Bell learned to play guitar when he was 13. In September 2005, he started to sell his first album, "Telegraph". In December 2006, he started to sell his second album, "Its Only Time". His third album was released in 2014. Some songs of his new album appeared, including "Saturday Night", "All alone at the Disco", "Sea Song", "C.C.Rider", "To Hip gotta go", "Little Miss Prissy" and "Jingle Bells".
Bell has made comments that have upset a lot of people. He made a negative comment when Caitlyn Jenner appeared on the cover of Vanity Fair. He deleted the comment soon after he posted it but it was still seen by many readers. In an interview with Buzzfeed he made comments against stars such as Justin Bieber, Lady Gaga and Ariana Grande. He got into still another controversy with a Justin Bieber fan wishing him death.
Saffron
Saffron () (Persian: زَعْفَرَان) is a spice made from the stigma of the flower of the saffron plant. The spice is used in cooking as a seasoning and as a food colouring. It is native to Southwest Asia. It is the world's most costly spice, and has been for a long time.
Saffron has a bitter taste and smells like hay. This smell is caused by the chemicals picrocrocin and safranal. Saffron also contains a dye, crocin, that gives food a rich golden colour. Saffron is a part of many foods from around the world, and is also used in medicine.
The word "saffron" comes from the 12th century Old French word ', which comes from the Latin word '. ' is also related to the Italian ' and Spanish '. "Safranum" comes from the Arabic word ' (), which means "yellow".
The cultivated saffron (saffron crocus "C. sativus") flowers in the autumn and comes up every year, so it is known as a perennial plant. It does not grow wild, and is now a triploid form of the eastern Mediterranean plant called "Crocus cartwrightianus". It is thought that "C. cartwrightianus" came from Crete. The saffron crocus resulted when "C. cartwrightianus" was subjected to a lot of artificial selection by growers who wanted plants with longer stigmas. It can not reproduce because the saffron crocus's purple flowers do not produce useful seeds. This means that reproduction needs human help. The corms (underground bulb-like starch-storing organs) must be dug up, broken apart, and planted again. A corm lives for only one season, reproducing by splitting into up to ten "cormlets" that will grow into new plants. The corms are small brown balls up to in diameter and are covered in thick parallel fibres.
After a period in summer known as "aestivation", some narrow green leaves come up from the ground. These can grow to up to in length. The number of leaves is between five and eleven. In autumn, purple buds appear. In October, after most other flowering plants have released their seeds, the saffron grows its brightly-coloured flowers, which are coloured from light to dark purple. At the time of flowering, the plant is usually less than in height. Inside each flower are three prongs, called the "style". Each prong has a crimson "stigma" of between 25 and 30 mm in length at the end of it.
The saffron crocus grows best in climates like that of the Mediterranean maquis or the North American chaparral, where hot, dry summer winds blow across the land. However, saffron can live through temperatures as cold as , and short periods of snow. Saffron needs no extra water if it grows in a wet place like Kashmir, where there is usually 1000–1500 mm of rain each year. It is also important for the rain to fall at the right time of year: there should be a lot of rain in the spring and little in the summer. Rainfall just before flowering also makes the plant give more saffron. Rainy or cold weather during flowering can cause disease, so the plant gives less saffron. Other things that can make the plant give less saffron are: the weather being damp or hot for a long time; rabbits, rats, and birds, digging in the ground near the plant; parasites such as the roundworm; fungus and corm rot. Saffron plants grow best in strong and direct sunlight. Planting is best done in fields that slope towards the sunlight (i.e. south-sloping in the Northern Hemisphere), giving the crocuses' more sunlight. In the Northern Hemisphere, planting is mostly done in June, with corms planted some 7–15 cm deep.
Growers have found that planting corms deep and in rows spaced 2–3 cm apart makes more threads, whereas planting depths of 8–10 cm makes more flowers and corms. Saffron crocuses grow best in crumbly, moist and well-drained clay soils with high organic content. They are often planted in raised beds, to help with drainage. Farmers often use 20–30 tonnes of manure per hectare on the plants before plating the corms The buds do not start to grow until early autumn, then in the middle of autumn the plants begin to flower. Picking the flowers must be done quickly: they flower at dawn, but curl up and die during the day. The flowers of the saffron crocuses only last for one or two weeks. From 150 flowers, the farmer can get about 1 g of dry saffron threads. To produce 12 g of dried saffron (72 g freshly harvested) would take about 1 kg of flowers (1 lb for 0.2 oz of dried saffron). It can be worked out from this that one freshly picked flower makes 0.03 g of fresh saffron, or 0.007 g of dried saffron.
The history of saffron growing reaches back more than 3,000 years. The wild plant from which the saffron crocus came was called "Crocus cartwrightianus". Humans began choosing wild plants that had long "stigmas". Gradually, a form of "C. cartwrightianus", "C. sativus", came into being in the late Bronze Age Crete. Experts believe that the first document to mention saffron is a 7th century BC Assyrian book about botany which was written in the time of Ashurbanipal. There is evidence for the use of saffron in the treatment of about 90 illnesses during the past 4,000 years.
The Minoans had pictures of saffron in their palaces as long ago as 1500–1600 BC, showing how it could be used as a medicine. Later, Greek legends told of sea voyages to Cilicia, where adventurers hoped to find the world's most valuable saffron. Another legend tells how someone named Crocus was bewitched and transformed into the original saffron crocus. Ancient Mediterranean peoples–including perfumers in Egypt, physicians in Gaza, townspeople in Rhodes, and the Greek "hetaerae" courtesans–used saffron in their perfumes, ointments, potpourris, mascaras, divine offerings, and medical treatments.
In late Hellenistic Egypt, Cleopatra used saffron in her baths to make her feel good. Egyptian healers used saffron as a treatment for all types of gastrointestinal ailments. Saffron was also used as a fabric dye in such Levant cities as Sidon and Tyre. Aulus Cornelius Celsus prescribes saffron in medicines for wounds, cough, colic, and scabies, and in the mithridatium. Such was the Romans' love of saffron that Roman colonists took their saffron with them when they settled in southern Gaul, where it was extensively cultivated until Rome's fall. Competing theories state that saffron only returned to France with 8th century AD Moors or with the Avignon papacy in the 14th century AD.