So who are your greats? Who inspires you?

[Jimbob]

Wartburg Knight?
Had to check it out. The model looks too embarrassed to show her face
good enough to have been built by British Leyland

[traveller2]

You are welcome HHF

Thanks Nereus.

[traveller2]

Films: 2012, Avatar, Aeonflux, The last airbender, Taking lives, The hangover, 40 year old virgin.

Politicians: Im with Terry on this one, none.

Music: Neyo, Fantasia, Rihanna, Pink, Black eyed peas, Avril Lavigne, Sean Kingston.

Cars: Anything german. I have an Audi at the moment.

Books: Hardly ever have time to sit and read. When I do its usually something factual on war/history.

Sport: I never watch sport, but love playing sports. I know nothing of football, rugby, baseball etc. The sports I participate in are more outdoor/adrenaline sports.

Of course, like HHF and Terry, my wife comes top of the list because she reads this.

[Randy Cornhole]

Off the top of my head -

Movies - Robert de Niro
TV - Stephen Fry
Music medium - Vinyl Records
Stand up comedy - Russell Brand
Science Guy - Richard Dawkins
Business Guru - Richard Branson
Musician - Frank Zappa
General all round nice guy - Dalai Lama

[SaSamSa]

Music: Magic Numbers, Kooks, Mudvayne

Movies: The Watchmen, District 9, A Fish Called Wanda

Sport: Casey Stoner, Nancy Kerrigan, Mikey Ward

Entertainers: Stephen Fry, Neil DeGrasse Tyson, Freddy Mercury

Cars: Meh

Politicians: Churchill, Kennedy, Xenaphon

[BaaBaa.]

Go on then Richard. Give me the punchline.

A Yorkshire man, of your age, is INSPIRED by Margaret Thatcher?

Jesus wept. I'll join the party on her grave and I'm to young to have been affected by the bitch.

Street party's all over the North west when she finally croaks.

Let her be an inspiration to you Richard.

[BaaBaa.]

Traveller2? No offence. But Sean Kingston? You're inspired by Sean Kingston?

I need to lie down and contemplate this. Sad sad times.

[pharvey]

Go on then Richard. Give me the punchline.

A Yorkshire man, of your age, is INSPIRED by Margaret Thatcher?

Jesus wept. I'll join the party on her grave and I'm to young to have been affected by the bitch.

Street party's all over the North west when she finally croaks.

Let her be an inspiration to you Richard.

Ahh Maggie....... well she raped Wales by destroying the coal and steel industries, so not my favorite - but probably had a bigger pair of b*ll*cks than anyone since.

[traveller2]

No acounting for peoples tastes BaaBaa, including mine.

[sandman67]

Theres too many flms, directors, actors, musicians, composers and writers to list......Im not a consumer of art Im a devourer.

That said, modern art is 99% sh*te. Give me a Monet or a Stubbs any old day. Id like to do my own bit of installaton art in a neo brutal collectivist avant guard workshop mode called "Sandman kicks 10 bells out of Damien Hirst and drowns him in a perspex vat of his own piss"....its part of the same exhibition series as "Sandman feeds Tracey Emin into a woodchipper feet first" and "Sandman redecorates Tate Modern with a flamethrower and a bulldozer".

The people who inspired me as a kid, and still do now were Richard Attenborough, David Bellamy, Carl Sagan, James Burke, etc.....their modern contemporaries like David Starkey, John Rhomer, Richard Dawkins, Bll Nye, Neil DeGrasse Tyson etc stll do the same. The people who make me look up, down and around and think "Ahaaaaa! So thats how that works....".

Christopher Hitchens has had me hooked since his takedown of Mother Theresa - "Hells Angel". A truly great thinker and writer, contrarian, polemecist and speaker.

Through my grandad I developed a love of steam and iron, rivets and shovels....so greats like Brunel, Bazelgette, and Stevenson are industrial heroes.

Even though Im an ardent atheist I still find the architecture of cathedrals amazing.... so I guess you can add Hawksmoor and Wrenn to the list. Im a big fan of stained glass so I also love the "Gods Wigwam" in Liverpool. I love the temples of Luxor/Karnak, Angkor and Yucatan.....

I find Darwin inspirational not just for the fact his works are the foundation stones of much modern science, but also his personal struggle to cope with the personal turmoil his work caused himself, and sticking true to the science. It angers me the way modern fundy Christians denegrate his work.

I look up to people who make us all smarter or show how amazing we can be.....and the opposite applies for those who do otherwise.

A personal hero though will always be Fred Dibnah. He showed the world that a soot smeared steeple jack with down to earth traditional values and skills was entertaining and smart, sometimes sage like, and that a deep love of our history and traditional skills isnt something you should loose lightly.

[Jimbob]

Yes Sandman Architecture can be inspirational. On a recent visit to the Uk I took photos of two examples

[richard]

A personal hero though will always be Fred Dibnah. He showed the world that a soot smeared steeple jack with down to earth traditional values and skills was entertaining and smart, sometimes sage like, and that a deep love of our history and traditional skills isnt something you should loose lightly.

[sandman67]

JB

Look at that brickwork mate....what a masterwork of skill, time and attention. It carries forward the skills you see at Kew and other ornate Tudor "palaces". A wonder....

Richard

Fred also reminded me of my favorite Grandad, with whom I watched old Fred drop a couple of chimneys at Caleb Wrights Mill in Tyldsley, Lancs. One he used the burn method, the other he took down a brick at a time. Like Fred he never appeared on the street without his flat cap, steel toed pit boots, braces and pocket watch.

There are loads of Fred clips on YouTube.....including a very poigniant one about vandals (a bunch of scum vandalised his statue in Bolton a few years back....a very bruised bunch of retards were later handed over to the police by their own parents).

A proper working class hero

[Jimbob]

Yes Sandman, the brickwork is very good. Its an Irish pub in Digbeth, Brum. Inside has not been modernised but left with character for the characters within.

Rereading your take on the question, I guess I admire humble doers that still acheive greatness like Siddharta Gautama and the not so benign like William the Conquerer who changed England.

[sandman67]

hmmmmm......cant say I agree on old William The Bastard. He wasnt much of a king, nor much of a general either. Had Harold kept the auxiliaries at Hastings under tighter control old Willy would have got sent home in a box, and after that it was easy to conquor England as there were no real forces left to oppose him.

Edward I was a better fighter, and Edward III was the king who really gave us England. He codified the laws, gave us our flag, and made English the official language of England. It pisses me off that thanks to our crappy history schooling (and a great propoganda job care o Willy Shakespeare) we English cry Agincourt when we should cry CRECY!!!!!

I have a lot of sneaky admiration for old Henry Morgan....ex buccaneer and Lt Governor of Jamaica. Shows how the ill favoured son of a Welsh farmer and man of questionable means and methods can rise

I still find these words, taken from the Declaration of Arbroath, deeply moving and inspirational, even though Im English by birth

...for, as long as but a hundred of us remain alive, never will we on any conditions be brought under English rule. It is in truth not for glory, nor riches, nor honours that we are fighting, but for freedom – for that alone, which no honest man gives up but with life itself.

Jefferson admitted that that was, in part, the inspiration for his draft of the US Declaration of Independance.