The Squeee

It's Wednesday and I need an RA fix! Tomorrow's the UK voting referendum and I just found out I'm only eligible to vote in the local council elections, because I'm not a UK citizen - I'm just a resident. :( Anyway, I'm not keen on this blog being too (or at all) political, so here we go: today's Richard Armitage post! Today, Captain America . (Pic from Richard Armitage Online ) Captain America: The First Avenger is due out in cinemas late July. It's bound to have a lot of "well-educated Radio Four listeners" in the audience, which is funny, as that's not the audience you'd normally expect for a superhero comic book adaptation. Oh Richard, the things you do to us poor ladies ... or rather, the things you make us do! Anyway, the role he's playing is that of Heinz Kruger. I might hang out in a comic book store and do roleplaying there, but it doesn't mean I'm at all clued up about the Captain America universe. Not at

The Awl has posted a list of 111 Male Characters Of British Literature, In Order Of Bangability . (Thanks for posting about it in the forum, rhubarbsmom!) First of all, let's correct the image they use to illustrate the article, as they've chosen number THREE on the list as opposed to number one. Can't have that now, can we? There we go. MUCH better. Order is restored. Ta-daaaah!! Mr. Rochester of Jane Eyre made number one! :D Congratulations on your impeccable taste, Carrie Frye! Of course he is the most bangable character in British literature. Here are some reflections on selected parts of the rest of the list:

As in, what would be a dealbreaker for you? What would turn you off? There are a number of things that make us love this poor lad so much, so that every time he says something, we keel over, swooning uncontrollably and declaring how much we love him and what a wonderful man he is. Every new (or old) interview I read, there's always something that makes me sigh like a little infatuated fangirl and just making it one step closer to writing "Richard" on a piece of paper and encircling it "Richard" with a heart. So, the question inevitably comes: What could he possibly say or do to make the infatuation end, the admiration fizzle out? From what I've been able to figure out about myself, it would have to be something pretty darn drastic. ( More bearded goodness here !) Getting a beard totally failed. It just made him even more smouldering. Oh so manly, oh so gorgeous, be still our hearts! So no, facial hair is not a dealbreaker. More like a Beard of M

Spotted this on a few blogs at the end of last week and said "I'll have to watch that when I get home!" and ... still haven't, as I've been either knackered or away or both. (Thank you so much for the reminder, Tara!) Maybe if I post it here, I'll remember to watch it and not just browse through it quickly and wish I could see it with the sound on? :) (Also, I have told myself I'm going to post about Richard Armitage every Wednesday, and I haven't written anything for today. So this is me writing about him today! :D I might just update this post when I've seen the clip and can comment on it properly.)

Here are a few remarks I made in response to a post on Me + Richard Armitage last December, when the topic was about his fame, his friendship with an actress and the fandom that goes with it. Saved them because I thought they could be used as basis for posts here, which hasn't really happened. But anyway, here goes: Picture from Me + Richard Armitage , found through Google I too have a sort of reluctant interest in Ms. Capper, which is really difficult to explain, because … well, would I be interested at all if she HADN’T been seen together with Richard Armitage? No. She sounds like a nice person, and we get the impression that Richard Armitage is a nice person too, so sounds like they’re well-matched as friends. If there’s more to it than friendship, who knows? Does it really matter to any of us either way? I suppose that from a sense of being an ordinary woman, that he’s seen with a woman who looks REAL is the sort of self-satisfied “see? He’s a decent bloke, he wouldn’

Here are a few remarks I made in response to a post on RAFrenzy's blog a year or so ago, when the topic was about his fame and the fandom that goes with it. Saved them because I thought they could be used as basis for posts here, which hasn't really happened. Since I'm currently writing up a review of Between the Sheets , I thought this should be posted beforehand. So here goes: Picture from An RA viewer's perspective from 33°0'S of the equator , found through Google I've not actually seen Between the Sheets yet even though I have it (*waves toward the DVD shelf*) but I've seen the non-explicit scenes on YouTube and once, when I googled with SafeSearch switched off, came across a blog which offered not just pictures but a short clip. To which my reaction was an "Oh. My. GODS!" with several meanings. Fascination and appreciation mixed with embarrassment and partial disgust, sprinkled with fangirly squees over when he says "lie down&quo

The FanstRAvaganza here at The Squeee has officially ended. Only a week or so ago, but real life has been hectic recently. Have now finally launched the re-vamp of the company website, so at least that's no longer hanging over my head. Having been busy in real life is also why I haven't made as many posts for this FanstRAvaganza as I had planned and wanted to have written. The ones that were posted were mainly done beforehand, or at least started and then just finished off in the week. Still haven't written about Richard and his BMW, for instance, and every time I drive down the A52, I'm reminded of why I want to write it. But anyway, who says you need to save everything for the big event? I need to have some topics to write about in the year leading up to next year's FanstRAvaganza, right? :) Here's a list of all my F2 posts on the subject of Richard Armitage, in reverse chronological order: The End of the FanstRAvaganza Richard Armitage - A Most Charitab

Lo and behold! Fans of Chris Evans, Tommy Lee Jones and RICHARD ARMITAGE - enjoy! Richard is only in it for a tiny li'l bit but he SPEAKS! Man has trailer time! :D

Yesterday was Red Nose Day here in Britain and it saw Comic Relief getting over £74 million to projects in Africa and the UK. Credit crunch? Not when it comes to being charitable! :) Richard Armitage is doing his bit for charity as well. He did a 24-hour thing at the Old Vic last year, which was a fundraiser for the theatre, and together with the Vicar of Dibley team (thanks for the reminder, MG !), he was in a sketch for Comic Relief in 2007: There are also these funny clips from BBC Children in Need a few years ago: Guy being charitable? Well, of course not! (I love Guy's final line. Bitter much?) Instead of just accepting gifts that his fans send him, Richard Armitage has instead urged fans to NOT send him anything, and have given away most of the gifts to charities. Good on him! He also reminds us that he's fine as he is, no need to send him any money or anything, so instead, could we please think of those who are not as well off as he is and give it to the

What if Richard Armitage was gay instead of straight? What would you do? No, I mean that sincerely. Would it change anything? Would you be disappointed? After all, if he was gay, he wouldn't be interested in you, regardless of how far-fetched the fantasy of meeting him in person is or isn't, but odds are he wouldn't give you the time of day regardless, as he once said he would never date a fan. Would you enjoy his works less? Or, would you perhaps like him even more? There are plenty of women who love to hang out with gay men, and hanging out with Richard Armitage - regardless of his sexuality - I can think of a whole host of worse things, for sure. The question of Richard Armitage's sexuality has popped up before, many times, and I'm not going to provide a definitive answer to it, simply because the only one who can give a definite answer it is the man himself, and he ain't here. I'm not exactly hiding him in a closet or anything. Pun intented

One of the things Richard Armitage is very fond of is sports. He likes skiing and seems to have looked into buying a little chalet in the French Alps (or how else would he actually know how much one costs?). In one interview, when talking about extreme sports, the interviewer said something about he wouldn't fancy a holiday on a river boat, Richard quickly - and emphatically - said "No!" I could do a whole post about him training until he throws up in preparation for Strike Back , good locations for skiing in the Alps (Chamonix maybe? Isn't that one they normally show on telly when there's winter sports on?), he wasn't keen on swimming when he took the role as Lee in Cold Feet and I've mentioned already that he enjoys watching rugby. So he keeps himself active. However, if there's a topic I care very little for, it's sports. And I thought there has been far too few piccys of Himself this week (especially today), so I went looking for something

Is it true that if a person is artistically inclined and talented in one way, they are more likely to be artistically inclined and talented in other ways too? That is the question. Judging by Mr. Armitage, the answer is yes, very much so. We all know he can act, so that's one just for starters. He has mentioned on several occasions that he plays the cello, and that, to me at least, makes him a bit artsy. If he was just into music like most people, he'd be strumming an accoustic or maybe even electric guitar from time to time, because that's the most common thing, really. Or play the piano. But a CELLO? That's pretty impressive. (Thanks to Angelfish via Skully for this one!) If someone can play an instrument well, then they probably can sing as well, right? You'd think. With regards to Richard Armitage, from what I've gathered, he's said he's not a singer. However, listen to the BBC Radio 4 adaptation of Samuel Richardson's Clarissa and yo

In two words: Pizza and Beer. Oh and something about watching rugby on telly, but as rugby is a total mystery to me and I really don't get any of it, I'll focus on the first two things - both of which I can relate to very well ... one more than the other. I know a lot about how to eat pizza, I can make many different ones and the Squeeze and I have gone to the Robin Hood Beer Festival in October for the past four or five years now. It's the one time of year I get drunk, and then it's not for the sake of getting drunk, it's because I'm not very used to alcohol (seriously, I'm such a cheap date) and love trying lots of different flavours! I don't know anything about beer more than "ale is darker and drinkable, lager is lighter and tastes absolutely awful, and stout is black with a creamy head" - oh and the water, malt and hops bit - so as I was thinking what kind of beer would go best with which pizza and finding I haven't got the foggies

I'm a creature of habit when it comes to rustling up dinner. I'll happily make the same dish over and over again until I'm sick of it. At the moment it's salmon with couscous and tomatoes. I got it off the Jamie Oliver app on my iPhone. [ Sunday Times ] That's a challenge too good to miss! So, off to find a recipe for said concoction. Not having an iPhone to hand, I had to trust Google - and found it on a blog called Feelings of White , which also has a nice video to show how it's done. So a while ago, I printed the recipe as a PDF so I wouldn't have to try and find it again and fail when all the ingredients were purchased, and then, once all the ingredients were gathered, I set to work. Arthur doubling as a cookbook For this recipe, we need: 2x 7oz (200g) salmon fillets, thaw if frozen 4oz (~115g) cherry tomatoes (a.k.a. "a handful"), cut in half 1 cup (~225 ml) couscous 1 small bunch fresh basil 1 medium red onion, finely chopped 1

The subject of food is one a little too dear to my heart (there's being voluptuous and then there's just being fat, aaight? :P), and - hooray! - there seems to be some of this in Dear Richard too. After all, was he not the one who mentioned fantasising about kissing Nigella Lawson after she's eaten some of her sumptuous chocolate cake? To that, I say: Hey Mister! I make wicked brownies! *polite cough* So today, the topic is going to be food! Yeah, I could've posted a piccy of a chocolate cake here, but decided Nigella is better for our collective waistlines. Unless we eat her , but then that would be rather disturbed. Our man's also been on telly with another Richard, making a Thai green curry with Myleene Klass in the way, he's been known to make smiley faces out of chunks of stilton and he's also mentioned how he's fixated on a certain dish from Jamie Oliver - one which I have actually tried making! (How it went will be revealed later today.

One of the interesting comments Richard Armitage was when an interviewer asked him, because he's a great dancer, is if we'd ever see him on something like Strictly Come Dancing . His response was that we'd never get to see Richard Armitage as Richard Armitage on TV. Basically, he's not the kind of celebrity to show up as soon as someone waves an invite to a reality TV show. Richard Armitage as himself. On telly. But not in a reality show. Things that make me love and respect the man: +1! Before I read that interview, I was thinking about him on Strictly , and then started to think of a host of other reality TV shows and whether or not he would be a suitable candidate. This is what I came up with ... Top Gear What it is: This is a car show, or ... a comedy show with cars in, depending on how you look at it. Rupert Penry-Jones and Peter Firth came on it to promote series 7 (?) of Spooks , so why not Richard Armitage? He does drive a car, after all ... Why

When the news broke about Richard Armitage landing a major role in The Hobbit , I couldn't help but being filled with mixed emotions. One part of me was absolutely thrilled that he's been given such a chance, and another part of me wants to start writing sympathy cards or "I'm sorry for your loss ... of privacy". Bearded goodness, courtesy of Richard Armitage's Beard @ Tumblr Don't get me wrong, I think The Hobbit is a great opportunity for advancing his career. Being disguised by the beard, he's not going to get admirers from an "OMG he's GOWGEOUS!" point of view (although those of us who are familiar with him will of course go "OMG that's one smoulderingly hot dwarf!" - especially now that we know what the man looks like in a beard) but rather, he'll be judged on his acting merits. Which is great! Those eyes can express what a thousand words struggle to, and there's still The Voice. He'll get to act an