I think this is a Phill Jupitus "level 3"

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-6621661560803266410#

Cloverfield!

Been quite a season for spiders – one of the ones in my garden (not the biggest I've seen this year either!) Body was about the size of a 50p

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The top one looks like a Cardinal Spider, or a very large House Spider. DT78's is a Garden Orb spider, one of a number that will bite humans, but I'm pretty sure they never get quite as big as a fifty pence piece, tho' I'd like to see a pic of one that size. Cardinals I believe can get up to ten inches across…

I love Spiders 😀 and this little one arrived today
Named Marlon Bronson (that's the name I've given him. His known name is Ceratogyrus darlingi or an African Horned Baboon)

Hopefully he will look a bit like this in a year or two

Oh and Speaking of Orbs this new find is quite impressive

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/8316720.stm

It has been a year for spiders – we have had some huge ones in the house.

Cardinals I believe can get up to ten inches across…
WTF………………… THATS HUGE
I'm going to start charging it rent if it gets that big.

this is the 2nd biggest Ive seen this week, the other was a little fatter but moved quicker when I had the camera, LOL

Caught this sucker in our bathroom…

Hmmm – I didn't really get any shots that show it to scale, bit worried about the biting thing now!! This is a shot of it on my shed roof after I poked it a bit. The edge is about 2" I thought it might have been pregnant or something as it was so fat…. urgh this thread has creeped me out now – my garden is filled with the things!

Cardinal Spider. So named cos Cardinal Wolsey was sh!t scared of them when he lived at Hampton Court.
Hardly surprising really, I was sh!t scared of them when they lived in my garage.

Garden Orbs only bite if provoked, and there's no ill-effects, it just shocks you a bit, or it did when one bit me while I was playing with it when I was a kid. Really put me off spiders. And that new species? Christ, you really wouldn't want to walk out your front door one morning to find one of those has spun it's web across the doorframe during the night. Watch me scream like a girl and run and hide under the duvet!

I am thinking that the first picture is more a large house spider (Tegenaria Gigantea): –

I think there are three types domestic, large (Gigantea) and Parietina (Edit – Wiki has just informed me that it is the last one that is sometimes called a Cardinal spider),