -- all I can get at that URL is a standard Stephenfry.com domain-squatter page ("helping you find what you need"), filled with wretched spam links -- did his domain get hijacked already?
posted by dmz at 6:49 PM on September 20, 2007

Same as dmz, and I'm totally crushed! *sob*

Oh well, I still haven't seen all of the A Bit of Fry and Laurie DVDs that Mr. Wintersweet got for his birthday--so I can console myself with that--but I hope the site restores itself soon so that I may add to my feeds.

P. S. For maximum surreality I recommend my method of buying Moab is My Washpot in a random used bookstore in Taipei and reading it in random Taiwanese cafes.
posted by wintersweet at 7:19 PM on September 20, 2007

Site's back up.

I first discovered Fry and Laurie in 'Jeeves and Wooster.' Oddly enough, I'm not a fan of the books but the shows were fantastic and now I'm a diehard Stephen Fry fan. Check out Kingdom, also. Absolutely fantastic.

Is there a name for Fry fans?
posted by who squared at 8:35 PM on September 20, 2007

Nice to see him back on the web. Here's his original site from 1996, courtesy of The Wayback Machine. Be gentle with it.

The imagemap links in the middle of the page don't work because of limitations on the Wayback Machine's archive retrieval system, but there are ordinary links at the bottom which mostly work.

Ignore the "U.S. Site" link. Especially look at "whizzy stuff", which is the reason I wasn't the least bit surprised about his technophilia.
posted by George_Spiggott at 9:10 PM on September 20, 2007

If there isn't, may I suggest Frylocks?
posted by quin at 9:12 PM on September 20, 2007

George_Spigott, your link is broken.
posted by LobsterMitten at 9:21 PM on September 20, 2007

Gems:

". . . sometimes a tethered modem DUN connection allows me to jack into the matrix, but mostly I’m in a field fondly fingering a phone."

"my passion for all things mobilic and phonular"

"Sony Ericsson have rolled over and asked to be kicked and shagged roughly"

"the wholly gorgeous 8600 Luna, an indulgent chocolate-box of a mobile phone."
I'm not a phone-geek but the Luna does, indeed, look nice.

"the response you get from a dead walrus is better than that of a UIQ Sony Ericsson"

"Swapping SIMS, syncing, testing, probing, playing." (NSFW!)
posted by who squared at 9:23 PM on September 20, 2007

Fry's right when he says that Douglas Adams is a sore loss. I'd love to read Adams talking about the iPhone. His posts on the Newton and Macintosh were great.

When my nose was even more broken than it is now, I used to get compared to Fry a lot. Damn, I wish it was for the hundreds of things he rocks at, instead.
posted by bonaldi at 9:27 PM on September 20, 2007 [1 favorite has favorites]

Yikes. Here's what that link to the archive of his 1996 page should have been.
posted by George_Spiggott at 10:09 PM on September 20, 2007

G_S, that is great. Thanks.
posted by LobsterMitten at 10:24 PM on September 20, 2007

I've just finished watching, for the first time ever, all the Jeeves and Woosters. And lordy, my mancrush on Stephen Fry grows...

If you've not listened to him narrating the Harry Potter books, it is a far FAR better way to experience them than a mere textual device could convey. Seriously. And listening to him reading his own autobiography? Magic.
posted by coriolisdave at 11:34 PM on September 20, 2007

Given Stephen Fry's Cambridge education, and his repeated expressions of hatred for all things Oxonian, I'd guess it was probably Cambridge.

Why then is the QI Club in Oxford?
posted by cillit bang at 1:36 AM on September 21, 2007

Someone hijacked him! Damn it! Call the internet police! *dials 999*
posted by chuckdarwin at 1:37 AM on September 21, 2007

cilit bang. Notice anyone missing from your link's list of "The People Behind QI"?
posted by howfar at 2:06 AM on September 21, 2007

He's back, chuckdarwin.

*duct tapes Fry to the Internet*
posted by maudlin at 4:31 AM on September 21, 2007

For all you Fryheads- Although it's (understandably) impossible to befriend Mr Fry on facebook, he's thoughtfully set up "Stephen Fry's Friendship Proxy Group" on the 'book that you can join and he'll occassionally post to...
posted by Rufus T. Firefly at 7:16 AM on September 21, 2007

Imagine if James Earl Jones started a blog this week and in his first post, he wrote exhaustively about RAID controllers.

Heh. I always thought of Stephen Fry as a "that guy" whom you see in a bunch of random movies but don't know by name ... I can think of V for Vendetta off the top of my head, but that's about it (paging IMDB ...)

So this blog seems more like if Fred Thompson decided to run for president or something. ;)

I admit I didn't read the iPhone post. Ick. I stopped at "My motto is: I have never seen a SmartPhone I haven’t bought." No, thank you.
posted by mrgrimm at 10:41 AM on September 21, 2007

He's that guy in every British movie you've ever seen.

Stephen Fry is Bill Nighy?
posted by Lentrohamsanin at 10:59 AM on September 21, 2007

no he's Clive Owen
posted by ellipse at 6:21 PM on September 21, 2007

I read that as "he's no Clive Owen" and was spluttering.
posted by bonaldi at 8:01 PM on September 21, 2007

Those who can't appreciate Stephen Fry's wit, erudition, charm and art are obviously idjits.
posted by Sassenach at 11:46 AM on September 22, 2007

It's eeejits, but you ARE a Sassanach so I'll let it go this time.
I'm late to the Fry-a-thon! (beautifully written article BTW) but here's another Frylock
posted by Wilder at 10:42 AM on September 24, 2007

He certainly can go on (in an enjoyable way), at least with his latest posting on fame.
posted by blue_beetle at 9:26 AM on September 27, 2007

Oh my! I just found this, how behind am I?
posted by tellurian at 6:46 AM on October 10, 2007