ohn F. Kennedy’s canonisation may have to wait as a new documentary, We Are Cuba, reminds us of how close Fidel Castro, Nikita Khrushchev and him came to blowing up the world in October 1962.

He may have been great at charming simple Irish countryfolk, but JFK was pretty pants at foreign policy.
“The film brings to life the three central characters and explores how the world’s most powerful men fell into an abyss of their own making and what courage and luck it took to climb out again,” reads the herewascuba.com sales-pitch. “With nuclear brinkmanship high on the international agenda today, the events hold invaluable lessons for a generation too young to remember just how close we came to the end. Nuclear catastrophe was hanging by a thread... and we weren’t counting days or hours, but minutes.”
Premiering this month as part of the Sheffield Doc Festival, it’s the work of Irish filmmakers Emer Reynolds and John Murray who appear to have a timely hit on their hands.
Sarah Silverman, Alan Rickman, World War Z author Max Brooks and Iveagh Gardens-bound American stand-up Eugene Mirman are among the recent guests on Star Talk Radio, a weekly astrophysics goes rock ‘n’ roll show presented by egghead Neil deGrasse Tyson. startalkradio.net/shows-archive has over 60 episodes for you to OD on.
Having outdone themselves with Beyond The Candelabra – Michael Douglas not being eligible for an Oscar sucks a biggie – HBO are about to treat us to Hello Ladies, a new Stephen Merchant-penned comedy whose first YouTube teaser elicits more chuckles than the entire first – and hopefully last – season of the dire Derek.
Which just leaves time for quick visits to toys.usvsth3m.com/homophobatron (creating nonsensical anti-gay marriage arguments so politicians/the Iona Institute don’t have to); youtube.com/watch?v=ILJZK8WnNzs (Cassette Boy vs hipster vloggers); kanyezone.com (the West boy’s ego gets even bigger) and youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=yqMnUtIqYSU (naughty Israeli soldiers).