Jake Gyllenhaal inspires Travis and a Cotswold and Hamster Interlude

It looks like Jake Gyllenhaal has been given the weekend off from honing his viagra salesman skills in Pittsburgh. Tweets indicate that Jake and Reese (with or without the accidentally 'ugly' dog) are currently working their way round the restaurants of Brooklyn and SoHo. So, while we wait for the results of the Hot Poll tomorrow, I thought I'd slip in a gentle and partly off-topic post.


Travis, or at least elements of Travis, has begun a tour of the US, going through its backlog while finding inspiration for their next 'On the Road' album. Each of the songs has been introduced with some background and one reviewer suggests, tantalisingly, that we should guess which song was inspired by Jake Gyllenhaal.


This would not seem hard because there on the songlist is Love Will Come Through; a song that was purposefully written for Moonlight Mile and remains one of the band's favourites. Singer Fran Healy said of their inspiration, Moonlight Mile: 'We were totally blown away... It's a beautiful, smart, heartfelt movie. By the end, I was crying my eyes out... I just sat in the cinema room with my guitar, letting the movie wash over me... It was a fun challenge.' And, as this article points out, this song was the lone new song on an album of classics.

Travis must have been delighted to hear that Jake told Mvyradio: 'I can't stop playing the soundtrack in my car, I cannot stop playing it. I stole it from Brad and I play the Travis track over and over and over and over again.' The review of the show this week suggests that Jake himself and his performance were an inspiration for this beautiful song.


An interlude: Hamsters, History and lots and lots of pheasants

As it's the weekend and quiet, I thought I'd beg your indulgence for a little off-topic interlude. It's no secret that I have a little bit of a big thing for Richard 'The Hamster' Hammond of Top Gear fame (and almost 60% of all other programming at the moment). He's well up there on my list and, appropriately, he shares Jake's birthday - a sign, as I'm sure you'll agree. Today, I was out for a day trip in Cheltenham and the Cotswolds and The Hamster and his family walked right past me in the high street. And then, as if that wasn't enough, maybe to ensure I didn't miss him, they did exactly the same thing again an hour later. I heard a girl nearby berate her boyfriend for being too slow to take a photograph so she couldn't sell a pic to OK magazine. Then she started talking about Richard's hair. As I did. It was fluffy.


I didn't get a picture of Richard Hammond, so instead I thought I'd make do with other pictures from today and so now I put on my historian hat. These photographs were taken during a beautiful evening at stunning Sudeley Castle in the Cotswolds. The church here contains the grave of Katharine Parr who lived at Sudeley after her husband Henry VIII died before he could chop her head off. In these gardens Elizabeth I played with her stepmother. It's one of my favourite places, especially because I was named after Katharine Parr.



And so, interlude over, remember to vote before the poll closes tomorrow!

Includes pictures from IHJ, here and WDW.