Or So I Thought...

Failure is an Artform...

2011-06-17T13:23:00.006+01:00

Right, last week I touched briefly upon the rejections you face as a writer. I may have described my one professional 'achievement' (although I hesitate to use that word), but I could spin many, many more yarns about my professional failures.

It's hard to put into words (but that won't stop me...) the gut-punch of someone turning down something you've spent hours/days/weeks/months/years on. 'How dare you do this to me!' you think, 'I've seen telly and things and I know that this is better than some of that'. You feel the rage of every embarrassment and failure swelling inside you until this tumescence of seething hatred bursts out like an alien life-form (or is filed for use at a later date).

In the initial stages you can harness that fury to fuel creativity, but rejection's a crafty bugger and it slowly wears you down to the point where, instead of rattling off a furious and hastily-crafted Phillipic aimed at your tormentors, you simply fall face down in your bed and think that perhaps spending all that time coming up with an awards acceptance speech may have been somewhat premature.

You never quite get used to it... well, until the point when you are dulled entirely to emotion by the sheer volume of rejections. You have to try and not take things personally, which is astonishingly difficult but I imagine you're untouchable if you can manage it. You can laugh about it (even though every laugh is like a stab on in the inside...) and satirise your own misery. However, my attention was drawn to a fairly novel way of conquering failure- By celebrating it.

Dazed and Refused showcases work rejected by the panel of the BP National Portrait Award (and on the website you can view a classic catch-all rejection letter, much like the ones I mentioned last week).

It's a tough point to argue, producing a showcase of failures. As much as rejection hurts, in some cases (many, in my own experience) they're sparing you the blushes of public embarrassment. And yet, something about it really appeals to me. There's a kind of downtrodden yet defiant chutzpah about it. Why shouldn't us failures be given an even break? Let the public judge for themselves instead of aloof, highfalutin successful types. Yet, this is tempered by a niggling little feeling of reservation. With the greatest of respect (and some of them are fantastic paintings), as I mentioned earlier, there is often a valid reason for any rejection and sometimes, just sometimes, judges know what they're doing and that, no matter the quality of the brushwork, no-one really wants to see a portrait of Brian Belo...

But good luck to 'em. Never say never. (Hey, it worked for Justin Bieber... even if the pre-pubescent scrote wouldn't know professional failure and hardship if it smacked him on the bonce with a euphonium...)

Now, some quick pieces of housekeeping...

Lifestyle Rule #1
If you're name is Weiner, at no point shall you do anything embarrassing involving your penis.

Also...
I feel I should come clean about something. I know you think I'm a 20 year old English writer, but I am, in fact, a Syrian lesbian.

That Was That Was The Week That Was...

2011-06-10T15:13:00.006+01:00

The title doesn't really relate to the content. You're more than welcome to ignore it.

Last weekend was quite interesting. But permit me to take you back yet further than that, to May 6th. It's roughly 1.30 AM and I'm in bed, but unable to sleep. A repeat of Just A Minute from the early 90s is on. Paul Merton is rambling on with his easy, natural humour, Clement Freud is listing things and then just petering out before being challenged by Derek Nimmo and I'm rolling around. For a bit more context, I was having doubts about myself and my ability in my chosen field.

The most recent of a slew of rejections had come way back in March, but the long period where I realised that I had nothing out there was perhaps even worse. If you don't buy a ticket, you can't win the lottery (obviously, if you do buy a ticket you've still got a greater chance of being struck by lightning than winning, but at least it's not factually impossible). My initially prolific work rate (1 full-length play, 3 half-hour one acts and 2 15 minute shorts in 6 months or so ((not to mention a sitcom pilot and several unfinished bits and pieces)) - not necessarily good, but in existence, at least) had completely tailed off. I had no ideas and little inclination to write even if I'd had any.

I was at a very low ebb, both professionally and personally. I'd been undergoing counselling and was unable to shake myself out of the funk I was in. For the above reasons, I had not checked my Gmail inbox with the feverish regularity of old for some time. But, as I listened to Nicholas Parsons struggling to keep his panellists in check back in the 90s through the magic of radio, I thumbed the email icon on my phone and left it thinking, the arrow chasing its own tail round and round.

I rolled listlessly for half a minute or so, before being disturbed by the vibration of my phone indicating the recognition of a number of emails which I had already looked through on the laptop earlier and was preparing to simply check off one-by-one on my phone. However, up popped an email in my professional account from Mark, the organiser of the Bristol Folk House's Saturday Shorts competition for writers in the South West to which I had submitted one of the aforementioned 15 minute shorts (Chess with Vasily). My heart jumped with nervous anticipation (of yet another failure- I should add- not the good kind). I began to read the brief extract of the email afforded by the mail client "Dear Samuel, Thank you for your entry to Saturday Shorts. Sorry for the-"

I sighed. I'd heard of it all before- the platitudes, the 'we really enjoyed your play...', 'we felt your submission was very strong, but...'s. Nonetheless, I figured I should at least finish reading the email (they'd bothered to read 14-odd pages of my drivel, after all). I prodded the email and it filled the screen. I flicked my eyes back to the 'sorry', as painful as it always was. 'Sorry for the long delay. There were over 100 entries so it's been a hard job to decide.'. Don't be nice to me, Mark. It's always worse when they're nice to you. This is probably a lie, but in many ways as a writer you want to know that your piece wasn't picked because it was derivative shite rather than in a 'substantial amount of strong submissions'. I sighed and felt that familiar, horrible knotted weight in my stomach- I know it passes... eventually, but it's still utterly demoralising for that moment.

I eventually resolved to carry on. '... But we were very impressed with 'Chess with Vasily' and would like to put this on...' Yadayadaya- Hang on. What?! I read it again. And again. And still it hadn't sunk in. 'This can't be correct' I thought. The message asked for me to email back to confirm they had my permission to put on the play. I hurriedly tapped out a fawning, sycophantic email, as much to make sure that it was true- that the email wasn't meant for someone else, that it wasn't some kind of mistake- as to allow them to put it in the showcase. I was emailed back asking for any biographical details I wanted them to use in publicity. I hate writing bios. I can't write them without feeling like a cock, obsessed with his own achievement and thoroughly arrogant in his belief that he is of significance. To that end, I gratefully accepted the help of the quite staggeringly brilliant Dr. Simon Best, who was able to spare my blushes and turn a list of minor successes (swimming badges, deputy head boy etc.) into a professional sounding bio. [That's a joke. I never did the swimming badges...]

I hadn't revealed why exactly I'd needed the information. In fact, I sat on the news for most of the next day before telling even extremely close friends and family. I still felt as though it was ludicrous and that at some point Mark was going to turn up at my house with Mr. Blobby and reveal it had all been a Noel Edmonds Gotcha; that it was going to be taken away. Even when I did tell my family, I said that it's probably some subversive Eurotrash thing where they take the worst 6 entries and display them exclusively to cater to a select group of hipsters and their love of schadenfreude.

I read back through Chess with Vasily (or Chess as I now refer to it, purely for tax purposes), cringing at every typo or bit that didn't work as well as it could have done and seriously struggling to comprehend how what I'd written was capable of being in the top 100 of their entries, let alone the top 6. Around this point, I desperately sought assurance from people, which consequently led to me going public about the performance on Twitter. The cat was out of the bag, the only question was whether it was the kind of cat that purrs and curls up on your lap or the kind that scratches at your settee and pisses everywhere.

Details of rehearsals and suchlike were sketchy, but it was eventually revealed that on the Friday before the Saturday performance one would be taking place at the Folk House. So at 6:30 on Friday morning I got up, showered, donned my blue jumper (complete with geography teacher elbows) and hopped on the train for Bristol Temple Meads (on what turned out to be the hottest day since records began [that may not be true] - the jumper lasted all of the 22 minutes it took to walk to the venue from the station but no longer).

I'd had a brief phone exchange with my director, the very capable Duncan Bonner, but I would be meeting him in person and my two actors for the first time. They'd begun setting up (which predominantly involved rigging a game of KerPlunk), so I quietly took a seat at the back of the room and watched the words I'd written spoken by actual, real people who say other people's words for a living. I'd brought a notebook- best to at least look like you know what you're doing- into which I wrote the words 'Practical implications of KerPlunk?' and very little else over the course of two hours. I gave one directorial note, but otherwise let Duncan have free reign (and probably afforded him the only opportunity to say "the balls drop on page 9" of his directorial career. I'm not one of those writers who consider slight dialogue alterations personal attacks (or at least I can do a very good job of pretending that's the case...).

I made the trip again on Saturday and, before I knew it, I was shuffling into the main hall of the Folk House to witness the showcase; to witness the maiden performance of Chess... Something struck me about the other plays in the showcase- they had messages or morals; they were plays about real issues, from a light-hearted look at a dystopian future in which the government has collapsed to a harrowing monologue delivered by an abusive immigration officer. Mine was ostensibly about two grown men playing KerPlunk.

But you know what? I made an entire hall complicit in watching two grown men playing KerPlunk and they enjoyed it. The two actors were brilliant and Duncan (who had a cameo appearance himself) had done a great job of bringing it to life. It got laughs in all the right places and a hearty round of applause, which I enjoyed (I got a second round of applause later when us playwright's were made to stand up, which I enjoyed less - goes back to the thing about the bios, I suppose). Later in the week I received an email from Mark thanking me and saying that he'd received some correspondence from someone citing 'the kerplunk one' as their favourite. My work here was done.

It was a crazy experience. In many ways, I still can't quite believe it- that someone actually put my play on and that in excess of one person actually enjoyed it. The hard bit, though, is to go back from having your work on to being just another failed writer. Unless there's something out there, someone breathing life into your words, then it's very hard to feel like you're making progress. I can't say I've been blessed with an embarrassment of riches in the ideas department since either. But what seeing my work up on stage, hearing people laughing at jokes that I'd written and seeing the projected sales figures of KerPlunk skyrocket (I can't corroborate this... this is all conjecture) has done is given me faith again; In myself, in my choices, in my ability to write something that will actually bring some degree of pleasure to other people. And for that, I cannot thank Mark and the Folk House enough.

(Right, that's very long. Well done if you made it this far. Sorry it all turned a bit Nikki Sixx Heroin Diaries for some reason, but, if you have been, thanks for reading).

X-Men: First Class

2011-06-02T18:06:00.007+01:00

I went to see this last night and the only broadsheet review I've read was what can best be termed as 'lazy' (not to mention that it spoiled one of the best moments of the film), so I've decided to run up a few paragraphs about it myself, but in the style of one of those reviews.

The Kick-Ass pairing of Jane Goldman and Matthew Vaughn attempt to breathe some much-needed life back into the X-Men franchise, but will it be a case of go to the top of the class and kiss the teacher or simply detention for the latest offering?
[This is what the sub-editor will put at the top of the review to make it seem like I came up with those cliches]

We've had three canon X-Men films of varying quality and an underwhelming origin story for Hugh Jackman's Wolverine and now we're presented with another origin of sorts, X-Men: First Class. The tale of a young Charles Xavier and Erik Lensherr- how they became friends, how they became Professor X and Magneto respectively and how, eventually, they became enemies. [This is to make me sound knowledgeable. Trust me, I review films and have seen and understand all of the X-Men ones to date... Although I genuinely have]

You may remember, if you cast your mind back to the beginning of the millennium (and I mean 2000, not 2001, for the purposes of this piece... We've been through this, let's not discuss it again), how X-Men began with a young German Jew thrust into the horror of a Nazi concentration camp and who, upon seeing his family taken away from him, twists a metal gate as if by magic, before being clubbed by a rifle butt. This boy would become Magneto and it wasn't sorcery, it was a mutation, the manipulation of magnetism. Well, X-Men: First Class starts in exactly the same way. It is necessary, of course, to remind us (or even show us for the first time, if you're new to the series) of the terrible hardships young Erik Lensherr suffered as a boy, as they are so key to his politics and actions in later life, but these earlier scenes (along with a young Charles Xavier meeting Raven Darkholme) seem to lack something or perhaps could have been handled with greater subtlety. [You have to say something bad at some point. People want to get angry, either with what you're mocking or simply at you for mocking it, you big twonk]

But this is one of very few criticisms I can make of 'First Class', a bold tale of politics, eugenics and the inception of the X-Men told with great confidence by Vaughn. The action picks up very quickly as we follow the older Erik (played with enormous presence by the terrific Michael Fassbender) on a Boys From Brazil-style hunt for the Nazi scientist that made his life a misery, which ultimately leads him to meeting brilliant young professor of Genetics, Charles Xavier (portrayed with a compelling nervous charm by James McAvoy), who himself has been enlisted on a hunt for the same man- now known as Sebastian Shaw (Kevin Bacon), leader of the mysterious Hellfire Club- by CIA agent Moira McTaggert- in somewhat of a departure from her role in the graphic novels. [Always try and slip in as long a sentence as possible]

The two are tasked with recruiting a crack team of young mutants (in a montage which contains several neat references and a stellar, perfectly-pitched cameo [note how I haven't ruined this bit, like Peter Bradshaw did (it was hurriedly retracted)]) and training them to hunt down Shaw. We are privy to an engaging bromance between Xavier and Lensherr, who put their highly different approaches aside to avert the greatest threat the world has ever faced (this is the 60s, remember. Well before everything starts going a bit mental in 'Last Stand').

From then on it's full-steam ahead. There are occasional lulls (to be expected in a film 2 hours plus), often where the young mutants are involved (the same scenes have a small dip in the quality of the writing too), but the film never has you checking your watch. The 60s setting works perfectly and imparts a sort of stylish kitsch on the whole thing and Henry Jackman's thunderous score drives everything on to a tense final standoff. But perhaps the film's greatest achievement is the character development of the two leads. It's a credit to both Fassbender and McAvoy that you can see exactly how they become Sir Ian McKellen and Patrick Stewart [see, I've done this in a slightly flippant, funny way]. You're aware, in no uncertain terms, of how bumbling, would-be womaniser Xavier becomes hardened to Cuban Missile Crisis-era America and humanity's tolerance (or otherwise) of mutants; And of how tortured Erik, consumed by hatred and rage for his creator Shaw, ultimately becomes the very thing he seeks to destroy and takes on the mantle (actually literally, along with the legendary helmet) of Magneto. More importantly both characters are understandable. Magneto is undoubtedly a product of the cruelty he endured and of the knowledge that that is the case. In many ways he can be classed as an anti-hero and, for the most part, this is how 'First Class' chooses to portray him.

It spins a tale that has great historical significance and parallel and even though you know going in how things will turn out (if you've seen the other films), it still packs a not inconsiderable [everyone loves litotes] emotional punch. It is what all great fantasy/sci-fi/comic book tales should be - symbolic of and reconcilable with real world issues.

There are plenty of nods for the hardcore fans and, dare I say, a fair amount of fan service, most notably arising [double entendre ahoy!] from the presence of Emma Frost, played here by January Jones, though I can't help but feel Alice Eve (who was originally announced for the role) would have brought a greater wit and air of intellect to the role. The performances are strong all-round, although it certainly hinges on its two terrific leads. Jennifer Lawrence (playing shapeshifter Mystique) and Nicholas Hoult playing shy intellectual Hank McCoy (yes, he of Skins and About a Boy fame, playing Beast - I mentioned that one could easily see Fassbender and McAvoy turning into their older counterparts, but I found it a little harder to see Hoult becoming Kelsey Grammer) find a touching emotional depth (even if the latter's accent can be a little suspect). [Lots of brackets is the secret to good writing... ahem...] Speaking of suspect accents, Fassbender (a German Irishman) admirably deals with lines in English, German (something Kevin Bacon handles with considerably less success, but a bold effort nonetheless) and South American Spanish, although as the action ratchets up German via Poland Lensherr seems to bark orders with an Irish lilt. But this is a very minor hitch indeed in what is a brilliantly compelling central performance from Fassbender.

I'll come clean, I loved X-Men as a kid (and I still do). I watched hours of the 90s cartoon series and have stacks of comics in a plastic crate in my house and I've been waiting for an X-Men film that delivers [this is to make me sound cool in a geeky way... but is also true] and boy oh boy does 'First Class' deliver. ['cause it's a joke about stamps, see? ... OK, so I earned that sub-editor's strapline...]

Apprentice Preview...

2011-05-11T19:45:00.005+01:00

Right, there hasn't been one of these for a while (busy, busy, busy etc.), but I shall attempt to provide a brief look ahead to tonight's Apprentice (BBC One, 9 o'clock).

As you may remember, last night saw accountant (but don't let that sway you) Edward- a sort of squashed Jamie Lester from last series, but with the approach to the head/facial hair ratio of South African opening batsman Hashim Amla, who talks exclusively in bullshit-based riddles (that's Edward, not Amla. I've never seen Hashim do a presser)- unceremoniously sacked for clearly not having seen any of the past 6 series of The Apprentice and putting himself up for the role of project manager... Or perhaps it was just because when teammate Vincent (a sort of poor man's George Lamb, if you can imagine such a thing...) asked whether the fruit he was holding was an orange, poor old Edward was unable to pass judgment to the affirmative or negative. Or effectively juice oranges. Or answer very simple questions without trotting out footballer-level cliches.

But at the end of the day, it's a game of two halves (probably) and tonight's second episode of the week sees the sorry fools take a step into new media and design a smartphone application. Being an appalling business tosser? There's an app for that... apparently...

From the brief sneak peak at the end of last night's offering, it looks promising, with one industry panelist effectively and almost certainly unwittingly summing up the entire Apprentice equation in one pithy, throwaway observation - "There's just a basic issue of taste here."

Dont Shade Your Eyes...

2011-04-08T12:01:00.003+01:00

In Tom Lehrer's tale of a student of the great Russian mathematician Lobachevsky, he explains 'the secret of success in field of mathematics... PLAGIARISE'! And that's sort of what today's blog is about (plus some stuff about a stupid advert I heard on the radio and perhaps some things I saw on telly or something like that).

Essentially I was tasked with writing a short story. It was more a vanity project than anything, trying to get me out of an inspiration slump and I was aware that, in part, the idea owed a debt to a German short story called 'Dr. Murkes gesammeltes Schweigen', however during my research I inadvertently discovered that my idea was also very similar to yet another, English short story from a collection published only last year and long-listed for the Orange Prize. Now, I've never read Jennifer Egan's 'A Visit From the Goon Squad' (has anyone here? Any good?) and yet presumably someone who had would recognise certain elements of one of its short stories in mine. So, where do I stand?

Now, obviously this doesn't really matter as the story was just for my personal use. But say I'd submitted it to something or posted it somewhere (might have been worth a go, it was described by its only other reader as 'somewhere between Mark Watson and Bunny and the Bull). Would people flock to accuse me of stealing intellectual property? Despite the fact I've never read the original source? The similarities are few and any that do exist are superficial. My understanding is that similar themes and references are used but in completely different narratives- Egan's plays out like a Wes Anderson film and mine like an episode of the Twilight Zone- but are there still grounds to accuse me of plagiarism?

Reading back through it, Patrick Sueskind might want a piece of the action too for a couple of moments that bring to mind his 1985 novel Perfume (with its hilarious/ridiculous finale) and the subsequent film. Again, I've never read the novel (though I have seen the film - I think it's on iPlayer at the moment if anyone's interested. It's a very interesting idea and wilfully strange ((in a good way)) but the novel doesn't seem to lend itself to film particularly well. A flawed but nonetheless very worthy effort, mind) but is that a barrier these days? Has every idea been done already anyway? And if so, isn't everything plagiarised? Will we prosecute everyone? How many questions am I going to ask in this blog?

Well, that's it really, now onto the other gripes. I heard an advert on the radio earlier (I generally try and avoid commercial radio - this was in a cafe, I'm not going to demand them to change stations...) for a certain Carvery chain. It essentially consisted of James Corden doing his best Henry V over Elgar's 'Nimrod'. I hate these faux-patriotic adverts- You're a chain pub not a fucking Lord Kitchener recruitment poster! Honest to God, Corden(!) doing a Crispian's Day speech about carved meats over one of the most moving and powerful compositions of the 20th century, if not any century. Don't you dare! Don't you dare do this to that piece of music! How dare y-! Actually how dare you! ACTUALLY how dare you!

Also, a quick anecdote. Word reached Or So I Thought... HQ of a parent coming into the local Primary School to query their children being given the day off school for the Royal Wedding. Now, I'm not exactly a fervent Royalist but come on! They're just kids! They don't assign meaning to not having to go into school. It's just a jamboree of sunshine and running around in circles until you feel sick. Actually, no, you know what? Fine. Just your kids can come in and we'll draft in a Republican supply teacher so they can explain to a pair of crying 5 year olds why they're in school while everyone else is outside having fun. Giving them a NATIONAL HOLIDAY off school is not the same as indoctrinating them into supporting the Royal family.

This week Sam watched...
The Crimson Petal and the White, which was, well, weird. Sort of simultaneously a bit sexy and entirely the opposite. A bit like one of those dreams where everyone's naked but when you try and run your legs melt.
Campus - There's potential there but it needs a bit of work. I've a list but I won't bore you with it (unless you work on it and fancy listening to suggestions)

Hell in a Handcart Watch
I read a story from the Press Association titled thusly: 'Camerons fly to Spain for mini-break in Spain'. I won't bother to list the myriad faults with this, I'm sure you're all smart enough to recognise them without me.

An Open Letter to the Makers of Lynx...

2011-03-31T17:26:00.005+01:00

Customer Care

Unilever UK
FREEPOST
Admail 1000
London
SW1A 2XX

Dear sir/madam,
I recently undertook to purchase what one may well term a 'can' of your Lynx Excite product - I, a congenital imbecile, found your flashy advert with its Italian setting, bellicose operatic score and attractive, winged woman falling from the very skies utterly impossible to resist. Lynx Excite: Even Angels Will Fall. What on earth could possibly be more exciting, I ask you? A look at the can assures me in diagramatic form that should I combine the corresponding shower gel with my recently purchased spray, I will receive bikini clad women to the power of two. I'm no mathematician, but even I can well see that this represents a frankly unbelievable exponential return. Fibernace would indeed be proud.

So, what, you may be wondering is the problem with said body spray? Now, I have always been taught not to take adverts too literally, so you can well imagine my surprise when, after a liberal application of your fragrant chemicals, in fact an angel did tumble from the heavens. So far, so good, you may be thinking, but you can imagination my current consternation when I go on to explain that the previously mentioned celestial being landed square on top of me, having reached something approaching terminal velocity. She made no attempt whatsoever to utilise the wings that were gifted to her by God, presumably to avoid exactly this kind of eventuality.

I have sustained what my lawyers have asked me to refer to as 'not inconsiderable bruising', 'minor lacerations' and 'a nearly slipped disc'. Even writing this letter of complaint results in a shooting pain around the knuckle (is it a knuckle?) of my right thumb, which was badly sprained as a result of your celestial tomfoolery. Needless to say, I shall be commencing legal proceedings but felt compelled to provide a letter, in addition to my solicitor serving you court summons, allowing me to express some suggestions for a new marketing and indeed product creation direction.

I ask that you immediately rethink your advertising campaign. Perhaps have a single figure with a white backdrop simply explain to the audience that the humble act of spraying a mixture of potent hydrocarbons onto one's sallow flesh will not make one irresistable to women and may even result in what my solicitor and medical practitioners have termed 'intermediate discomfort'. Spraying something not entirely removed from simple natural gas onto oneself will not transport one to Italy and while it may well cause a phenomenon not dissimilar from your 'angels will fall' scenario, it is certainly a far less attractive proposition. Furthermore, I suggest that your lab produces a new product - perhaps call it 'Lynx Chemical Spray'- that in no way makes an immediate connection between spraying said concoction and dozens of models literally sprinting from far and wide to service your every sexual need. Nor shall you imply that the inocuous act of applying the spray will result in any women in the direct vicinity losing their clothes.

A bizarre mixture of false and some slightly (unpredictably, in fact) less false advertising have conspired to cause me not un-serious medical harm and I urge you to take steps to prevent further tragedy.

See you in court,
Outraged (and limping) of Marston Bigot

Still Got the Blues...

2011-03-25T12:22:00.003Z

Allow me, if I may, to discuss somewhat of a passion of mine. I can't quite pinpoint the first moment that I realised I loved this genre. Whether it was Clapton's uptempo interpretations or that first thundering riff of Muddy Waters' 'Mannish Boy' or the folky, bellowing sound of Lead Belly belting out 'Midnight Special' or perhaps even the exoticism of the idea of Robert Johnson selling his soul to the devil at a lonely crossroads in return from becoming the greatest bluesman in history, I'm still uncertain. What I do know however is that the blues never fails to sweep me up in its fervour and power. To hear Blind Willie Johnson humming in unison with his Open D-tuned acoustic on 'Dark Was the Night, Cold Was the Ground' is to hear the very 'soul of a man' (another of his compositions, incidentally). That moment of intense spiritual torment met with raw bottleneck slide guitar cuts a fine line between blues and gospel but the blues is all the better for its versatility. From throaty anti-recession shouts on Jimmy Witherspoon's 'Times Gettin' Tougher Than Tough' to the wailing, aching guitar licks of the late Gary Moore to the innuendo and raucous comedy of Wynonie Harris' 'Quiet Whiskey', the blues covers the full gamut of human emotion. Many see the blues as a music of pain or tragedy, but, at its heart, the blues is about having the last laugh over adversity.

So what, you may be wondering, does an Oxbridge-educated English comedian who went on to become the highest paid actor on American television have in common with a Depression-era preacher blinded by a handful of lye flung in anger or a Chicago Blues innovator dogged by alcoholism until dying penniless some 50 years after recording his first hits or the ex-con with the booming voice who died of Lou Gehrig's Disease before he ever saw the fruits of his extensive influence or the Texas boy who brought the blues kicking and screaming into the 1980s and was just free of his crippling drug addiction when he was killed tragically in a helicopter crash? Well, our very own Hugh Laurie has recorded a blues album and on Wednesday afternoon he performed several tracks from 'Let Them Talk' for a live-stream on the Guardian website.

Yes, Hugh Laurie out of Jeeves and Wooster and 'A Bit of Fry and Laurie'. He's done a blues album. Of blues songs. Yes, out of Blackadder and the... ahem... Stuart Little films. He's done an album.

Now, if you're expecting me to rant and complain about why a successful English actor and comedian shouldn't be recording a blues album, you're actually going to be disappointed. There's no doubt that Laurie is a talented musician, a multi-instumentalist in fact. Anyone who's seen 'A Bit of Fry and Laurie' will remember his brilliant parody and comic songs...

Actually, permit me to go off on somewhat of a tangent. It worries me that there will soon, or perhaps already is a generation of people who only know Stephen Fry as the convivial and intensely knowledgable host of QI and a foremost tweeter and technophile and Hugh Laurie as an American diagnostician. For my money, 'A Bit of Fry and Laurie' contains some of the greatest sketches ever committed to celluloid. From the louche critics running the rule over their own work to the brilliant piece of high concept comedy resulting in a magnificent topper about the comic timing of Paul Eddington, the four series are all packed with absolutely stunning pieces of wit and silliness. Ooh, Peter and John, how could I have ommitted them... and the voxpops! Ah, basically just buy the DVD boxset...

Anyway, back to the subject. Naturally Laurie has come in for some criticism for his latest venture. A quick glance at the comments made during the live streamed gig reveal that his latest career turn could best be described as... divisive. Many take the Onion-style 'affluent white man enjoys blues' angle, but the wonderful thing about blues is it's an ownerless concept. If you can hear anyone from Skip James to Stevie Ray Vaughn to Joe Bonamassa or Joanne Shaw Taylor and have that music resonate within you, it's achieved its aim. The blues will be there for you at your lowest to help you conquer that grief.

But the blues isn't afraid of challenging major socio-political issues too. J.B. Lenoir's 'Eisenhower Blues' album covers issues including but not limited to the Vietnam War and Civil and Women's Rights. And while we cannot all directly relate to songs like the heartbreaking 'Strange Fruit' by the unparallelled Billie Holliday they remain as tangible cultural edifices representative of the outpouring of grief at the time. Naturally for someone like Hugh Laurie to claim to be able relate to that literally would seem crass but he's not doing that. He's in the fortunate position of being able to record music in a style that he loves without having to worry about the figures. Very few Bluesmen have lived to see their records make money, but finance was not chief among their motivations. They had something to say or they wanted to move people or even just wanted to spin a good old yarn.

Laurie openly acknowledges his 'trespassing on the music and myth of the American South' but to criticise a blues musician for being a white, middle-class Englishman is utterly ridiculous. Are we to brand Eric Clapton and Jimmy Page 'shameless thieves of African American culture'? Blues is infectious- it makes your feet tap, your hands clap and brings a smile to your face if it wants to and that effect does not discriminate. Laurie isn't asking us to lie down and proclaim him the new Mississippi John Hurt. The blues survives thanks to new blood, new interpretations of classics, new songs entered into the great tome of the Delta but most of all it survives through being played. By anyone. From a poor Alabama slave boy to a fat, middle-aged axe-man in a working men's club in Bolton. Laurie wants to use his influence to keep the blues alive and disseminate its power to as many people as possible. And what, I ask you, is wrong with that?

A Couple of Words, If You Don't Mind...

2011-03-04T11:45:00.005Z

Well, hasn't the world changed since we last met, eh? Murdoch's intolerable expansionist endeavours have been enabled by Jeremy Hunt, the Culture Secretary (that's his name, isn't it, James Naughtie...?), Kolo Toure has tested positive for Charlie Sheen and faces suspension (or at least I think that's what's happened) and everyone's favourite melty-faced dictator Colonel Muammar Gaddaffi has clung onto his stranglehold of the Libyan people with renewed vigour and ever more dodgy soundbites... and TV appearances where he sits in a car with an umbrella. Oh! And the Lib Dems lost their deposit in the Barnsley by-election (finishing 6th behind the BNP and an independent no-hoper).

But instead of musing on whether troubled actor Charlie Sheen (as we're contractually obliged to call him- a bit like 'The Actor Kevin Eldon') is a tragic case of celebrity excess taking its toll or a ludicrous genius finally saying the things we're all thinking; or whether the people of Libya will ever know freedom, I'm going to bring up a couple of personal causes (well, sort of personal).

Winning!: The rantings of a lunatic or the single greatest philosophical statement of the century so far?

First cause. For some reason Auntie Beeb (who is incidentally involved in both of these) has seen fit to axe the sitcom Whites. You remember Whites. It starred Alan Davies as a thinly-veiled parody of semi-celeb chefs (the kind you would see on Great British Menu) and was notable for its marvellous characterisation, super-sharp script and scene-stealing cameos from co-writer Matt King. Well, for some reason, BBC Comedy has decided that Whites was less able to inform, educate and entertain than, say, BBC Three's Coming of Age or Lunch Monkeys. Just muse on that for a while. Anyway, if you happen to be on Twitter then you can hurl abuse (but in a sort of semi-constructive way) at @bbccomedy with the hashtag #bringbackWhites.

Second cause. If you're a radio-loving insomniac like me, there's a good chance you will have heard some of 5Live's Up All Night with Rhod Sharp/Dotun Adebayo. A marathon of global news, features, phone-ins and everything you could ever want between the hours of 1 and 5 in the morning. On Tuesdays at 2.30 is the American TV slot and Rhod goes live (via the magic of Skype) to the living room of one Cash Peters, TV swami, author and alternative health guru who delivers a wonderful half hour of badinage, results of his latest health experiments and even some TV reviews if we have time. Now, what does this have to do with anything? Well, there's specualtion that Cash may have made his last utterance of the brilliance of Oprah's TV station on 5Live.

It's difficult to understand the magic of the Cash/Rhod relationship without actually listening to it, but suffice to say it's brilliantly entertaining and one of few things that can make me laugh out loud at near enough 3 o'clock in the morning. Broadcasts aside, Cash is somewhat of a cult hero inspiring fierce loyalty in members of The List (you may not know what that is, but I know for a fact you want to be on it now) and providing marvellous blog posts on his website (www.cashpeters.com), as well as providing spiritual guidance to those in need (myself included). His jolly and yet grizzled tones have helped people through exams, dissertations and probably even childbirth (almost certainly... probably). The fact is that Up All Night, 5Live and indeed all British late-night radio will be a poorer place if Cash has in fact made his last appearance.

So, I urge you, do what you can to keep Cash Peters Up All Night!

The AV Club...

2011-02-18T13:32:00.004Z

[Note how I resisted calling it 'You're AVin' a Laugh' or something.]

The big news issue of the day is, of course, the debate surrounding the forthcoming referendum on the Audio Visual method of electing our MPs and many publications/websites etc. seem to be focusing on the battle lines being drawn not only between parties but within them too, not to mention between coalition partners.

Alternative Vote is a simple idea, albeit in a fairly complicated way. You select not only your first choice but also your second choice meaning that if your first choice is eliminated due to no-one reaching the 50% threshold your vote carries over to the second choice until eventually the least hated party/person ends up in power. Clegg, who had originally called AV 'a miserable little compromise', now leads the charge in support of it only to be turned on by David Cameron (trouble in paradise?) who claims it is 'inherently unfair' and went so far as to say that under AV we could end up with a party in charge that no-one wanted or even actually voted for. Well, phew, Dave, just as well that didn't happen in the last election, eh?

The main point is however that this is an issue where party politics has almost gone out of the window, where PM and Deputy can face off against each other, where cabinet ministers can disagree, where Prezza can be furious with Ed Miliband. The best analogy I can think of (in my tiny, nerd-culture addled brain) is Marvel's Civil War crossover comics from 2006/7, written by the incomparable Mark Millar. A government initiative demanding the registration of superheroes leads Captain America to abscond from his duty to round up the rogue masks and fall in with an anti-registration group, quickly becoming their figurehead along with other prominent figures such as Luke Cage and Cable. Meanwhile Cap's old friend and co-Avenger/Ultimate Tony Stark thinks it impossible in the current political landscape to resist this change and continue to self-police and gathers his own team of higher-profile heroes (She-Hulk, Mister Fantastic and even Spider-Man who unmasks especially) to hunt down the resistance.

As the plot develops amid much tragedy, the Human Torch and Invisible Woman side against their intrepid leader Mister Fantastic, Spider-Man turns coat after discovering some of the more unpleasant features of the act and ultimately they all cause more damage with their 'Civil War' than either the Registration Act itself or any resistance to it would have done in the first place... oh, and Captain America is assassinated on some courthouse steps.

Now, what does this have to do with AV? Is Prezza a Luke Cage, punching his way against the reform, or is he more of a Ben Grimm trying to protect the interests of civillians and keep himself in pies and insurance comparison ads? Will Cameron be gunned down on some stairs by Crossbones? Is Clegg going to don a suit of fictional metal and laser his way to some actual power?

No... or at least I'd be very surprised. The main point is that it's interesting to see individuals pitched against each other within their own groups. Public hostility to politics (like public hostility to heroes in the wake of Hulk's smashing of Las Vegas or Nitro's explosive murder of 600 people) is likely to lead to a 'yes' vote, argue some commentators, but then there are surely many who think FPtP flawed but that AV is just a way of keeping things much the same but different enough to fool most people into thinking there doesn't need to be a proper change for another 400 years.

In any case, it looks like this one will run and run (and I am in no way qualified really to talk about any of it or discuss any ramifications).

Just as a quick straw poll/trial, please comment on how you would vote (1st, 2nd and 3rd choices please) in the referendum.

1) Yes to AV
2) No to AV
3) What does it all mean? Why can't we just go home?

This week Sam watched: True Grit. A masterpiece. Towering performance from Bridges, fantastic script from the Coens and if Deakins doesn't win the Oscar for cinematography it's a crime. A masterclass in film-making.

Ill Informed TV Reviews: I...

2011-02-14T15:27:00.003Z

Right, here's a sort of accidental idea I've had whilst shambling around today- review TV shows, having missed the first 3/4 or so. Basically, I caught the tail end of Cookery School, Channel 4's answer to the BBC's cook-off monopoly, if the question was "can you make a sort of low-rent Masterchef in what appears to be a brick high-rise in Acton?"

Now Cookery School is much like an ordinary school: There's an overwhelming pressure placed upon the students and at the end of tomorrow's episode someone gets evicted... Oh hang on, that's not schools, is it? That's reality television... always get those two mixed up. Not schools at all really. (Well, maybe after Gove's finished tinkering: "Once you've bought and funded your own free school, you can kick the weakest students out at the end of every week...")

I watched the last quarter as the 'students' were tasked with cooking risotto with mussels and then chastised in front of one another by chef Richard Corrigan (out of off of Great British Menu) and 'cookery mentor' (or 'chef') Gizzi Erskine. Graduate (it's what we call them now that none of them can get actual jobs) Bram (who knew people weren't only called that in the 19th century?!) was complimented on the texture of his risotto. Clearly there was a bit of history with Bram, as Corrigan was forced to reconsider his opinion of his cookery abillities. Bram, clearly a bit of a 'character', did an impression of Corrigan, explaining that he expected the Irishman to deride his humble rice dish when in fact he had let out a gutteral "mmmmm", in the post-cookery interview segments that take place on the balcony, complete with black, spiralling fire escape stairs as if the students had all popped out for a cheeky fag break.

It's the classic format. Plucky amateur cooks try and make it big and learn a few things along the way. Like Masterchef. Except not really Masterchef, shh, what did you go and mention Masterchef for?! Well, I guess it's because Masterchef have a flash new studio complete with Time Commanders-esque surveillance balcony for Gregg and John to eye the incompetence of the contestants like dodgy food emperors at an amphitheatre. "Tougher challenges" claims the voiceover... and yet I thought that Imperator Greggus Wallacius had decreed that "cooking doesn't get tougher than this" every episode for about 4 whole previous series.

Anyway, the thing about Cookery School is that it's almost a throwback to the late nineties, early noughties heyday of Channel 4, where BBC formats were slightly altered and then shoved in brick studio space in Hounslow. Who can forget the seminal RI:SE or... you know... the educational things they used to do... sort of edgy stuff... about sex and drugs? Even the camera work is reminiscent of that Golden Age of television where top media luminaries like Kate Lawler and Mark Durden-Smith could run the rule over the day's news in an edgy early morning formats... no, not like Daybreak, even edgier (if you can imagine such a thing...).

But, I only saw the last 15 minutes, so the first bit could have been shot as a Bergmanesque character study of some tragic but loveable amateur cooks set in Malmo. I don't know. Next: Outcasts, the last 15 minutes of Episode 2... possibly.

Denial's Not Just A River in Egypt...

2011-02-11T10:37:00.005Z

Right, yesterday saw under pressure national hate figure Hosny Mubarak pull an audacious switcheroo on the furious public assembled in Tahrir Square. A press conference was called, rumours spread that the 82 year old was about to step down. When the time of the conference arrived, Mubarak kept the world's media waiting while he stood backstage giggling. Eventually he arrived on stage and declared that, actually, the conference was all a big joke and he wasn't stepping down at all. HA! Jokes....

You see? It was all a big prank. He's going to be there for ages yet... at least until September and by then this whole Tahrir Square revolution thing will have blown over, probably and he can cling on for another 30 years...

Or perhaps not. I don't know. I try and avoid big stories like this that lots of people seem to have opinions about, frankly because it takes a lot of time and effort to get oneself to the required level of knowledge and expertise to be able to offer a valid journalistic opinion. Which is actually what today's blog is about...

Journos famously cut it fine when offering their two penn'orth on topics by not actually reading/watching/doing what it is they're writing about. It happens to all of them at one point or another. They'll drop a bollock and say something silly about an episode of The Tudors or cooking Risotto or something. Just you see if they don't. Yesterday this issue reared its inelegantly-coiffured, empty lens glasses-clad head once more after this article by Deborah Orr was printed in the Guardian G2. Now, while I don't necessarily agree with the content - while I don't think 10 o'Clock Live is the perfect vehicle for Lauren Laverne, she is nonetheless a very talented presenter and at no point have I ever heard her touted as our answer to Tina Fey before this piece - there is an obvious boob... well obvious to anyone that saw the episode of 10 o'Clock Live in question, in which a PRE-RECORDED, STAGED PIECE ABOUT CHARLIE BROOKER AND LAVERNE COCKING UP A LINK was aired and then mocked by the presenters themselves.

But hey, it's just a bit of lazy journalism, happens to the best of us, right? Wrong. Twitter went 8 shades of mental about this. First with some quite personal attacks on Deborah Orr, then people defending Orr, then people attacking the people who attacked Orr and then people who attacked Orr attacking the people who defended her on the basis of their defence. Now, aside from a cheap dig at the format which might concern the production staff and presenters, the only person who should really have been 'offended' by the article is Laverne herself. I can sympathise there. I hate reading criticism... and as a writer, that's, well, a bit of a massive pisser. In fact, if you leave a comment, there's a good chance I'll track you down/humiliate you with my lucid prose... or just cry... one of those two...

I'm sure that after reading my spot on dig at Mubarak at the start there you will have realised that I didn't even watch the press conference- I was busy writing something else at the time- but you have to fill the column inches somehow. And that I suspect is what happened to Orr. She wanted a quick piece to demonstrate that she too loved critics' darling 30 Rock (which is very good, to be fair) as well as having a quick pop at the fairly divisive 10 o'Clock Live.

It was Brooker himself who first drew my attention to the article in question via Twitter. Now, I love Brooker, the man is massive influence on my writing and general miserable approach to life, he has magnificent hair and all he did was indicate the mistake, but in doing so he inadvertently created somewhat of a monster (at least on Twitter between about 10 o'clock and sort of late lunchtime-ish) where people got really quite angry about this little journalistic slip-up.

The article was just a clear opportunity to make a cheap snide, which we all love as writers, let's face it. I made a cheap snide about Mubarak, perhaps the week's most obvious target, at the beginning of this very column. Orr, a respected social and political commentator, was just padding out her double-page spread in the G2, it was an honest mistake, she's not an abominable, controversy-hungry, bile-spouting harridan like Melanie Phillips or Jan Moir, she's just an ordinary journo. I honestly think that in a world where the Daily Mail continues to be published there are journalistic issues that people should be more worried about than one columnist cocking up side-piece about Tina Fey/Lauren Laverne.

I'm not entirely sure why I'm defending Orr- she's doing a job for actual real money, that I've been doing free for what seems like an eternity- but some of the things that people Tweeted about it were needlessly offensive. Many of the commenters, I suspect, had not even read Orr's article in the first place and were operating by hearsay. I love Twitter, but we Tweeters are, all of us, guilty of some quite staggering hypocrisy sometimes- whether it's denouncing racism on Question Time and then laughing at some gypsies getting married (which I'll happily admit I've never watched and will never attempt to write a piece about) or attacking a journalist that wrote an article they've not read about a show that she hadn't watched. Not to mention whoever was subbing that day let this mistake slip through the net, but then they might/probably have better things to do on a Thursday night than watch live topical comedy shows, I don't know.

So maybe we can cut people some slack. It must be bad enough being a Guardian journo where every Tom, Dick and Harry can take the phrase 'comment is free' a little too literally and leave a borderline-insane/worthless opinion on your piece for all to see on its website... in fact, my favourites are those like John Harris who go after malicious commenters and keep commenting on their own pieces getting angrier and angrier or Sarah Ditum's games reviews where she isn't afraid to embarrass commenters for being overly dramatic with their sort of half-critical arsey remarks. Because these people only leave these narky, niggling little nuggets of criticism (probably born out of self-hatred in what I believe is known in the trade as 'the Frankie Boyle Method' of being funny) because they think that the authors will somehow not care enough about their work to take issue with them.

I can't speak for the writers I've mentioned, but I certainly take some pride in my pieces (I mean, not all of them, obviously, some of them were bordering on utter shite - as is this one, some would say) and it hurts to see them attacked by angry office workers trying to avoid having to fill in a spreadsheet about the Hamburg files. Writing in the G2 in an extract from her book on the very same day as Orr-gate, screenwriter/director Nora Ephron described the pain of seeing your work flop. It's 'mortifying', 'lonely' and 'sad'. And that's from a triple Oscar nominee, so imagine how shite it is for us downtrodden hacks.

So maybe, if you don't have anything nice to say, don't tweet/leave a comment on the Guardian website... Mkay?

Everything That's Wrong With...

2011-02-04T00:04:00.005Z

There comes a time when every right thinking columnist must write his/her 'everyone else is basically an idiot' column. This was perhaps most brilliantly illustrated in the seminal satire of modern idiocy 'Nathan Barley' when put-upon, jaded hack Dan Ashcroft (portrayed with stunning ennui by Julian Barratt and, one suspects, heavily based upon writer Charlie Brooker) pens his legendary 'Rise of the Idiots' polemic, only to be beatified by the very idiots he sought to shame. Well, I have a strong inkling that this week is the time for my 'Rise of the Idiots' (see, it's a bit like Brooker's 'Dawn of the Dumb', you see where I'm going with this?).

There are two main triggers for this vitriolic brainsplurge that I will be inflicting upon you all today: The first is the maiden series of Channel 4's living sexual health nightmare The Joy of Teen Sex and the second is this article by John Harris, appearing in yesterday's G2 (think of it as further reading... you don't have to read it all... even just the title will do)

"So, what on earth could be wrong with a show titled 'The Joy of Teen Sex'?", you may well ask. Now, I'm no prude, I've cracked many a hearty innuendo and penned thoughts (admittedly for comic effect) that would make the Marquis de Sade... well... I don't know... have a sly wank(?)... but one that he felt really guilty about afterwards...; I have no issue with graphic nudity or a heavily trussed-up 'sex coach' removing a frankly terrifying looking piece of carnal paraphernalia from a chest of equally daunting vibrating trinkets; but what I do have a problem with is a ludicrously trite television show. Teenage sex is doubtless an issue worthy of exploration and is certainly worthy of a far less flawed format than 'Joy', which somehow manages to treat fairly harrowing issues with a childish contempt and light-hearted frolicking with a kind of po-faced nagging. Some moments leave you expecting Graham Chapman to march onto screen and halt proceedings for them becoming 'too silly' whereas others have perfectly innocent, balanced young women having rancid A2-printed genitals thrust in their faces until they cry.

Now, what does this have to do with 'the rise of the idiots', I hear you cry, well aside from the people frequenting the 'Sex Advice Shop' and the voxpops which wouldn't look out of place in 'A Bit of Fry and Laurie', a regular feature is the thoughts of 'teen journalist' Billie JD Porter. [deep intake of breath and sigh] There's nothing particularly wrong with Miss Porther per se... but I can't help but feel that she's a 'journalist' in the way that I'm a Hollywood actor... Yes, she says fairly sensible things when being pressganged into watching someone get a Prince Albert or a 'vajazzling', but then so would any sane person faced with watching a man have a needle thrust down his urethra and, yes, she seems fairly game, posing for a slightly dodgy middle-aged 'glamour model photographer' and venturing onto Chatroulette (which, incidentally, if the latter makes you a journalist, makes me eligible for last year's Pullitzer...) but I want to see her pen 2,000 words on Tahrir Square and hand it into me by the end of the week, you know? I've trawled the internet for evidence of 'journalism' but her blog (http://www.billiejd.blogspot.com/) doesn't offer any clues (I won't link properly in case she sues for defamation... after all she seems like a modern woman... one who would sue for defamation...).

Take this week's episode. Porter appeared, flanked by two impossible hipsters, all with vacant expressions on their faces, staring into the abyss of depravity that is Chatroulette (for when you stare too long into the Chatroulette, it too stares back unto you...) and gurgling various childish platitudes into the webcam (not to mention later making 50 dirty internet pounds by not adhering to age-old ((albeit very flawed)) internet rule of 'tits or GTFO'). And it is exactly these people that I'm beginning to struggle with. You know the sort, the kind of people who say they're 'dressing ironically' and button their shirts all the way up, who think/know they're better than you because they have the right connections to make into television/fashion/journalism, whose voices resemble a mixer-sodden whinge with a rising inflection. In Ashcroft's 'Rise of the Idiots' he points out how the idiots are "oblivious to the paradox of their own uniform individuality" and that is just it- you're not being ironic anymore when everyone is doing it. Just admit that you actually like bowties and Neil Diamond and that you do actually need those NHS spectacles and that you're not really a 'journalist'. It's fine, you know, you don't have to be a 'journalist', it's ok just being on television because you're a hipster and your parents know some people... mostly... yeah, it's nearly almost fine as long as you accept that that's the case. I know what you're thinking: 'Oh, Sam, you can't cut everyone down to an archetype, some of them are probably fine... what are the underlying causes, why can't you explain all that? EH?', well I'm getting there, ok?!

Essentially the underlying causes are those raised in John Harris' article. It's suddenly become acceptable to be Tory in pop culture. Well, I'm here to echo Johnny Marr's sentiments. It's not 'ok' to be a Tory creative, because creativity is our only defence against them in the first place. The arts are ours, dammit. Why can't you go back to your braces and stock-broking and leave our arts alone?! I don't need both Gary and Ken Barlow telling me how good Cameron is, I don't want to hear it anymore. They're selling off our forests and now their taking our arts from the inside. I didn't absorb all the social realism I could so Gilbert and George could tell me 'socialism wants everyone to be equal. We wanted to be different...' (a factually inaccurate statement anyway... the two aren't mutually exclusive) or for some Harrow/Eton/Russell Group University tosspot could tell me that they shouldn't have to apologise for their privilege. Yes. Yes, they should. 'Oh, but I was born into millions and millions of pounds' doesn't really cut it excuse-wise with me. You should have to apologise because there are millions with the same aspirations as you who have had to work a thousand or more times harder to get any closer to realising it and even then, bar a handful of notable exceptions, remain more distant from it than you would ever experience. Ok, so you might argue that they, on some level, must want to better themselves in the same way that you do by going to Oxbridge/JP Morgan etc., but there is just an inherent value in actually working to get there. Using your rationale, let's imagine a child in Ethiopia born into poverty. That's fine is it. We shouldn't bother offering help to that child because it's been born that way, is that it? Yes, you should have to apologise, because you are responsible, at least (if you insist on the excuse of birth allowing you to be non-culpable) for the fact that many a decent, hard-working, ordinary employee has lost their job/missed out on promotion/achieved so little of what they wanted in life that they've been driven to suicide, you short-sighted, self-serving oik.

Ahem...

Anyway this is more about arts and less about me being a bit like Geldof...

As several commenters on the article point out 'oh but Thatcher was good for the arts, Sam, wasn't she? Look at all the arts we done under Thatcher, eh? What about music and drama... all that we done under Thatcher, eh?'. Here's the rub- yes, The Smiths happened under Thatcher, yes, Boys From The Blackstuff happened under Thatcher but they were both epics of utter despair but also of steely defiance under a regime attempting to choke originality and creative freedom as well as handily getting rid of all the actual jobs that would otherwise have been available too. To credit Thatcher with Bleasdale's magnum opus or Strangeways Here We Come is like crediting Hitler with 'the marvellous courage shown by the French Resistance'. They existed as anathema to the Tory government, reminding them just how much we hated what they stood for and exactly how we can overcome it.

Speaking of Boys From The Blackstuff, Liverpool City Council is fully aware that it doesn't want another generation of Yosser Hughes'- beaten by police, battered by the despair of the Dole and all but killed by the government- and has pulled out of Cameron's Big Society, already denounced on this very blog last year as basically 'don't like how things are? Then you sort it out and we can blame you when it inevitably goes tits up' politics.

Now, as bad as 'Uncool Britannia' is, I wasn't particularly enamoured with Cool Britannia either (It's responsible for Damien Hirst, after all, who is responisble for making obscene amounts of cash from extortionately priced botched taxidermy or human remains), perhaps it's wrong to make this a political thing as Harris has done, but it just so happens that you're friendly neighbourhood over-privileged pop-culture figure (surprise, surprise) just happens to be a Tory more often than not.

I don't wake up in the morning with the sole aim of inciting class warfare, honestly I don't. This was supposed to be about the arts and about terrible, privileged ironically-dressed hipsters and I've turned it into a massive go essentially about how I've put in actual effort into the things I've wanted to do and got zero reward like so many honest people, who would be part of the appallingly patronisingly-titled 'Alarm Clock Britain' if they didn't lie awake at night despairing over whether cuts are going to lose them their jobs or wondering how they're going to keep the electricity bill paid and sleep through their alarms until they awake in a cold sweat, cursing the fact that they're still alive and still doomed to the daily grind in Cameron's Britain.

Phew...

No Sexism Please, We're British...

2011-01-28T00:18:00.004Z

Right, anyone who saw 10 O'Clock Live last night will notice that Charlie Brooker somewhat stole my thunder. Since Sexismgate broke earlier this week, I've been accumulating thoughts, jokes etc. for the Friday blog and what should happen on Thursday evening? Well, only one of my heroes making very similar jokes about the same subject to an audience of millions. So, instead of banging on about it, I'll give you a quick rundown:

I was going to discuss the details (briefly, I'm sure you all know basically what happened... but, y'know, with sparkling wit and artistic flair), then I was going to make the point (that several others have made by now) that is struck me as strange that Gray, who happened to be going through the courts to gain damages from Murdoch's News International, was the one to lose his job when the surprisingly hirsuite Keys (who ultimately walked anyway after a bizarre hour-long Partridge-esque interview on talkSPORT... where he will probably be plying his trade in 6 months time, given that his opinions are not so far removed from a good percentage of the active listnership...) received only a warning.

After all that I would go on to summarise the headlines about the story in the Murdoch press, particularly on the startling hypocrisy of the Sun (again, I was beaten to this point by Brooker) whose spread consisted of: Front page- Andy Gray is a sexist pig; and then over the page, 'oh look, some tits'. I was then going to go on to point out that the media storm over this story has quite possibly harmed Sian Massey's career a good deal more than any cheap snides from two men who should know better but were probably only saying what Massey will sadly hear from the terraces every time she makes a key decision. The ensuing media scrum has resulted in Massey missing several games in which she would be officiating, whether as an assistant or as the referee in lower league fixtures, all of which would have been occasions to impress the powers at be and appear more regularly in the officials line-ups for Premier League games.

Anyway, just as we were all being reminded that there is no place for sexism in modern society, who should crop up on Question Time but the bafflingly banal, attention-seeking harridan Katie Hopkins...

So... swings and roundabouts, I suppose...

Political Turmoil...

2011-01-21T12:34:00.003Z

It's fair to say I've learnt a few things this week. Not only did I learn what vajazzling was, but I (as did we all) discovered a few home truths about politics. Firstly, I learnt that (and frankly we should all have taken note from Costner) it is never advisable to trust your bodyguard with a woman. Yes, poor old Alan Johnson, struggling to get to grips with his new role as Shadow Chancellor had to put up with the alleged hanky panky between his wife and his personally assigned security official. So, it was Johnson out/Balls in (and believe me, I'm on Twitter, I've heard every joke going about this, so you can all just imagine your favourite one here). And from one heavy-handed reference to a cock to another - Andy Coulson resigned as Communications Chief in the Coalition Government earlier today. Perhaps, nugget of advice number 2 is it is never advisable to award a man allegedly repsonsible for the illegal tapping of the phones of pop culture luminaries such as Sienna Miller and Andy Gray a key position in government.

So, Coulson who resigned his leadership of the News of the World amid allegations of overseeing a culture of phone-hacking and was inexplicably rewarded for this by being allowed into Cameron's inner sanctum (I've created a notion that disgusts even myself there) and today he's resigned his position with the statement that he could 'no longer give 110%'. I'm fairly certain he couldn't give that in the first place as it is A MATHEMATICAL IMPOSSIBILITY. Classic hack soundbite, mind - you're resigning from the government, you're not on the fucking Apprentice. Reports of him defending his position with the claim that he has 'a field of ponies' remain unsubstantiated.

It's one of those periods of 24 hours where all news happens at once and it becomes impossible to work out who's trying to bury their news underneath all the others. Nevertheless, short of Blair yelling 'Alright, I knew this would happen. It all went wrong. Everything was wrong!' at the Chilcot Inquiry, Coulson is rightly the lead news story. Who will Dave replace him with? Rupert Murdoch? Robert Maxwell? Or perhaps just Joseph Goebbels...

That's it for this week, I'm afraid.

Soupy twist.

This Was the Week, This Was....

2011-01-14T10:29:00.004Z

Well, it would turn out that the furore that led to last week's blog was in fact a hoax. Hoax/joke, I basically called it correctly... anyway, it would appear that shit-stirring sociopath Kenneth Tong was conducting a 'social experiment'. Now, it comes as absolutely no surprise that someone who partook in the 'social experiment' Big Brother, would have no concept whatsoever of what actually constitutes a social experiment. It would appear that in both cases, observing ordinary folk to gain insight into cultural norms and human nature lies somewhere far behind SAYING OR DOING MORALLY DUBIOUS THINGS FOR ATTENTION.

Anyway, don't worry, it's not all going to be about Tong, I just thought I'd follow up on last week's and point out that it was all, of course, a hoax for the purposes of a social experiment... Oh and spare a thought for the Independent's columnist Johann Hari who spent a not inconsiderable amount of time interviewing the wretch when we all still thought he was genuinely advocating illness as a viable means of achieving his evil misogynist aims...

Still, he's cried wolf now, so if in March he starts tweeting about how he's found Lord Lucan under a napsack in his parent's kitchen, we'll all be wise to his games...

So yeah, forget about him. Forget about the last three paragraphs... and last week's blog... just remember that it was all very funny and someone should probably pay me for this, in all honesty...

So, another week of popular culture and anotherweek where we slip ever closer to the void and all realise that Nathan Barley was, in fact, a documentary... Anyway, topicality... that's what we need here. Umm, Labour hold Oldham... um... ah, Silvio Berlusconi is now formally under investigation for 'using a teenage prostitute and abusing his position as PM'. Mais non? Not old Silvio, the lovable rogue? Abusing his position of power? Say it ain't so.

WHERE HAVE THEY ALL BEEN FOR THE LAST 15 YEARS?! ACTUALLY WHERE HAVE THEY BEEN?!

(I'm very shouty today, sorry about that...)

Silvio has done nothing with the power he's held at varying intervals over the last three decades than abuse it. I'll take an interesting standpoint here and say that, sure Silvio's had some fun with his position, but then isn't that really the ultimate aim of having any true power or influence? Just, so that you can do whatever you want with whichever belly dancers or teenagers you want? I'm certain that Italy's greatest political commentator Niccolo Machiavelli would have just loved Silvio for proving him right about absolutely everything.

He's the modern day Cesare Borgia, but instead gaining territory Silvio makes boundless sexual conquests (and is slightly less dependent on the goodwill of the Papacy). Nonetheless the authorities in Milan are now conducting investigations into the indiscretions of everyone's favourite comedy head of government. I'm now taking bets on the likelihood of Silvio Berlusconi coming out and saying "I was conducting a social experiment into how many daliances a political leader can have before people realise they're generally unsuitable for the running of a country's infrastructure".

This week also saw the discovery of a brand new starsign, the mysterious Ophiucus. Here's today's horoscope for that one.

When the Moon is in the Seventh House and Jupiter aligns with Mars, a handsome stranger will feed you some bullshit about there being starsigns, let alone a new one.

Kenneth Wrong...

2011-01-07T10:05:00.005Z

Right, haven't done one of these for a while but as no-one seems prepared to pay me for it I might as well dust off the old talons of vitriol and aim them at a new target.

Twitter has been abuzz for the last couple of days with an outpouring of bemusement and outrage aimed at one person in particular following a series of controversial statements. I know what you're thinking, 'who is this idling buffoon making the biggest PR cock-up since the public failing of David Cameron's perception filter led to the reveal of a grinning Lady Thatcher brandishing a large pair of shears'? (Ok, so that hasn't exactly happened per se... YET). Anyway, the figure in question is a certain Kenneth Tong. Nope? Me neither. Supposedly he took part in the formerly perennial stifling shitsauna of mediocrity that was Big Brother and now he's starring in 'the internet' where he's playing the part of the woefully misguided and remorseless villain.

Ordinarily it's very difficult to be angry with someone called Kenneth - I'm thinking Branagh, Barlow or that dildo out of off of Peep Show - however many, many people have been willing to make an exception in the case of Mr. Tong.

Over the last few days Tong has rebranded himself as some manner of body fascist, firing out tweets such as

'Only the thin truly win. My Size Zero Pill will change lives, it's like the modern day Schindler's List. Will I be your salvation?'
'Not attempting to be controversial, simply wealthy enough to be honest in saying you're fat and credible enough to promote managed anorexia.'
'There is no excuse for a Girl not to be a Size Zero. It is perfection. Skinny is so sexy, show's self control and is the epitome of beauty'.

So, it seems that he's pushing some kind of product with a staggering lack of self-awareness. Clearly Mr. Tong, who must instantly recognisable to, oh, 3 or 4 dozen people is above our mere human boundaries of taste and decency.

Well, either that or it's a joke. I doubt even someone who's appeared on Big Brother would tweet something along the lines of:

'I quite enjoy these comparisons to Hitler, have read a few Tweets about this, you lot are too kind, I'd argue this is quite a complement.'

I'd quite like to know which facet of history's greatest villain's personality or atrocities there committed he finds to be a complement (sic). The annexation of the Sudetenland perhaps or the way in which that parting just clung to his head so wonderfully... While he assures us his verification is in the post (or something), I don't really see why Twitter would verify someone who prompted equally as many 'who is Kenneth Tong's' as 'this man is a sexist vagrant's.

Joke or not, however, the point stands that any destructive, potentially fatal 'advice' constitutes an abuse of perceived power and thousands were quite rightly astounded and enraged. Cue everyone calling him a vapid, shallow jeb-end. Which is about accurate BUT here's the catch, Tong or not, he's just seeking attention. He wants you to hate him and to call him a vapid, shallow jeb-end (in those exact terms). He wants your disgust and to be vilified as a twattish monster. Like serial killers... or Richard Littlejohn.

By the way, I am fully away of the irony of writing an angry piece about why we shouldn't give attention to this person, which is why I'm advocating a mass tweet of (and bear in mind that they never catch on when started by me... as illustrated by an early effort at the Spartacus tweet that swept Twitter... fully two days after I'd attempted to get it off the ground when someone with influence tweeted it) 'Who is this arsehole and why should we give any credence to his frankly ludicrous opinions?!' perhaps with some kind of hashtag to indicate cohesion and not just a series of perhaps 10 of my friendship circle venting frustration at some unknown figure from their own real lives. #bollockstokenneth perhaps, simply because it makes me giggle from the juxtaposition of 'Kenneth' and 'bollocks'. Alternatively you could just bombard him with @replies calling him 'a vapid, shallow jeb-end', but as we've established, this would probably undermine the cause...

Now, just as we're verging on the libellous, it's probably a good time to point out that everyone is entitled to an opinion... I'm just not entirely sure why I've had to read his and why he couldn't keep his archaic, abhorrent misogyny to the confines of his presumably equally crushingly regressive friends and immediate family.

On a semi-serious note, the fact is, if you're happy in yourself who is ANYONE to tell you different, least of all Kenneth Tong, a non-entity evidently so unhappy that he's been forced to broadcast his baffling and offensive inflammatory statements in the hope that people might remember who he is.

Apprentice Delayed...

2010-10-28T19:32:00.001+01:00

Right, I haven't been able to see last night's Apprentice, thanks to the excellent Special Relationship last night and several hours spent on trains, so it will be postponed until tomorrow. Presumably we all know what happened anyway. It's almost unavoidable.

Hors d'Oeuvres, Hors d'Oeuvres...

2010-10-27T12:47:00.002+01:00

Today was a rare occasion where I managed to catch PMQs. There was a lot of general bickering and a nice joke from Ed Milliband about Clegg's crafty fag habit. If I was in there and an MP for, say, the New Forest (this constituency probably doesn't exist), I would have said "I put it to the Right Honourable Gentleman that he can't see the wood for the trees... and no amount of cutting down our woodland will change that." Eh? Eh? Oh, I'm wasted on you...

I'd be rubbish at the admin, but I'd have a hell of a confrontational soundbite.

Fooks...

2010-10-26T17:00:00.004+01:00

Right, I've had a monster of a day so today's series blog is going to be, what I believe is known in the trade as, 'concise' (i.e. shorter than it should be).

Harry and the Home Sec were given a quick blast of a dangerous computer hijacking program (a bit like a Firefox add-on, right kids? Hey? Eh? Ah, my satire is wasted on you...). Tariq finally snapped, clearly furious at having no lines that weren't clunky technological exposition... except that, it was a cunning ruse to secretly tell Ruth that the grid had been compromised, which she then conveyed to Harry through a glass of water and a note. Magic. This is why I love Spooks. Reading a note by pretending to drink water. The very best Her Majesty's Military Intelligence has by way of covert note passing.

Lucas had agreed to meet Vaughn in Battersea Park, taking with him reliable Mr. Gunny. Vaughn demanded the Albany file in a sneery, evil way... oh Boo! Boo! Hiss! Fantastically Dimitri was showing off a disarmed bomb he just had lying around. Dimitri is fast becoming a cult hero, bombs lying around, working out people weren't using chemical explosives to treat Diabetes... an all-round genius. There was a quick 2 minute* window in which for Harry to give the team the low-down on the surveillance. Lucas picked up a sassy American cryptographer Danielle Ortiz (and by 'picked up' I don't mean that. For god's sake, grow up! I mean he was handling... hold on... why are there no spy terms that aren't synonymous with sex?) and began ferrying her around the capital. She seemed familiar. Perhaps because she's been in something else or perhaps because she was basically the Spooks' version of Lisbeth Salander.

Dimitri cracked out the Nikon and started snapping the cyberterrorists ("oh yeah, grr, you're a tiger, pout more" etc.) before returning to the grid and slipping the memory card to Beth to take into the ladies toilets (because these are cyberterrorists, not your average perverts) and run face recog on. In truth, the device of confinement and the rising tension in the office as everyone had to 'keep calm and carry on' made for a terrific episode. Tariq gave the game away by a split second glance at the camera after the classic 'pretend to drop your important documents so that Beth can help you pick them up and slip you some classified intel' trick.

Lucas fobbed Ortiz/Salander off with some lies and went to the location Vaughn had tasked him with investigating. And who should open the door but MALCOLM!! (Fanboy yay!). Meanwhile, ex-SBS man Dimitri attempted to shoot his way out of the now locked down building before declaring it 'useless'. No? Because MI5 wouldn't bother bulletproofing their perspex doors and walls, would they? After retrieving a parcel from Malcolm, Lucas returned to the car to find that Ortiz had given him the slip. After some brooding and manhandling he forced her back into the car.

Using crazy voice synthesomething technology, the hackers were able to use a robotic Harry to order Lucas to 'neutralise' Ortiz. Dimitri formulated some terrible plan involving - yes, you guessed it - bombs... Lucas' moral code might be a little off-kilter these days, but he knows when he's being played and phoned up the faux-Harry to ask him his favourite opera. He quickly sped away in the car, having a tire blown out in the process and Ortiz taking a bullet graze to the neck. Lucas then beat an armed man to a bloody pulp. Ortiz was in bad shape but promised that she wouldnt' tell anyone about Lucas' trip to Malcolm's house or Albany, at which point we were reminded just how off-kilter his moral code was when he pretended to phone and ambulance and let her die.

Harry made a bold phone call to the terrorists (because we do negotiate with terrorists) except that was all a cunning ruse too and Dimitri had in fact blown the communications to hell, allowing a loop of faces and Harry on the phone to be played (somehow). Armed Met burst into the building and apprehended the cyber terrorists. Hooray!

It would seem however that Malcolm handed Lucas a fake Albany file, prompting him to break into Malcolm's house (Lucas has done a mighty heel turn in these last few episodes...) only to find it stripped out. Spooky.

Welcome Returns
Colin Salmon's comedy American accent.
Malcolm.

Tariq's Tank Tops
Green.

Quote of the Week
'I've got a terrible crick in my neck, you see' Harry (you probably had to be there)
Oh, and
'Oi, Evershed, stop being nosy' Dimitri

NEXT WEEK
Lucas! Ruth and Harry! Ruth and Lucas! Lucas with a gun! Schoolchildren!

This Thing...

2010-10-25T11:20:00.002+01:00

Right, better do one of these things. I'm quite tired, insomnia, feeling ill and having to get up at 8 are not happy befellows. Do I have diabetes? I might have diabetes... Anyway, today's not about diabetes per se, but rather about John Peel.

Unbelievably it's been 6 years since the definitive disc jockey and music journo John Peel left this confusing world of nonsensical hip-hop and mass-produced rubbish from Cowell's high waistband and frankly who can blame him? One cannot overstate the impact that Peel had on the British music scene. Any presenter that does not count him as an influence is either a liar or not worth listening to anyway. While he may have supported the wrong team, he was nonetheless a towering genius. There isn't really much else to say.

He had diabetes, you see. Hence the tenuous link...

Essentially, Peel was and is a legend and we shall never see his like again.

I'm getting very bad at these...

I'm sure things will pick up again soon, particularly if, say, someone fancies handing me a job in the media in some capacity...

Apologist...

2010-10-22T23:57:00.002+01:00

This isn't good enough. In fact it's being written on a phone, that's how bad it is. As you may have guessed, there is no FriPic. It's getting increasingly difficult to do, but I will try (honest) though it would be easier if someone could, say, shower me with cash or provide me with a London-y creative type job (I'm quite cheap and I make excellent tea). Any takers? Is that a no?

The Apprentice: Bread...

2010-10-21T14:10:00.005+01:00

So another week another early morning phone call from Lord Sugar's office. Alex Tiggywinkle was first to the phone (Baggs was slightly slower to emerge from his hibernation) and summarily informed the others to get up to be ferried to the usual posh-ish location and informed that they would have to bake and sell bread/cakes/pastries... a bakery task, essentially. A bakery task.

A lot of cooking tasks this series, perhaps prepping all the candidates for the inevitable positions as pub chefs, baristas and bar staff. Lester and Melissa/Jenny Eclair/Lady Gaga showed huge interesting in the PM role and inexplicably the coiffured Melissa won out. Over on the other side, comedy surgeon/businessman Shibby (think Beaker meets Spence from Holby City) put himself up on the chopping block. They showed another classic Shibby VT at this point. I swear they give him a script and record it several times, going "can you be... even more twattish" after every take.

Melissa was looking increasingly like she'd lied about being a catering manager as she failed to pick out which bakery goods people liked. She continually crumbled under the pressure and eventually decided on 'mixed fruit jam croissants', under pressure from Full Metal Jacket who was blowing his top (not a surprise for anyone who read that news story I posted up last month). It was to the boardrooms, then, to pitch their baked goods. Cue the team sitting in silence unable to work out basic calculations.

When Shibby's team turned up to the same pitch, they were all business. Firing out cheap prices for massive orders and then high fiving each other outside the boardroom. All well and good until the three tasked with working in the bakery practically all had coronaries. "We're not making croissants!" "We are now!" Sandeesh was a leading dissenting voice, 'stirring' as the kids would no doubt say... the bastards. In the car, Paloma, so keen to press the hotel for another 500 bread roll orders and the croissants, was now bemoaning the situation... and blaming the bakery team for not telling them what they could make.

Over in the other team's bakery Full Metal Jacket was joking about their pitching team's ability (or rather lack thereof). He may have his real-world indiscretions, but I like Full Metal Jacket. He seems like a real person rather than the brash, arrogant automatons that flood every series. But then this was a week full of revelations, as the erinaceous Alex became a character full of pathos and I found myself rooting for him as he leapt to the rescue with some uncooked dough weights.

In Shibby's bakery, the revolution was in full swing, as the entire team ignored the hotel order. This threw a spanner in the works at Beaker's next pitch where had a bit of a teenage strop about a large order, muttering "you know, we're not supermen" into his ledger. Paloma reprimanded him, to which Beaker replied with the fairly valid point that they can't agree to orders they can't fulfill.

In Melissa's bakery, Full Metal Jacket was running the show to plaudits from Nick (something that very rarely happens) and to teary thanks from the team leader herself. Shibby, wearing a bright, stripy jumper delivered the news that they hadn't been able to fulfill the hotel order. As a surgeon one would hope that he was able to deliver bad news. Simply put, he wasn't. If he explained to me that my kidney transplant had not been a complete success in the same way that he told the hotel chef that he only had 16 bread rolls, it would have been Beaker who was in need of an organ donor.

Baggs was being mouthy again this week, in charge of Melissa's market stall. Melissa herself had an argument with Alex (who appeared slightly less sympathetic when he started bringing up his 11 A* GCSEs) before being reigned in by the ever effecient Stella. Eventually they managed to sell all their produce (albeit on the cheap), something that their opponents were seemingly incapable of.

In the boardroom it was of course revealed that Shibby's team had lost, leaving a dejected looking team including Surrey Investment Banker Bates. Bates has that imperious yet glassy-eyed and absent look about him, constantly swaying his head from side to side as if it was disconnected from his body. I'm not sure he even said a word in the boardroom before Shibby elected to bring back Paloma and Sandeesh.

"I think we were on different wavelengths" said Shibby. "We clearly were. I'm a businesswoman and you're a joke." Retorted Paloma, one of the first classic boardroom fight soundbites of the series. Shibby had a Downfall moment and over the course of the episode increasingly became a joke character, snorting with inappropriate laughter and generally losing the plot. However Sandeesh had effectively sabotaged the task from the inside and had just remained quiet. So, given Joy's firing last week, surely she would have to go. Sandeesh however flashed her enormous eyes at Lord Sugar and he gave her another chance. Shibby was predictably fired.

The Quiet One
Liz Locke. She's that one who hasn't really done anything yet. In fact you probably won't even recognise her from that name. That's why she's going to win.

Help...!

2010-10-20T00:56:00.004+01:00

This is somewhat of a plea, even though I don’t really enjoy asking for aid through the medium of this blog (although some would say the entire thing is a ‘cry for help’).Essentially, I need your aid for this.

Since I discovered this summer that Edinburgh is basically the best thing since sliced bread, I've been enormously keen to go there in a professional capacity, despite the fact that it's possibly the least financially viable idea known to man. However, Ideastap have been crazy enough to offer the incentive of stumping up a cool 10 grand to two new productions. Now, Ideastap are notorious for making some odd funding decisions (one need only look at the winners of last months Editor's Brief), but it's surely worth a bash.

So what's the project, well, to put it simply, I've no idea BUT we have more than a month to work it out. Is hoping for a perfect blend of young comedy talent, performance poetry, short films and sketches to prove to facile toff commentators like Quentin Letts that young British comedy is in fact in rude health too much to ask?

So, if you're a comedian/poet/director/writer between 18 and 25, drop me a message and we'll see if we can't bloody get to Edinburgh.

Kooks...

2010-10-19T14:54:00.003+01:00

We might as well kick off with This Week's Topical Touchstone which one could hardly ignore as it was treated with the customary, classic Spooks heavy-handedness. Yes, it was the Israeli/Palestine situation and the eagerness of Lighthouse (or 'Obama' as we know him) to engineer peace talks. But we all know better than to think that political forward thinking can ever actually take place in the world of Spooks (or even the real world for that matter)...

This weeks' plot was decidedly convoluted (as usual) and revolved largely around a double Lebanese agent switcheroo. We quickly (I say quickly, it took the actual plot about 20 minutes to get there) worked out that an attempt was being planned on the president's life. Of Beth and Dimitri, who had been tasked with babysitting the delegations one went about their job in an ordinary way and the other got beaten up... again. Guess which? Yes, Beth got tied up and nearly died for the... I've lost count of the number of times. She wasn't alone however. Lucas nearly died too, his assailant resolving to leave him tied to a drain by his belt however. (It was at no point explained how Lucas got free from the drain. Presumably there's a whole episode here where some yoofs nick his trousers and he has to bite through the leather belt and then chase them). Lucas' attacker later gave himself up and explained that he wasn't the one who planned to kill Lighthouse and he had instead been trying to kill the one who planned to kill Lighthouse. Got that? Good.

There was some sort of minor argy bargy between the delegations involving lunch (I didn't particularly understand this bit, but then I was trying to read an article about Wayne Rooney on the Guardian website at the time, so cut me some slack, will ya...). The Palestinian head made a joke about dates, I forgot to mention that earlier... oh and the Israeli ambassador was called Levi Cohen, which I believe is the first name listed under Jewish Characters in the Hamfist Guide to TV Stereotypes. Cohen doesn't get on with his daughter, also a politician, mainly because he allowed her to be kindapped in 2001... you think she'd be over that now but apparently not (whatevs... etc.).

The main point was that Beth's captor cut himself in the right thigh with a sterilised knife (one hopes that he dresses to the left) and limped away, leaving her to engineer an escape by using a jack to break the radiator pipe she was tied to and tip off Lucas about the limpy assassin (big on the old limps this series). Ruth and Tariq quickly tried to work out if a shot was possible from the roof of the hospital. Tariq noting that it would indeed be 'a record' 1.67 miles and (repeatedly) that there was another building in the way. They quickly called Dimitri who reeled off an array of astonishing ballistics based facts and informed them that it was basically impossible. Ruth pointed out that the sniper might have prepped the building beforehand and sure enough the sniper fired off a quick salvo, taking down the Palestinian rep. Lucas loomed behind him however and when the perp went for his handgun, shot him down.

The sniper died with an unsettling grin, so unsettling in fact that even stony Lucas was unsettled by it and phone Ruth to explain just how unsettling it all was. He'd achieved his goal of creating chaos at the front of the hotel and forced the president to take the back door where someone else would be waiting. Dimitri ran off to find Anna Cohen, who had conveniently disappeared.

We built to a stunning denouement where Anna Cohen turned herself into a walking diabetic bomb by injecting chemical explosives with her Insulin syringes. A masterful play, even by Spooks standards of implausible heel turns and improvised weaponry. Fortunately Dimitri whose growing on me each week was able to talk her down and disarm his second bomb in 2 weeks, all the more impressive when you consider that one of them was a human.

Back at HQ we were treated to the usual 2 or so minutes bolted on the end that we don't really need. Lucas was told that the sniper had been fed false intel the whole time and that Anna was completely responsible. Another hard day over, Lucas/John went to Maya only to find that her partner Michael was home and that Michael was Vaughn! Yes Vaughn faked a Stroke (somehow) and was in fact cleverly pulling all the strings somehow. There was not even one mention of Albany this week. So much for finding out why the file was just a Turner. We may never know...

Character of the Week
Dimitri was this week's go to guy with all manner of ballistics and explosives expertise. He identified chemical explosives instead of insulin from one sniff (mad skills) and persuaded Anna not to spray her innards around the office suite. Top work from the new boy.

Clamour of the Week
Over on the Guardian blog there are calls for Tariq to be given something more than clunky exposition by way of lines. I, however, suspect that Tariq is the sort of character that would remain largely silent, were he not tasked with explaining most of the plot and implausible technological leaps (unless he was playing Call of Duty with a headset).

Next Week
Lucas! John! Lucas/John! Harry & Ruth! Compromised Grid! Shouting!

Bicentennial Blog...

2010-10-18T10:38:00.003+01:00

Nope, not a remake of the not-so-seminal Robin Williams robot drama, but rather this is, unbelievably, the 200th post on this blog. How has it been? To quote the immortal Dan from Him & Her played by the magnificent Joe Wilkinson 'peaks and troughs, peaks and troughs'.

So, you know what I'm going to do? I'm going to forc- suggest you read some of the classic blogs.

There was last Christmas' essay on my favourite horror tales, which seems all the more appropriate given both the repeats of Mark Gatiss' fantastic Crooked House and his equally brilliant History of Horror, this was followed a mere month later by a blog about a new miniseries concerning the Borgias (which as yet doesn't seem to have materialised) (vintage me for all you blog fans). We saw the first Twilight film and my cogitations on that subject (a bit like a far superior text-based version of Vampires Suck), followed by the sequel. There were some seminal FriPics like Lambing Live (yet to be sued), the Election (the government hate me) and Modern Art (I'm definitely right about this) all as prescient today as they were, ooh, several months ago.

The lifetime of the blog has seen the Winter Olympics (I had a lot to learn about Curling at that point...), a Eurovision, the broadcasting of the series Spartacus: Blood & Sand, the World Cup, both Junior Apprentice and real Apprentice and a highly academic post about comedy (that's academic as in scholarly rather than irrelevant).

So, here's to the next 200 posts of cult comedy, cynicism and various other c-words!

(If anyone has any personal favourites ((though I'm sure you've all got better things to do with your lives)) feel free to leave a comment. You followers are all brilliant)

Off the Rails...

2010-10-15T17:43:00.002+01:00

Today has been spent largely on trains, so I imagine that fellow commuters would frown upon me attempting to record a comedy sketch in their presence (though it would be amazing to try and do that in the Quiet Carriage). This has somewhat put the FriPic on ice, I'm afraid. Perhaps you can rewatch some of my past glories (and epicfails) instead. Thank you for your understanding (and please take all your baggage with you, or we'll have to blow it up).

The Apprentice: Life's A Beach...

2010-10-14T00:01:00.006+01:00

We began in the house with the weary candidates being called to Heathrow's Terminal 5 where a big TV with SiralunsLordSugar's head on it (yes, it's already descended into some manner of Orwellian hell) - interestingly Lord Sugar had 'urgent business' to attend to (remembering what it was like when Amstrad actually made serviceable technology, perhaps?) - who instructed them to create some manner of beach equipment and then pitch it to three businesses. Stella was called up to the boys and promptly made Project Manager. Mussolini last week was quite an act to follow. Laura was made PM of the girls (and believe me, that's probably not the last time that you'll see those two letters in conjunction with the girls team this week...).

The surgeon's suggestion of some sort of 'massive hand on a stick' with which to apply suncream onto your own back received a deafening silence. Jamie Lester came up with the idea of a towel... but a towel that was also a pillow... and a fridge. All they needed was the name... And yes it was hedgeho- I mean, Alex, who was full of ideas. This was the man who was convinced that he'd invented the bendy bus and within seconds he began an altercation with Bates under which some of the incidental music from Curb Your Enthusiam was appropriately played. The erinaceous Mr. Epstein offered the name Cuuli (with umlauts). The next task was designing the prototype. Jamie Lester claimed that 'when I open my mouth, I'm not holding back', apparently he wasn't thinking either as he described his glorified towel to a bemused looking manufacturer (he went on in his VT to talk about being like a champagne bottle an for a moment, it was as though he was being played by Russell Tovey - watch it for yourselves and see).

Over with the girls, Paloma, who wouldn't look out of place as an all-action heroine in a dodgy 90s Sky TV drama, was attempting to conduct some manner of market research... and failing spectacularly. Mouthy Joanna offered a book rest. A classically misguided Apprentice invention. This resulted in a quick rush to design a prototype that not everyone in the team was entirely convinced by.

Thoughts then turned to advertising. The boys spent most of their evening persuading Stella to get into a bikini. What a surprise that the Complete Banker Bates turned out also to be a mild misogynist... In the surf shop, Full Metal Jacket demanded a top with tassles. The girls, meanwhile, continued their spate of wild arguments and Laura was averse to people talking, apparently, so averse, in fact, that she had to leave the room to be consoled by Joy.

The next morning, as the Cuuli was unveiled to widespread approval, the ladies' Bookeze was also unveiled to... well... this:
What appears to be a heady mixture of bemusement and disgust. The Bookeze: easy to assemble in a mere 8 pieces... oh and they glossed over the fact that you seemingly have to take the book out to turn the page.

The next stage was preparing the pitch, always a joyous moment for the Apprentice viewers - who will make an unbridled arse of themselves? To say Bates lacked natural charisma is an understatement comparable with 'that whole business from 1914 to 1918 was bit rum, wasn't it?'. Stella tried to break it to him that she wanted Lester to pitch while Full Metal Jacket's best attempts to let Bates down gently fell on ungrateful, borderline-teenage ears. Despite Bates sulking afterwards, this was somewhat of a Waterloo for Stella proving that she was capable of standing up to the male bravado and forcing her own feelings home. Bates interpreted this as 'piss-poor' and that 'it wouldn't damage my confidence at the end of the day anyway, because I don't really care what she thinks... and, just shut up, you're not my real Mum'... Alright, so I made that last bit up, but that's essentially where it was headed. As it happens however, Bates was still allowed to do the pitch anyway. Go figure.

Pitching for the girls was Jenni Eclair-alike Melissa. Joanna carried over last week's handbags and began taking jibes at the jargon-filled pitch. I would say that it would join the ranks of 'ideation' and other classic Apprentice lingo but it was so inpenetrable that I can't remember any of it.

The time for planning was over and the real pitches began. Hewer, holding his pen like a cigar and classic sour-faced expression plastered on, oversaw Bates' monotonous attempt to prove to Boots that the Cuuuuuli was more than just a towel. Which he couldn't... because it isn't...

In the car to the girls' first pitch, Joanna had a brief altercation with Joy, seemingly over the fact that the latter actually had some semblance of decorum and moral decency. Their mid-pitch assembly demo invariably resulted in disaster, with at least 1 of the 8 pieces being put in the wrong place/the wrong way up, etc. Any product where you have to insert the caveat 'you'll find it's slightly bendy' is almost certainly not worth investing in.

So, to the board room! Lord Sugar didn't have any urgent business to attend to this time and thankfully was available in person, not via TV link with Nick wearing a giant foam hand and pointing it at the unlucky candidate (although, in some ways I like that idea more). The Shug seemed impressed by the Cuuli itself, but less so by the name and immediately quizzed Epstein the hedgehog on the use of umlauts, raising the marvellous point about Germans nicking sunloungers with their towels first thing in the morning (we've all been there, right kids?)

We learnt that the girls had turned down an offer from Boots because they'd demanded exclusivity and consequently lost the task by failing to sell any units... at all... Madness. The catfighting began, Laura uttered the phrase 'I managed to the best of my ability', the best of her ability being what Bates would presumably describe as 'piss-poor'. Joanna turned on Joy and turned out to be a real bitch, pressganging Laura into bringing back the target the unfortunate Joy instead of the admittedly equally fairly blameless Sandeesh.

For Joy, it was a lack of get-up-and-go that proved her undoing. Ironically, she was made to get-up-and-go by SiralunLordSugar's finger of fate. Boom! On a serious note, Laura or Joanna definitely should have gone though...

The Quiet One: Stuart Baggs 'the brand' was very quiet this week, presumably realising that, while there are many words to end that sentence, 'brand' definitely isn't one of them... which they didn't... 'cause it is...

Next Week: Baking. Remember the 100 chickens? I imagine it'll be like that.

Mine...

2010-10-13T16:32:00.004+01:00

So, the rescue of the Chilean Miners is underway and handled in a customarily sensitive fashion by Sky News who spent most of last night reminding us that 'of course, it could all still go wrong', in the same way that they implied that the Raoul Moat standoff could turn into Infernal Affairs at any moment. Fortunately it transpired that after much banging and testing, the Fenix was finally put into use hauling forth the miners from their earthy prison. (Of course Murdoch ruined this too by placing a counter on the screen which stood at '0 out of 33 miners' for a good 6 hours or so).

On a similarly bleak note, today is also Margaret Thatcher's birthday. Interestingly that fateful day also signifies what could be the first major crack to appear in the Coalition, as it transpired that the Lib Dem's pre-election promise to abolish tuition fees turned out to be bollocks. Quite how 'abolition' turned into 'raised to an unlimited amount', I'm still not entirely sure. Poor old Cable is seemingly being scapegoated in a manner not seen since the 1930s and it surely cannot be long until he realises that Clegg has not only hoodwinked the public but his own party as well.

Still, it's the Apprentice tonight. So it's not all bad...

Dukes...

2010-10-12T15:14:00.003+01:00

Break out the implausibly named chemicals, it's time for this week's Spooks series blog! (As always, here's the link to last week's to keep you in the loop). Weirdly, last night I had a dream that I was in Spooks. It was all very exciting and not quite everything actually made sense. So it was pretty true to form, really. I was Armitage. I even did the Armitage voice and everything.

I must confess that I missed the pre-credits stuff this week and had to go back to iPlayer it, seeing as most weeks half of the entire plot unfolds before the title sequence. This was not one of those occasions however as we were given only a minute or so of fairly banal action with a 'holyshitwhyhavetheygotallthoseguns?!??!' moment at the end. As you'll remember, we've covered Al Qaeda, Somali pirates, Nigerian oil tycoons and last week the Russians, so where to go from there? The Chinese, of course. It was three Chinese agents responsible for the 'holyshitwhyhavetheygotallthoseguns?!!?!?!?' just before the credits, but forget that because Armitage/Lucas North/John (and his torso of many tattoos) is in bed with Laila Rouass/Maya (it is Maya, I checked). There would seem to be trouble in paradise however as a labelled photo on the table in Lucas' lovely open plan kitchen (civil service cuts not quite reaching MI5 yet) would seem to indicate that someone, possibly Vaughn (he of the lopsided face), was onto them.

Meanwhile Beth was using all of her charm attempting to turn a CSS agent Kai (a brilliant turn by Benedict Wong, who was equally fantastic in the Countdown episode of The IT Crowd... the range, dear readers, the range!) to get some valuable intel on their business in England and Harry had heart-to-hearts with both the home secretary and Colin Salmon (who was playing a slightly ropey-accented CIA agent), both of whom warned him not to tread on Chinese toes in the present climate. So naturally, Lucas and Dimitri (yes, Dimitri was let out of the office again this week) were tasked with breaking into the Chinese Embassy. Tariq, who gets lumbered with some awful technobabble-infused exposition (I do miss Malcolm, by the way), poor bloke, lets them in via the window where they roam the building with torches (not exactly Splinter Cell, is it?).

As it happens, someone's dropped a bollock and tripped the alarms. We know this because Kai politely phones Beth to warn them, even though she scared him away earlier that day (again... charm). The CSS man guides Dimitri and Lucas to the roof before Lucas undoes all the hard work by finding another way out 'because they'll know we had inside help if we both go out this way'. Lucas decides his way out is smashing a window and nicking some laptops, then feigning innocence when angry-looking, gun-toting Chinese officials catch him. He puts on a London-ish accent (the perfect disguise) and claims to be a petty-ish criminal, leaving the Chinese to hand him over to the Met, the fools.

Beth met Kai again, with both Lucas and Dimitri watching from afar (Dimitri was really earning his paypacket this week). Lucas' watching was interrupted by a phonecall from Vaughn, who was in a pub for reasons which I don't fully understand, who told him to get the 'Albany' files. Cut To: the MI5 'Interrogation Suite' (yes, this is what flashed up on the screen, so it must be true) where Tariq was conducting a polygraph (or presumably something less technically dubious) on Kai. Lucas headed for the mainframe to look up Albany, but bottled it, realising the implications. I was disappointed to learn that his username was simply 'Lucas North', I was hoping for something along the lines of 'FSBsux' or 'NorthbyNorthwest' or at least 'LNorth36' or something.

The mysterious clueword of the episode was 'Amphitrite' and it was Ruth (yes, even Ruth was allowed onto the grid this week, mostly for her remarkable translating abilities) who was tasked with finding out. Displaying some impressive spy skills including pretending to have Diabetes and ignoring fire alarms, she eventually discovered Amphitrite to be not a dangerous chemical (we had enough of that last week) or even the desalination tech that they originally thought, but rather a woman: a certain Dr. Jiang. Who was being held in a room by the CIA, who had been tasked with protecting her from the Chinese (so even Colin Salmon was talking smack).

Lucas, still needing someone with Level 7 clearance to be his fall guy, picked poor old Stephen Owen, a 22 year old data analyst - easily the least cool job in MI5... like being a dinnerlady at Apple or Andrew Ridgeley- and stole his details with which to nab the Albany file. Which turned out simply to be Turner's The Battle of Trafalgar (depicting the famous pre-battle message flags). All that trouble for a jpg of (an admittedly brilliant) painting, duly delivered to Vaughn on a USB stick with ample time for a quick voddy and to rush to the hospital to embrace Maya.

Meanwhile, Kai was being played by the Chinese all along and turned out to be an unwitting triple agent and was promptly thrown into the back of a transit with Dr. Jiang. The secret services were warned that any intereference would result in a bomb being set off in London. Cue Dimitri's time to shine. Not content with being outside the office on at least 3 separate occasions, he had to diffuse a bomb while Beth, Lucas and what appeared to be a Met task force intercepted the van. Kai went crazy and got embroiled in a standoff, as it all went a bit John Woo. Dimitri melted the bomb with a Zippo lighter (who knew?) while Beth took a leaf out of Lucas' book and yelled Kai into submission.

And they all lived happily ever after... nope... this is Spooks. We finished with more tension between Harry and Ruth, young Stephen being arrested for compromising the mainframe and it transpired that the CSS agents had another agenda as well as Amphitrite... none other than a black and white photo of our own Lucas! Which meant that the negative shot at the end of the show was of a black and white photo. A negative of a black and white photo. Confusion at its best.

Exchange of the Week
More than just a quote this time. It just had to be the conversation between Harry and the home secretary.

HARRY (regarding the Chinese): So we should simply roll over for the bigger dog?
TOWERS: If you roll over you sometimes get your tummy tickled... [stares lugubriously at takeaway coffee] I don't think they put the hazelnut syrup in.
HARRY (does uimpressed face (you know the one... the Harry unimpressed face) gets up to leave, nods): Home secretary... [leaves]

Next Week
Israeli paramilitaries! Beth tied up! Harry and the home secretary argue! Business as usual!

Side-Projects...

2010-10-11T11:37:00.003+01:00

I've made a foray into performance punk poetry (think sort of John Cooper Clarke meets Stewart Lee) under a pseudonym and some poems have been put up on a tumblr. I'm aware that having to post a link to the page will compromise my pseudonym, but then again, there's not much point in a pseudonym if no-one reads your work anyway, so here's the site and you know nothing about whether I'm real or he's real or whether we're the same or different, right guys?

(A more serious question, if anyone knows of any decent poetry open nights, I'd be grateful)

Friday Pictorial the Twenty Seventh: Sugar...

2010-10-08T12:26:00.002+01:00

This one needs very little introduction. 99.9% of you understand where this is going...

The Apprentice: Sausage Connoisseurs...

2010-10-07T17:13:00.007+01:00

Yes ladies and gentlemen, last night saw the majestic return of The Apprentice and, as we hoped and predicted in last week's candidates preview, this series is blessed with an abundance of marauding bellends. Stuart Baggs, who we earmarked last week as a real card, opened the bidding at only 49 seconds in with 'everything I touch turns to sold', only to be quickly followed by surgeon and business owner (surely you can't do both without detriment to one or the other) Shibby Robati who claimed, much to his own glee, that his 'first word wasn't "mummy", it was "money"'. Surrey investment banker (if ever 3 words were harder to come back from) Chris Bates threw his hat into the ring by claiming he was an 'all-round exceptional human being' (or something equally twattish)... as if we wouldn't hate him already. In fact, many of the candidates' statements were so obtuse, hackneyed or genuinely stomach-turning, that it was as though they'd simply hired actors to play a parody of typical Apprentice candidate archetypes.

Astonishing opening gambits and we were yet to have the credits. When the strains of Prokofiev were finally over, we saw the candidates shoved into the board room at midnight and ordered to go to Smithfield and craft some sausages. It had all the ingredients for a classic first task - forcing the contestants to wear silly hats, a good chance of potentially fatal cock-ups and a wee bit of sales tagged on the end. First the teams had to pick a name, a simple task, one would imagine. The women decided on Apollo (named after the space missions rather than the Greek god, apparently) and the men argued over whether 'Fusion' was more cliched than 'Synergy', eventually deciding that it was and completely missing the fact that they are both equally cliched and mean exactly the same thing. Joanna accepted the title of project manager after Melissa shirked duty despite showing initial interest. For the boys 34 year old Dan Harris stepped up to the plate, banging the table and roaring. "It was like being back in the dressing room" said Karen Brady, providing you with all you need to know about what it's like to be a woman working at a football club run by Davids Gold and Sullivan.

The first step of the sausage task was buying the meat. Synergy, having decided to pursue a sausage with the minimum legal requirement of meat in it (surely that won't come back to bite them in the arse, will it...?), charged off seeking the cheapest price available. Apollo, meanwhile, attempted to create a gourmet sausage with a staggering 70% meat. Meat acquired, both teams moved into the kitchen, taking a crash course in sausage manufacturing (the entire episode was essentially one, long, strung-out innuendo) before forming a production line with varying degrees of success. Dan quickly turned into a sausage Mussolini, all yelling and arm-folding, Joanna managed to get a degree of consensus and harmony from Apollo.

In Synergy the 'characters' certainly came to the fore. "Who is doing the mincing?!" demanded Mussolini. Baggs carped on about something or other, Epstein (you'll remember from last week, that he was convinced he invented the bendy bus and had been sacked from Hagen Daazs) spent his time looking like a hedgehog and Jamie Lester (who looks like a composite of all the previously successful male candidates) branded Dan Mussolini "a nob". Among the quieter ones were Raleigh Addington (the only candidate approaching Bates in the appallingly posh stakes) and indeed last week's blog's pick Christopher 'Full Metal Jacket' Farrell of the hidden convictions.

Both teams struggled with the sausage skinning machine, something that never looks graceful or impressive at the best of times. Apollo's simply fired out quantities of minced meat seemingly at random, while Synergy's rusk-heavy mix came out resembling something between pet food pellets and a turd, blocking up the nozzle in the process. Eventually both teams managed to create enough processed cylinders of meat to flog to an unwitting London public.

This was where it counts. Graft and sales. Stuart Baggs (who has his own erinaceous quality, now that I think about it) came out of the blocks quickly, terrifying potential 'sausage connoisseurs' with a bizarre combination of sexual aggression and unyielding hounding. "It's 100% meat" he claimed. Right, so that's 100% 42% meat then...? Epstein manned the griddle, presumably resembling a hedgehog too much to be of any use in a high-pressure sales situation. Mussolini led a splinter group on door to door sausage-selling, less a trailblazing march into a gap into the market and more harranging innocent West London residents by buzzing and yelling "do you want some sausages?!" into a receiver.

The women focussed on flogging their 'gourmet' sausages to banker-y types and a restaurant with a good degree of success. Meanwhile the boys subteam brought their limp, rusk-filled excuse for a sausage to a female chef who displayed more business acumen than the entire team had for the rest of the episode and drove a hard bargain and we were whisked back to the boardroom for the fallout. Sometime the editing can be misleading, but it certainly seemed that the women had adopted the correct business strategy, whereas the blokes were a bunch of in-fighting neanderthals.

Mussolini screwed up his already slim chances immediately in a bizarre display of non-adherence to board room etiquette and was quickly informed to "sit in a conventional manner" by Lord Sugar. One of my favourite ever Sugar quotes, I think, up there even with "you've gone from anchor to wanker". Nick and Karen gave their verdicts and numbers and the boys had lost by £15. Much, much closer than anyone would have guessed. At the inquest, previously subdued Raleigh laid into Mussolini branding his behaviour 'shameful' with all the air of abused spouse. Mussolini correctly brought both hedgehogs back into the board room and, frankly, Siralun mi'Lud Sugar should have fired all three.

Epstein was reminded of his own failure by Sugar and quickly gave a hurt speech about 'tough times', still hard to accept from a man with such a degree of hedgeholio about him. Baggs dug himself into an enormous hole with a smattering of appalling trash-talk and sickening sycophancy but inevitably it was the slouchy Mussolini that faced the finger of doom.

The One You Won't Remember: Sandeesh (Nope? Me neither...)

Next Week: Beach Holiday Paraphernalia

Pudge Speaks Out...

2010-10-06T14:38:00.003+01:00

Yes, it's David Cameron's speech today, so this will be a political-ish post. I should point out that I can't actually watch the speech at the moment, so I will instead be following it by watching the worm reaction tracker on the Guardian website. As of several minutes ago, he'd plummeted to -250 there or thereabouts. I'm not John Pienaar but I'm pretty sure that represents fairly resounding disapproval and, brilliantly, Cameron isn't even on the stage yet, so this should be a treat...

As the speech is yet to take place, this is very much a pre-emptive blog, so I'll supply you with some things you may well hear, a sort of conference bingo, if you will.

Awful fawning over being in power.
Some cheap jibes at the previous government.
Apologising that they happened to miss several announced policies out of their manifesto...
Attempting to justify marriage tax breaks despite it costing more than any of the savings made from the equally flawed removal of tax credits.
Thatcher - (I notice that Cameron, in fact, just called her "the greatest peacetime prime minister of the 20th century" - I'm fairly certain that tells you everything you need to know about how the next decade or so will go...)
Attempts to prove that the coalition is held together by something more than quasi-Tory Clegg and reams of Duck tape...
Some new euphemism for 'rolling back the state'...

On the plus side, The Apprentice starts tonight, so there'll be plenty more fawning twats to direct your anger at, expect all the fallout from the first firing in tomorrow's blog.

Flukes...

2010-10-05T15:29:00.007+01:00

It's time for the Spooks Series Blog the third and yesterday's was a classic example of Spooks formula. Pre-credits bloodbath, running, techy talk, exposition, pouting, world-ending chemicals inexplicably being stored in Central London - the LOT.

At the opening, all eyes were on the Azakstan Freedom Front (Azakstan is a bit like Kazakhstan only slightly more fictitious, one assumes) as they attempted ot break into a research facility before being promptly shot dead by balaclav-clad men including our very own Lucas.

Yup, it was a Russian-themed episode which can only mean comedy Russkie accents ahoy (one of Spooks' real vices) and plenty of terrifying bioweaponary. Harry (Peter Firth is literally the best actor in the world when it comes to being singularly uimpressed by everything) is eventually persuaded to allowed well-dressed FSB agent Viktor onto the grid to track Azis Aibek (who you will also remember as definitely non-Russian, non-handicapped Anderson in Sherlock, one of several facts to the detriment of his credibility as a terrorist from the ex-Soviet Union) an escaped AFF member with a gammy leg who was attempting to unleash an implausibly name but incredibly potent chemical weapon.

Lucas, Beth, Viktor and Dimitri (yes, even Dimitri was let off tea-making duties for this one) headed to the Tube to stop him in his tracks. Which brings us neatly on to This Week's Missed Topical Touchstone - The Tube Strike. Imagine the beauty of Aibek arriving at Charing Cross with his bag of bioweapons only to find that all major lines were closed. Instead This Week's Topical Touchstone seemed to be the Cold War (and to an extent the Georgia/Russia conflict over South Assetia) neither of which are topical per se. All parties eventually found Aibek (surprisingly nippy for a man with a limp) who dropped his bag (which was in fact empty anyway) and headed for the surface, with both Lucas and Viktor (two men of athletic build without limps) somehow failing to catch him up.

He was heading for Doctor Kirby (who some of you will remember as Kemp, the werewolf-exploding priest cum evil genius of Being Human series 2, one of several facts to the detriment of his credibility as nice guy scientist who just happened to help invent one of the most dangerous chemical weapons in the history of humanity) (Donald Sumpter seems to play a lot of 'K' characters, perhaps that's where the first K went from 'Azakstan'...) to demand the location of his beloved bioweapons. He refused and was promptly beaten up (again impressive from a man with a limp) leaving limpy to take his anger out on Kirby's daughter.

Lucas, Beth and Viktor nearly caught Aibek at Kirby's daughter Meg's house, but he mananged to get out. Lucas and Beth left Viktor to console the poor girl. Viktor's idea of 'consoling' appeared to in fact be 'murder'. Yeah, that's right. Whodathunkit? That the FSB agent would turn out to be a wrong 'un? Aibek was caught and Beth's suspicion was suitable arounsed by Viktor smoking, sat on the bath with a dead Meg lying on the floor next to him.

Lucas and Viktor (fully equipped with spy camera to record the destruction of the bioweapon) travelled to the location where the dangerous chemical was cryogenically frozen and attempted to retrieve it, only for Aibek (bloody handy at escaping the authorities for a disabled man) to club them both over the head and make off with the bioweapon (when will you learn MI5?!). I say 'make off', he made it as far as the roof where Viktor followed him and shot him... just before Viktor himself was shot by Beth and the recorded footage cleverly put through Windows Movie Maker (presumably by Tariq) to make it look like Aibek murdered Viktor and made off with the swag (bioweapon) and then shown to the Russian ambassador.

Right at the end Laila Rouass turned up again (I've forgotten her character name already, I want to say 'Maya'?) - you'll remember that in this she's playing a doctor, like in Primeval, except for this time a real doctor rather than a 'doctor' specialising in the already dead or extinct species, which is surely cheating for a doctor, isn't it?- and kissed and made up (literally) with Lucas/John, who explained that he'd been in prison for 8 years (neglecting to mention that the 'prison' was run by the FSB and he was subject to torture and interrogation at every possible opportunity).

Quote of the Week
'Target's made a drop' Lucas North. Because sometimes even spy jargon has to sound like a euphemism for defecation.

Real Life Credibility Cameo of the Week
Kirsty Wark - To paraphrase a classic opening, they say you appear on Spooks twice in your career, once on the way up and once on the way down. Good to see a Newsnight presenter on again...

Bleurgh...

2010-10-04T10:59:00.002+01:00

You know how sometimes you're in a motorway services at 7:45, having got up at 5:30 and you think 'I know what'll sort me out - a black coffee' and so you head to a coffee chain (let's call them, I don't know... 'Rica') and grab a medium Americano? It's never as good an idea as it sounds.

You go for the medium, thinking '"medium" is normal-sized, right? That's how it works.' Not necessarily. They guilt trip you into buying a medium because no-one wants to ask for a small, no-one. Medium is only 'medium' because the 'large' Americano is large enough to drown a toddler in (again, I'm not advising this...), it's a large by any normal person's standards.

The caffeine then takes its toll on everything it can. Brain, bladder... all the b's, essentially. You will also spend the next 3 or 4 hours being twitchy and convinced that you're suffering from palpatations.

This is essentially a long-winded way of saying, I feel a bit bleurgh so today's blog won't be very good. Still, Spooks tonight, so at least tomorrow's will look after itself. (I mean, I still have to watch, remember what happened and come up with a concise and witty article about it, but it basically writes iself... well, I mean, I still have to write it... but... ok, it's all me. ALL ME)

Friday Pictorial the Twenty Sixth: Sustenance

2010-10-01T13:47:00.003+01:00

Another poem. Because some of your are that way inclined. Inclined to a bit of the old poetry, I mean.

The Apprentice: You're Nicked...

2010-09-30T15:25:00.007+01:00

Right, excuse the awful title, this is basically about the brand spanking new series of extended, reality, job interview show The Apprentice which is focusing on business(wo)men who have lost out in the recession. From unemployed graduates to failed entrepreneurs, the new series boasts an extensiev array of downtrodden, desperate candidates. So, as victims of the cruel cycle of business, surely this year's collection of candidates will display a good deal more humility and quiet determination? Well no. It would appear that despite the numerous failings and setbacks, the new contestants are the usual bunch of appalling, arrogant arseholes.

A 21 year old telecoms entrepreneur introduces himselves as "Stuart Baggs - the brand", another, Christopher Farrell, conveniently hid a weapons conviction and the fact that he was currently on bail for alleged fraud, yet another draws comparisons between herself and a Lamborghini (expensive, flashy and ultimately pointless given the laws in this country, presumably). It's the usual ragtag bunch of crisp-suited egotists and delusional, Machiavellian capitalists, with the odd loveable idiot thrown in for good measure.

Actually let's go back to Farrell, an ex-Army sniper who claims that he carries over his 'killer instinct' into the world of business (and apparently his personal life given some of the allegations made by his former wife in the article). Should there be a backlash about his involvement in the show? After all, most successful businessmen are fraudsters. Just look at Madoff and Conrad Black and... oh, hang on...

As I was writing this article, my attention was drawn (by the excellent Tom Searle, no less) to this candidate. Not quite sure how he aims to prove that he originally invented the bendy bus (possibly in the same way that I, as a young man, wrote a sketch about Captain Oates that I later found out basically covered the same ground and one written by Lee and Herring when I was a mere slip of a lad). The factfile goes on: 'Sacked from his first job making ice-cream at Haagen Dazs,' (it doesn't say why but presumably they let you take home one tub to eat in front of the telly whilst weeping profusely) 'Alex later found his forte in telecommunications'. I'm not entirely convinced that telecommunications counts as a 'forte', regardless of the fact that at least 3 of the other candidates also list this (just before the bit where it says they're unemployed).

Essentially, it looks a cracker of a series. A genuine criminal, a brilliantly delusional 21 year old and an equally misguided man sacked by Haagen Dazs are just the tip of the iceberg. Roll on next Wednesday as the wisened finger of truth shatters its first, already largely recession-ruined, life.

Theory...

2010-09-29T18:36:00.003+01:00

To paraphrase a great quote, the problem with writing comedy is that it takes up all your time. Sitting at a desk and trying to come up with funnies is a lot of harder than it sounds. Even if you're a regular Oscar Wilde in conversation, when attempting to come up with comedy that will work in an isolated context in front of any number of strangers, you will experience no end of despair, exhaustion and general annoyance. Add to this the fact that you have to be able to create new material and perform old material regardless of what's happening in your life and how you're feeling and you're left with a fairly complicated art form (yeah, this is one of those needlessly pretentious posts).

When writing comedy for, say, a sitcom or a play you can think of a few jokes that arise from the premise and situation and then frame the story around them, you can focus on the narrative and hope the jokes bloom organically from it or you can do the same gag for 30 years. Ideally you will have a combination of the first two (and possibly the third, if all else fails). In many ways attempting to formulate a stand-up set is very similar. Ideally a theme will run throughout the set (although this isn't always apparent) and each gag/one-liner/anecdote will link back to it. Alternatively, you can deconstruct these conventions and create comedy from the pencilled in workings of a gag that you forgot to rub out.

Musical comedy, in my experience, often reaches the point where you have one brilliant line and a tune but no real structure. Instead of taking the Leonard Cohen route of writing poetry and then fitting them to music, I usually just come up with the one cracking couplet and a jangly chord sequence and graft from there. I'm sure that more accomplished musical comedians have a far superior working method to mine.

Essentially, the main point of this is that writing comedy is very hard and it's exceptionally easy to take good comedy for granted, so, if nothing else, have a think about the work that goes in to that knob gag or that bit where someone told a lie about a current member of government. Or don't. It might ruin it for you. I don't know.

Mooks...

2010-09-28T18:27:00.005+01:00

Yes, the Spooks series blog will happen... for nothing if not appalling laziness and lack of inspiration on my part. If you don't watch it, then I like to think that this is an able substitute. (If you missed part one of the blog, it can be found here)

I'll start with This Week's Topical Touchstone as it played an enormous part in the episode. Oil barons and crises dominated the 60 minutes, as the spies attempted to foil an attempt on the life of morally questionable Robert Westhouse. As it happened, last week's theory about Beth being killed off was brushed aside before the credits (a lot of action pre-credits in Spooks, if it was American ((or Downton Abbey)) there would almost certainly have to be adverts after the opening titles...) as, despite being involved in a lift-based bloodbath she was able to snaffle a phone from a dead man's hand and get back up for some espionage action once Lucas arrived on the scene.

After the credits finally arrived we were treated to a quick title screen simply saying "Lucas" an indication that this episode would be one of those convoluted affairs so beloved of big budget American dramas where we experience events from multiple perspectives (though technically Kurosawa's Rashomon deserves the credit/blame). The episode was very complicated as we discovered that not only did Westhouse have his own assassin on hand to counter the attempt on his life but the assassins responsible for the lift massacre were in fact attempting to kill Beth, who had sold out the brother of one of the killers to the authorities.

This was all explained from 3 different viewpoints with some other bits of action thrown in. We got to see Harry get his hands dirty again as he halted Westhouse (who had also planned a coup in Nigeria... did I mention that?) in his tracks. He nabbed a briefcase full of... something (I wasn't quite paying attention at this point and was duly punished for it) and headed for the door. Meanwhile the Nigerian assassin (the original one tasked with killing Westhouse before all the other assassins turned up) aimed his gun at the door, tasked with killing the briefcase-holder. We moved into slow motion and I prepared to eat last week's words only for Beth to run into the frame and knock her boss behind a conveniently placed vehicle.

Back at HQ (they still put up where it is on the screen... surely an appalling move for a secret service...) Lucas persuades Harry to retain the services of mildy untrustworthy Beth in return for accepting the role as Section Commander (there was no haggling over pay and Lucas wasn't required to go on an ICT course). Elsewhere our hero Mr. North found time to search through some trinkets from the days before his visit to Deed Poll and, as it happens, he had been involved with Laila Rouass of Footballers' Wives and Primeval fame (she was a doctor in this... a bit like in Primeval... but a proper doctor... with a stethoscope and things...). She wasn't overly pleased to be reacquainted but then popped up again towards the end of the episode, so you make of that what you will...

Next week, the ever-present, acronymical threat of the FSB rears its ugly head and the Deed Poll business gets out of hand...

Line(s) of the Week
'... he's been to the Ukraine more times in the last 3 months than is healthy.' Harry (or something to that effect) (It's also worth noting that Harry will probably appear here every week. He gets the best lines and Peter Firth delivers them so, so well)

The Habbit...

2010-09-27T19:24:00.001+01:00

Yeah, I know I'm getting an awful habit of being busy and not really doing adequate blog posts. Don't blame me, blame life.

Here's an article about The Hobbit to tide you over...

Friday Pictorial the Twenty Fifth: Songwriting

2010-09-24T14:13:00.002+01:00

I'll apologise for this. It's 18 minutes long and doesn't even get to the original point I was trying to make. Too long, some would say (bastards, goldfish etc.) and it can't all be funny, can it? Also catch this one before the inevitable court case arises. You can say 'I saw that before he was bludgeoned to death by Hollywood lawyers'...

And yes, I do know it's 'Allied Carpets', thank you.

A Keg of Ideas...

2010-09-23T14:39:00.002+01:00

Twitter is marvellous really. It can draw your attention to all sorts of remarkable things you'd never otherwise hear about. Today's remarkable thing is IdeasTap, a sort of social network for pretentious creative types like myself. It boasts a whole host of writing briefs, opportunities and even funding! Yes, funding! (it's like the grail for us - meaning that when people go "why are you wasting your life?", you can go ((in a Humphrey Ker character voice)) "um, well I just got some funding, actually, so it's not even your business or anything anyway, so shut up, you're not my mum." Or something along those lines).

The problem lies in the fact that as a young pretentious creative, one has a tendency to imagine that one is the only exciting playwright/comedy prodigy in a sea of awful 'edgy' allegorical theatre/Jack Whitehall. This myth is rather extensively debunked by checking the profiles of other people following opportunities, almost all of whom are the same age (or younger!) and have had a good deal more success. Naturally, I lay the blame for this directly at the feet of Thatcher and her "oh, why don't we just nationalise the schools, surely that won't create even more of a educational lottery" rationale. Anyway, this is making me sound far needier than I intended...

I'm not sure what the point of today's blog is, particularly, except to perhaps reiterate the difficulty of the industry for which my skills set bests suits. Bloody typical, eh?

Be A Good Sport...

2010-09-22T12:10:00.009+01:00

Yesterday I hit a new low as a football fan. My beloved team was the victim of what is known (appallingly) in the trade as a 'cupset' as they lost to lower league opposition with an alarming display of profligacy and indolence in front of goal, spurning several hat loads of chances and going out with a whimper in a penalty shootout.

Life as a fan is never easy (unless you support Manchester United or Chelsea, in which case it's more comparable with being an Eton-educated Oxbridge graduate and wondering whether you might just be able to get into a position of power in the current government). You suffer appalling lows as your ragtag collection of overpaid mercenaries show no passion or desire and then you reach ecstatic highs as your heroes show tremendous heart to set up a plucky win against a team funded by an entire Arab country. It's never boring. Heartbreaking, infuriating, coronary-inducing, but never boring.

The season as a whole has been dire, commensurate with the state of Delhi's Commonwealth Games, really - shit flowing through the halls and a bridge collapsing (alright... even I don't really know what that last bit means). Mostly, the point is that there's a fine line between just keeping things interesting and forcing supporters to the brink of despair. The Commonwealth Games organisers are 'confident' that everything will be sorted out. Albeit a confidence not shared by the numerous big name athletes that have pulled out, the general public or even the organisers' spouses (probably). The footbridge collapse yesterday could not have come at a worse time, just as losing to Brentford on penalties could not have come at a worse time (although that would be true at any time). Just when the Delhi organisers needed to prove that they could get it together and deliver a memorable games they were given a ludicrous accident that certainly made it 'memorable', just not for the reasons that everyone had been hoping for.

Fingers crossed that by December the halls won't be flooded with excrement and a serviceable bridge (with no concerns over structural integrity) will have been erected.

The only positive? At least I'm not Titus Bramble.

(For non-sports fans he's a calamitous defender... and now a rapist... apparently)

Today's blog was brought to you by the letter 'P' for Ped Mcpartland and the tweet that started it all...

Military Intelligence...

2010-09-21T02:33:00.006+01:00

Yesterday saw the return of excellent espionage-fest Spooks, meaning that today I don't have to rely on 'the news' to write a blog. Huzzah. I know that various other outlets offer series blogs, opinions and reviews of Spooks, but this is the only one with wild tangential ramblings and little or no actual professional journalistic standard.

We were given a frankly terrifically jam-packed opener, where more took place before that credits sequence than I actually remember happening in some of the entire earlier series. Essentially, Ros (who got blown up at the end of last series - Nope? Me neither... it all seems such a long time ago...) only managed to attract 5 people to her funeral prompting Harry into a crisis of conscience. "Do you ever feel like you can't go on?" He asked Ruth, seemingly unaware of the luck he's experienced being the only main character to survive from the first series. But surely good old Harry wouldn't tender his resignation to the new home secretary later in the episode, would he? Ruth then presented him with the bombshell that Robert Glenister's marvellous home secretary had all the while been in the employ of Nightingale (shady corporation behind much of the action in the last series), prompting everyone's favourite MI5 knight of the realm to pay him a visit with some 'special' whisky. Death by whisky, arguably one of the greatest methods Spooks has ever served up.

After the credits we found Lucas North, who'd traded his sharp-lined dark shirts for a grubby khaki jacket and an accent, aboard a ship, tasked with the assassination of a top Al Qaeda (or 'AQ' as the 'professionals' call them) chief (no, not that one). He had a chat with ship's captain Dimitri (from Russia via Romford... as it happens, because he was a spy too) but before he could carry out his orders the ship was boarded by, yes, Somali pirates. Which reminds me...

Tangent #1
The topicality of Spooks is marvellous, as well as the Somali pirates there were some nice references to the Coalition thanks to the brilliantly odious new home secretary, played by the excellent Simon Russell Beale and his slightly uneasy initial relationship with stalwart of the old guard Harry. I'm surely not the first to point out that Spooks' equal parts glamorous and gritty portrayal of life in the Secret Service is perhaps a little unrealistic -at no point does Lucas North accidentally leave some crucial documents on a train, Tariq is able to reel off reams of bizarre technobabble uninterrupted by workplace discrimination and main characters are dispensed with faster than you can yell 'don't open the door, Rupert, there's a car bomb' at your telly - however, it's able to get away with providing a frankly terrifying vision of a London constantly under attack from nefarious baddies, computer hackers, ex-spies, ex-mentors of spies and environmentalists because of the flecks of topicality that it drip-feeds each episode with.

Well, the Somali pirates threw a spanner in the works. Remember that Russian prostitute played by whatsherface out of Hallam Foe and Art School Confidential that I conveniently hadn't mentioned up until this point? No, of course you don't. Anyway, she's a spy too... well, private contractor called Beth who then helps Lucas to break away from the captives and eventually escape to an airfield, leaving Dimitri to face the remaining pirates and stop them from making it to Plymouth where they planned to splatter the Queen with exploding boat debris, which he did. However said explosives had mysteriously disappeared when he went to check them, along with some submersibles (what we used to call submarines when I was a boy... except sort of robot submarines... choc full of plastic explosive). The Queen splattering was a decoy! Beth turned up in the middle of all this, basically to ask Harry for a job, prompting some more brooding from Lucas. The big news however was that explosive submersibles had breached the Thames Barrier (tick off Thames Barrier -again - on your National Security Risks bingo card) were on their way to Westminster as we speak.

The only way to stop them (after threatening an unbudging teenage hacker at gunpoint failed) was for Harry to make exactly the kind of terrible decision that had prompted him to tender his resignation in the first place. Beneath the Houses of Parliament lay an EMF bomb that would knock out all electronics within a kilometre's radius. Ruth reminded him it was a last resort and would knock out all computer systems in that area. "So the country will have to struggle on without internet pornography and Minesweeper for a couple of hours. Do it." Drawled Harry, the spirit of Ros' classic 'I am not impressed by anything' rhetoric living on despite her immolation. Ruth then pointed out that it was all computers again, for instance pacemakers and life support machines. "Bugger!" Harry's face seemed to say. Nevertheless, he gave the order. Cue befuddled Londoners staring at their kaputt mobiles on Westminster Bridge.

Wowzers trousers, all that action, surely no more major revelations can be made in this episode, right? Wrong! Harry told the home secretary to tear up his letter of resignation, providing Peter Firth a stay of execution for another year (that's worth 7 in Spooks years, mind). Elsewhere, Lucas bumped into a man who'd had a stroke who called him 'John' prompting a mortified look reminiscent of Armitage's classic turn as Guy of Gisborne, very much the real star of BBC's Robin Hood. The stroke victim then dropped a briefcase at Lucas' feet and left.

Bloody hell, eh? Revelations all round. What does Beth know? Is she really going to be killed off next week as the preview suggests (bloody preview spoilers... tsk...)? John? What's all this about John?

Well, frankly I wouldn't be surprised if it was just a curveball and he'd just gone to Deed Poll...

Line(s) of the Week:

'Don't think I won't kill you because you're a teenage girl.' Lucas
'I'm suitably ennobled.' Harry

News, What News...

2010-09-20T15:25:00.005+01:00

There's an appalling lack of bloggable news today. The Guardian website offers live-text for the Lib Dem conference and London Fashion week, pictorials of Oktoberfest and a video about tigers being capable of mating in the mountains of Bhutan. None of which can particularly be anatomised in 500 to 1000 words of ideally witty prose.

So, what to talk about, if not Clegg's Faustian pact, overflowing litre steins of Export Juergenbrau, ridiculous clothes and nobbing tigers? Well, not a lot really... erm... did you all have nice weekends? I made several thoroughly underappreciated jokes on Twitter (perhaps future civilisations will look back on them and deem them worthy of laughter) and embarked on attempting to drown myself in even more writing projects (a grand total of 2 sitcoms, 1 full length play, 3 one-act plays, 1 graphic novel, 1 radio drama, 2 short films at last census).

Sometimes life and the news outdo themselves and contrive to serve up a story about a dangerous mental winning a Mid-Term Primary or bear getting trapped in a car, yet today there is no such luck. We were given a list of people who earn more than Cameron by Auntie Beeb (in the Public Sector, not just in life in general) and top of the pile sat Sir Jock Stirrup, awarded a meaty £288, 700 a year, presumably for being the only MoD chief to actually be a fictional character from a Monty Python sketch.

In sports news, while diving to catch a well-hit Afridi 6 (admirable commitment), a MCC member of managed to stack it into some substantial metalwork. All in good fun, eh? Otherwise they wouldn't show the replays, right? Wrong! He looked as though he'd lost a fight with a grizzly and grinned at the TV cameras as his bloodied face was dabbed with a friend's hanky, clearly dying inside. The lesson here? Never try. Particularly if TV cameras are involved.

Caption Competition the First...

2010-09-17T15:24:00.003+01:00

Right, not enough time to think of/record/edit/upload a proper FriPic this week, so instead here's a wee caption competition (the Pope has become inescapable). (No idea how this will work... tell your friends, I guess)

What could perchance being going on here, followers?

Not the Pope o' Clock News...

2010-09-16T13:27:00.003+01:00

Right, I'm staying true to my new philosophy and not going to say anything about the Pope or the protestors or anything. After all, I'm not a Jeremy Vine phone-in...

So, here's a list of minor news stories to stop you all from breaking the precepts outlined last week.

Yoga Bear - A female brown bear in Finland was captured on film doing a number of Yoga streches and positions in easily the most charming story you will see all week and boasts the greatest number of 'Yogi Bear' puns outside of the 1960s or inventor of the television John Logie Baird. My favourite line from the article is 'These are not beginners' postures. Yogi bear is definitely an advanced practitioner'. (Most of the credit for this story goes to Nat Luurtsema, who posted a link to the pictures yesterday.
News of the World Paywall - Not content with simply making up their own news, every public figure's least favourite redtop is to follow Murdoch's example and charge readers for their online content. Presumably they just needed more money for hidden cameras or Ricky Hatton lookalikes or something... ahem...
Bruce Dickinson Lands Top Airline Job - Iron Maiden singer and qualified airline pilot (I love that opening to a sentence) Bruce Dickinson has been named Marketing Director of Gatwick-based charter airline Astraeus. Favourite line from this one? "In a demanding industry he is a man who can cope with pressure," Monnery said, "whether as a 757 captain or in front of 50,000 Iron Maiden fans, or senior airline and aviation managers."
And Finally...

Primary Education...

2010-09-15T15:20:00.003+01:00

As you'll remember, Or So I Thought... can never resisted delving into the baffling world of American politics from time to time and what better excuse for another vitriolic rambling than this morning's Party Primaries, in which Delaware, the state we have to thank for such revolutionaries as Henry Heimlich, inventor of the Heimlich Manoeuvre and Teri Polo, Helen Santos out of off the West Wing, elected ultra-Conservative Christine O'Donnell to a position of power.

'What's wrong with ultra-Conservatives?' I hear you cry. To which I say: "We've been through this NUMEROUS times. Have I taught you nothing?!"

To clarify, Christine O'Donnell ran on the rather audacious pro-gun, anti-abortion, anti-masturbation ticket- I can only expect that Nick Griffin is scribbling notes furiously (and, no, 'scribbling notes' is not a euphemistic expression in contradiction with that last point)- and even by Tea Party standards is a little-bit right wing. The ideology is perhaps just a little odd -Killing a foetus - WRONG, shooting another human being - FINE, Masturbating = ADULTERY - but then I wouldn't expect anything less from the Tea Party. O'Donnell, whose totally credible backers include gun-toting, blow-up politician Sarah Palin and the National Rifle Association, has won a victory that is being cheered by the Democrats too however, who see the Tea Party as an easier fight than their moderate Republican counterparts.

To be fair, they've got a point. In the article that I found out about this from (from The Guardian, of course) they refer to Tea Party supporters as 'sympathisers'. If your party members or followers are known as 'sympathisers', you're almost certainly barking up the wrong, Fascist tree. That said, if there's anywhere crazy enough to vote in Palin's gun-loving, non-masturbators, it's (*an implied tiny and very isolated section and certainly not a majority of*) America... ahem...

Where's the Beef... Oh She's Wearing It...

2010-09-14T12:53:00.004+01:00

Apparently some people have only just noticed that Lady Gaga is off the wall mental. To cut a long story short, the diminutive songstress turned up to MTV VMAs (which, to be fair has a track record for this sort of thing with, only last year, Kanye's God Complex becoming just too powerful to allow Taylor Swift to accept an award in peace) in a dress made out of meat.

Meat, of course, being the primary tailoring material for centuries... oh, hang on, no it isn't. You don't wear raw meat to an awards ceremony, you mentalist, this isn't a Tom Green film. Naturally PETA have blown their motherflipping top over this. Now, I must confess that I don't subscribe to the vegan thing, I don't have superpowers (we all love referential comedy...), but even I can tell that wearing a meat dress is a pretty stupid idea. Not least because it's highly unappealing to look at and I can only imagine that feeling the cold flesh of mutilated animal against your skin isn't the most pleasant sensation in the world.

Now, no-one would expect Lady Gaga to turn up in something normal (which ironically would actually be a much more effective and impactful statement), hell, next time she might just cut her losses and turn up wearing a hollowed out deer, however I can't help but feel that perhaps she could have considered maybe silk or, if you simply must go down the food route, tapioca or something.

Also, pretty much all her songs sound the same. A fact highlighted particularly well by any montages of her songs performed on dreadful TV talent shows. I mean they're catchy, but not to my taste really... and they all sound the same. This is in no way a personal attack on Ms. Gaga (I'm now refusing to use her honorific title), in fact I remember reading a brilliantly insightful and frank interview by Caitlin Moran that displayed Gaga as personable, self-deprecating and very human indeed, however I don't understand why she couldn't have popped into Tesco, say, and bought a cheap and cheerful little number not hacked and stitched from the flesh of a sentient being.

Saturday Night at the London Palla- Oh, Hang On...

2010-09-13T13:04:00.004+01:00

Britishness is a curious thing, tricky to quantify exactly. I know where I am on a scale of weeping at Elgar's Nimrod to putting little flags on a white van, but the two aren't necessarily mutually exclusive, yet (and allow me to be painfully middle class for a moment- although I've already given that away by admitting to the whole Elgar thing ((I just have something in my eye is all))) is there perhaps anything that presents pure concentrated Britishness quite like the Proms and, more specifically, the Last Night of the Proms. Who could argue with the flag-waving and everyone joining in (each in his or her own key ((Tom Lehrer references for the win)) of course) with Elgar's magnificent arrangements of Parry's 'Jerusalem' and 'Land of Hope and Glory'?

Well, I'll tell you who could argue with that: Bruce Forsyth and Tess Daly, that's who. For, on the very same evening as the Royal Albert Hall shook to the thundering chorus of Pomp and Circumstance March No. 1 in D Major, BBC Television centre shook to the thundering chorus of clumsy footing and celebrity clapping as another team of hapless but enthusiastic amateurs took to the floor for the launch of the new series of Strictly Come Dancing. Alright, so the events that I've listed didn't exactly coincide per se, but it sounds much more exciting this way. I should also point out that this 'launch' of Strictly Come Dancing came 3 weeks before the actual series begins and mostly resembled a PE class where Ann Widdecombe was inevitably picked last.

The roster was revealed, featuring such pop culture luminaries as Paul Daniels and Goldie, to a series of increasingly laboured gags and then paired off predictably with the show's professionals (that's 'predictably' as in the pairings were predictable, rather than them obviously being paired with professionals as opposed to say goats or members of the BNP) over what seemed like about 5 or 6 hours, with the pauses usually reserved for results shows used here simply before reading out a name in a bottom-clenchingly infuriating waste of airtime. Instead of those pauses we could have had more dances choreographed by the new team of old favourites like 'that one that won with Ramprakash' and 'the other guy, you know, the blonde one' where people drop from the ceiling on wires to swing jazz versions of pop-rock.

I say predictable pairings, by that I mean that as soon as I heard Widdecombe was involved, it was patently obvious that she would be given to Anton, who I can only assume did something to massively upset the production staff somewhere around the second series and has carved out a living as a sort of carer for the celebrities with the most left feet. I also had a suspicion that male duffer of the series Paul Daniels would be inflicted upon Ola, after her triumph last year, that proved well-founded. After each group of 3 or so pairings, Brucie would hand over to the judging panel for ludicrous conjecture from Len about 'surprise packages' and 'good pairings' based on nothing but the brand new celebrities' abilities to walk down stairs without breaking an ankle, nonsensical, superlative silliness from Bruno, camp cynicism from the maestro Craig and well, a look from Alesha that suggested she was just happy to still be there being, as she is, in no way a qualified professional dancer/choreographer.

I'll offer my own staggeringly unfounded speculations right here, right now -

Patsy Kensit - Will be one of those ones who's either really good or really rubbish.
Gavin Henson - Might just be too big a rugby player to be good at celebrity dancing. Good feet for a big lad, though.
Tina O' Brien - Oh yeah! I remember her out of off of Corrie.
Jimi Mistry - He'll do well... I've seen The Guru...
Ann Widdecombe - Could be painful, but she's no X-Factor-class mug without an iota of self-awareness. She knows exactly what she's doing. Sadly, this isn't Celebrity Big Brother and 'game-plans' won't get you anywhere if Anton can't swing you around his head like a cape.

Boom!

Friday Pictorial the Twenty Fourth: Memoirs

2010-09-10T14:58:00.002+01:00

Let's face it, none of you have actually read the Blair memoirs, right? Yeah, but have you actually read them? Hmm? Didn't think so. Don't worry though. I've bitten the bullet and digested the text for you in this handy video.

Ooh Yeah! Satire! *fist pump*

Why Can't We All Just Get Along...

2010-09-09T11:39:00.006+01:00

Twitter people will know that I spent a hefty percentage of yesterday banging on with some idealistic pseudophilosophy, but given that Pastor Terry Jones is still intent on burning the Koran on 9/11 *sic* (don't know why he can't just go back to doing the 'bishop on the landing' sketch) and a radical Muslim leader calling for retaliatory US flag burning (should be grateful it's not retaliatory US citizen burning), clearly the world has learnt nothing from several millennia of Eastern and Western philosophy. This means it's about time for Or So I Thought... to lay down some precepts of its own.

The First and most important precept is that regardless of other people's beliefs/religions/philosophy, Or So I Thought... and its readers shall not attempt to belittle or indoctrinate (apart from Scientology... that's fair game). The best example I can use to illustrate this is that I don't like Hip-Hop, I don't 'get' Hip-Hop but I'm not going to tell someone that likes it that they're living a lie and should face the empirical fact that AOR is better, because no actual good can come of it. Which brings us neatly to:

The Second is that the illusion of empiricism has caused too much philosophical hate and, as compelling as empirical evidence is, it does not automatically give its subscribers a right to be maladroit about it. Heavily linked to the first, this precept is again designed to stop people antagonising people of different belief systems. The most important tenet of this philosophy is choice. If a person is happy with the choice they've made philosophically, telling them that they're wrong, thrusting evidence, no matter how definitive, in their faces and forcing them to lose any faith they once held in anything (there being a God, there being no God, there being multiple gods etc.) is simply not going to solve any of the world's problems, many of which have in fact been caused by non-adherence to this precept.

The example most prescient here is the rather militant branch of Atheism that has emerged in the last few years. Several figures (I won't mention names) have developed somewhat of a cult of personality around themselves and have made themselves, or in some cases have inadvertently become, a god to their followers and have since used the excuse of empiricism as a shield for self-righteousness and the belittling of others. Now, I'm not saying for a moment that Atheists are more culpable than any other philosophy (Christianity has been guilty of this a number of times throughout history, ditto Islam and in Modern History perhaps the Gaza conflict is an apt example, all of which think that they have evidence too), however they ('they' is a word I'll use a lot. I'm yet to find a satisfactory school of philosophy) are the most recent example and, even then, in no way am I referring to all Atheists, but rather a select group. Naturally Evolutionary Science should be taught in schools and not Creationism, however in a good deal of writing and broadcasting there's a tendency to take a stance of aggression and sanctimony (I'm sure they'd hate the irony of many of the nouns and adjectives that I've used throughout this piece). There's a difference, albeit a fine one, between letting empiricism speak for itself and using it as an excuse for the abasement of others.

In extreme layman's terms- just because you're right, there's no need to be a dick about it.

The Third is that conflict in the name of this or any philiosophy is wrong. What happened to the good old days of wars for resources... like oil and... oh...
On a serious note, historical conflict based on simple greed or territorial disputes instead of forcing one's philosophy on another group of people and therefore subjugating them, in which the aforementioned reasons are invariably given as an excuse (Crusades, Nazis etc.), were far less embarrassing for all involved. (See: Alexander the Great, Napoleon, etc.)

In Summary:
1) The Philosophy of Respect - Treat all other philosophies with respect. Life is far too short to ruin other people's happiness and the knowledge that you've done so but are right will be of little comfort in this ultimately futile existence.
2) The Illuisory Shield of Empiricism - Empiricism is worthless if it cannot be delivered with tact. Think of the humility and savoir faire with which Darwin presented his evidence and strive to do the same.
3) The Disrepute of Philosophical Conflict - The rights and wrongs of one and another's philosophies should never be considered a satisfactory rationalisation for conflict.

Phew, to quote the brilliant Nick Mohammed's Mr. Swallow - "It's not very funny this bit, is it?!"

Samuel E Robinson has an AS level in Philosophy, but a Masters in Pseudophilosophy from the University of Life... ahem...

The Twenty...

2010-09-08T19:05:00.003+01:00

So, the Barclaycard (ahem) Mercury Music Prize was awarded to last night to The XX, a band with songs so good that they were the sountrack to the 2010 General Election (second 'ahem' of the sentence). But instead of definitively answering which album was the best of last year (which, to be fair, the Mercury has never managed yet anyway), the Awards instead threw up more questions.

What was up with Nihal last night?
Seriously. Dark Brown shirt and jacket with BLUE JEANS? What?!
He did some accents too. Why?
He then said "I think the XX is an album already on everyone's coffee tables." Hmm?
Are they? I don't think they are.
Who keeps their albums on a coffee table?
Midlife crisis? (It would explain a lot)
Why didn't Mumford & Sons win?
Again, a serious question. Why?
How come KT Tunstall is immune to Lauren Laverne's contagious pregnancies? It claimed Miranda Sawyer during the course of the evening but not the Scottish singer/songwriter. Why?

In all seriousness, I was very much hoping that Mumford & Sons would win. Their brand of anthemic, alternative folk has proved popular with critics and fans alike and their debut 'Sigh No More' is a fantastic collection of songs. Drawing more from traditional Americana than the British folk scene, Mumford & Sons feature banjo-driven tales of loss, pain and regret. From the hugely catchy 'Little Lion Man' and 'The Cave' to the ethereal title track and the fury and disenchantment of 'Dust Bowl Dance', the quartet display their brilliant songwriting talent. Perhaps the biggest weapon of these young folkies is the voice of Marcus Mumford. Dripping with pain, pathos and righteous indignation, Mumford's subtle, rasping voice could lend credibility to even the most introspective compositions and is on display best in their live performances. I've never had the pleasure of seeing them in the flesh but their televised performances at various festivals and shows are remarkable. Every debt to their fans paid in power, sweat and raw emotion, with each concert played as if it's their last. Do pick it up.

Why Cowards Is at the Centre of the Comedy Universe...

2010-09-07T13:11:00.007+01:00

Many of you will have seen Him & Her last night, the new bedsitcom from Stefan Golaszewski, the Alan Bennett of his generation (I will make that strapline catch on, mark my words). A beautifully observed study of two unemployed twentysomethings in their flat, it perfectly showcases what I rather pretentiously christened the 'Cowards School of Theatrical Comedy' (I know, I'm an arty arse, but Rick Edwards retweeted it, so I plan to spread this term for the current epoch of British comedy).

Stylistically, the Cowards School creates comedy from the juxtaposition of Mike Leigh-esque realism and the brilliantly absurd. This permeates the performance poetry of Tim Key, the songs of Tom Basden and the writing of both Stefan Golaszewski and Lloyd Woolf and its influence is spreading fast. More comparable with short plays than sitcom episodes or sketches (best observed in Him and Her and the beautiful The Caravan sketch involiving the lottery ticket from Cowards). The style is not limited to the quadrumvirate of Cowards however and encompasses the work of a wider selection of related comics/actors/filmmakers (though more often than not, the line can be followed back to Mssrs. Basden, Golaszewski, Key and Woolf) including Joe Wilkinson, Diane Morgan (now performing as sketch duo Two Episodes of MASH, their most recent show directed by Golaszewski) Alex Horne, Jonathan van Tulleken, Mark Watson, Jonny Sweet, Nick Mohammed, Rick Edwards and many more. Indeed Edwards' 'The Boot Sale', as featured in the Virgin Media Shorts shortlist, is another prime example of the style (starring Wilkinson, Morgan and Basden and directed by van Tulleken), with its bittersweet tale of man finding hard to let go (Further Reading/Listening: Key's 'All Bar Luke') .

Each project is a veritable 'six degrees of separation' that leads back to Cowards or one of its practitioners (see diagram A) and yet the BBC did not recommission the television programme of the troupe that started it all. We were given 3 brilliant episodes, but no more (though their two superlative radio series' are available as audiobooks ((which I never think is the correct term for this kind of thing really))). All four members are individually endeavouring to further the spread to great acclaim as well. Edinburgh award winner Key has a book and an vinyl album of his poetry available later this year, Basden's play 'Party', also adapted into a series for Radio 4 recieved highly favourable reviews and featured some very bright comedy talent (including the wonderful Jonny Sweet and Nick Mohammed), Golaszewski's plays (Stefan Golaszewski Speaks About A Girl He Once Loved and Stefan Golaszewski is a Widower) recieved huge plaudits and Him & Her deserves the same praise and, after a break to focus on writing and acting, Woolf is returning to his highly original stand-up.

I have been challenged on my comment regard Golaszewski as 'the Bennett of his generation', but I find it a perfectly valid comparison. Both portray brilliantly observed characters laid bare, for all their failings and strike a careful balance between pointed, witty humour and pathos. While the language and voice may differ, the ideas conveyed and the methodology are far more similar than one may imagine from a superficial glance.

DIAGRAM A
A quick study into my earlier claim (note that not all potential permutations and links are included ((lazy, not enough paper etc.)))

So, here's to Him & Her, to Golaszewski and to the Cowards School of Theatrical comedy. Long may it grace ours screens/radios/stages.

NewsRamble...

2010-09-06T13:20:00.002+01:00

Here I tackle the sensitive issues of major news stories with little or none of the levels of maturity or insight that you'd expect or even actually desire from topical blogging...

This is My Excuse, Tell Me Yours...

2010-09-03T14:07:00.002+01:00

Basically, I've been quite busy sorting out the backlog of Edinburgh stuff and not had much time for amusing thoughts to come from my brain. I also have a sneaking suspicion that that the microphone on my laptop or perhaps just Audacity (which I use for VO recording) is knackered.

For these reasons, there'll be no FriPic today (cue mass outpourings of grief and the chucking around of phrases such as 'what is he like?!' and 'more procrastinating?!') I'll try and have things sorted for next Friday. Apologies.

In the meantime,

Stay classy.

Moomins.

Continued Edinburgh Musings...

2010-09-02T15:08:00.002+01:00

So after a frankly brilliant 3 weeks at the Fringe, what did we learn, kids? Well, aside from learning that fame is somewhat like Twitter (the already famous/well-followed get more famous/well-followed exponentially, but the minorities or cult figures struggle to carve out any influence - See: millionaire and American youth Bo Burnham), we (by which I mean 'I') learnt that I would definitely love the whole 'comedian' spiel - to the extent where I've already run up a Powerpoint presentation (my lameness knows no bounds).

We also learnt that free drinks are indeed possible, though not always consistently. (Have since meditated that the whole 'free drink' period occurred mostly when I was on my own. Sympathy drinks, I suppose).

Another key fact was that comedians, on the whole, are very nice people with a lot of time for their fans.

Several wider facts: Murdoch's greed is insatiable. Not content with charging for the Times Online, everyone's favourite Mr. Potato Head made flesh Rupert Murdoch decided to pull Sky Sports News from Freeview to add a new SSN HD channel. Yes, that's right, high definition for two people sat in a studio. Not since the forefront of the day's technology or 'gadgets' was thrust into, out of an entire force, a dimwitted police 'inspector' has their been a more drastic, collective pissing of resources up the walls of television.

I say 'several', I have become sidetracked and consequently forgotten what the rest of the points were. They may come back to me, they may not. We just don't know...

A Well Groomed Fringe... The Third and Final

2010-09-01T14:42:00.006+01:00

This one dedicated to Hoffi for her birthday (yup, it's a birthday dedication week). Right where were we...

Karaoke Circus: (This was between Herring and Pappy's but I missed it out because I'm writing this from the ones I put into the Fringe app and KC wasn't listed on there) - Basically a fantastic evening had by all. A real party atmosphere permeated through Prince's Street Gardens where we'd arrived massively early. There were some terrific performances, my personal favourites, I think, being Thom Tuck's 'National Express' (if ever a singer was better equipped to take on the theatrics of the Divine Comedy...), Justin Edwards and Gus Brown's heartfelt (and dare I say well-rehearsed rendition) of Youssou N'Dour's '7 Seconds' featuring blistering falsetto from Edwards and astounding French rapping skills from Brown and Andrew Collins' identical to the record version of 'I Bet You Look Good on the Dancefloor', if only for him announcing "turned out nice again" at the end.
Key's Album Launch: Right, back to the canon. Again we all turned up early, early enough to see Key, Horne and Mohammed (fulfilling the role of violinist in this instance) arrive at Avalanche records. The launch itself was fairly short, but included several poems, the 'Egg' sketch and David O'Doherty's interruption causing Key to tear up one of his playing cards. Another one of those classic 'only in Edinburgh' moments. Key signed my copy of the album and graciously did the same to my copy of 'Tutelage' which I had lugged to Avalanche in a record bag. Lovely guy.
Stewart Lee: Lee, a comedian's comedian, was testing material for a new tv series which included some fantastic routines about Adrian Chiles, a vast segment of callbacks and absurdities regarding charity and some fantastic lies about meeting David Cameron in univeristy. He was selling merch at the back of the gig at the end and I snapped up a copy of his book which had been consistently recommended to me during the weeks, which the man himself signed and I read a large chunk of on the train back from Edinburgh attempting to ignore some anti-social Sheffield children.
Gutted: The latest offering from Ward and White was excellent fun. Following a girl's revenge against the husband that murdered her parents, Gutted delivers big laughs and tandout performances from the Penny Dreadfuls as men of varying heights and Colin Hoult doing a magnificent Alec Guiness in Kind Hearts and Coronets sort of turn, leading a strong ensemble cast of talent. The songs are jaunty and the piece revels in schadenfreude and black comedy. I can safely say it's the most I've ever enjoyed a musical and therefore I bestow upon it the title of 'Best Musical. Ever. In the History of Arts. Ever'.
Seann Walsh: There's been much hype surrounding the Brighton-born comedian, touting him as one of the future stars of comedy and it's safe to assume that a fair few more appearances on Mock the Week will materialise. As for his live material however, he delivers a solid hour of observational, witty rantings. Mixing Lee Evans-style slapstick with Dylan Moran levels of cynicism and general disenchantment with life. The show was however stolen by a wheelchair-bound man. Discussing the travelators at airports and the redundant warnings of "caution, you are approaching the end", he theorised that some idiot must have fallen off it to necessitate such an announcement. The man raised his hand and explained that he'd toppled backwards whilst trying to do a wheelie, prompting the audience to fall into fits of laughter and Walsh himself to sink to the floor wrapt in serious giggling.
The Horne Section: My second Horne Section of Edinburgh and my third overall was naturally hugely enjoyable. The Magnets (who my friend's dad had engineered a debut album for) produced some excellent a capella stylings, Paul Foot delivered a bamboozling list of 'disturbances' that left the audience as confused as they were amused, Key was as implacably hilarious as ever (his song is still one of the best things I've ever seen). Appallingly, I can't remember who else was on the bill for this one (I think there was another act- leave a comment if you can help). EDIT: It was Pete Firman, providing wonderfully flawed magic. (Thanks to Zoe)
John-Luke Roberts: A clever show built around the murder of a captive offstage. Serial killer Roberts delivers some marvellous whimsy and pre-prepared insults ('you wear mediocrity like a favourite jumper' etc.) and a hilarious public service video about contraception. A strong debut.
Keepers: Psychical theatre. When put together, two of the most terrifying words in the English language. However Keepers was a thoughful and cleverly-staged meditation on the lonely existence of two 19th century lighthouse keepers. The tension ratchets up and during a heavy storm things take a turn for the worse, creating an interesting, for want of a better comparison, Weekend at Bernie's scenario (curse my limited frame of reference...). It jumps the shark during a bit about flying and there's a slight continuity error but it's forgiven for its bold portrayal of a fascinating subject and the inclusion of an on stage musician and foley artist who got an as big, if not bigger, round of applause at the end for his brilliant work.
The Horne Section: Here it was, the final Horne Section of Edinburgh. The end of my Edinburgh adventure, but it did not disappoint. Alex promised a gala evening and duly delivered quality act after quality act. Key, The Magnets, Josie Long, David O' Doherty, Al Murray (in a drumming capacity) and finally Tim Minchin! Minchin improvised a jazz improv epic interspersed with a ad hoc Key poem about cheese. I'm always blown away by the man's sheer piano chops. The Horne Section is a show so good that Jimmy Carr and this year's darling of the Fringe Bo Burnham just turned up to stand at the back and watch. 'Nuff said.

Shows I didn't see:

Bo Burnham: Winner of the 'Spirit of the Fringe' award. Apparently the Spirit of the Fringe is being young, already rich and from the internet. Not so sure about that one...

A Well Groomed Fringe... The Second...

2010-08-31T14:57:00.005+01:00

Pappy's: Great fun. Some excellent sketches and songs from the trio. Good pre-performance music, Tom crashing into the boxes, dressed as a pink elephant on a pogo stick and free badges at the end dished out by Crosby himself (bonus points). What more could you want?
BBC Comedy Presents: I book the tickets for this a long time ago, so it was a bit of a lottery as to who was on the bill. I'll just rattle through them all - MC Carl Donnelly (a very good compere, bantered well with the front row, including a 19 year old who was getting married: this would be a recurring theme throughout the evening), Tom Allen (some good jokes improved by brilliant delivery), Chortle Student Winner Phil Wang (some fairly interesting material, the polish will come with experience), Ginger and Black (deadpan musical storytelling, very good timing), Matt Green (a good short set from the 12 year old...), Jon Richardson (some really funny general misanthropy and ranting). It was a mixed bag really, there were laughs but none of the acts are my particular niche of comedy, though I do like Donnelly and Richardson.
Nat Luurtsema: I went to see Nat again, this time with Simon (contributor to this blog). It's fun to go to shows several times and see the tweaks and ad libs. Again, I thoroughly enjoyed myself and so did Simon. After this I was elevated to VIP status by Nat, who is so, so nice. You should all go and see her at various locations.
Greg Davies: The only award nominee that I saw (excluding winner Russell Kane, who we covered yesterday) and he really earned his nomination. Detailing his life through a series of genuinely hilarious inconsequential moments devoid of meaning, Davies, a master raconteur, delivers an enormous amount of big, big laughs chronologically from birth to last Christmas via a decade as a depressed drama teacher to classes of eccentric children. The intimacy afforded by the Pleasance Upstairs (one of my favourite venues) perfectly suited the atmosphere. A must-see.
Rob Deering's Beat This: I saw this on a bit of a whim. Having headed to the Dome after Greg Davies. There I bumped into Alex, who didn't have much time to talk as he was taking part in Beat This. Having nothing to do, I wandered to the box office and, as luck would have it, they had tickets left. I quickly bought one and latched onto the back of the queue as it entered the Jokerdome. Alex and his teammate one-liner merchant Gary Delaney were taking on improv-rap/songsters Abandoman. Beat This is essentially a comedy pop music quiz. As with other Fringe gameshows (Comedy Countdown et al) it's hard to evaluate it for this blog. The concept is strong and works well in practice, though I imagine, as is always the case with these things, quality is largely dependent on the quality of guest.
The Invisible Dot Club By the Sea: Ferried by coach to a secret location, we were treated to a formidable bill of Kevin Eldon, Josie Long, Colin Hoult, Tim Key and Stewart Lee, all excellently compered by the magnificent Daniel Kitson. Needless to say all the acts were brilliant and the evening was marred only by an idiot heckler during Lee's set. Lee however, a consummate professional, dealt with it admirably by announcing that he'd been booked to do 20 minutes and the heckler could either let him get on with it and stop yelling out the punchlines, negating Lee's trademark slow-burning, repetitive delivery, or he could stand on stage in silence. And so it came to pass that Stewart Lee stood in silence for 5 solid minutes to laughter and applause before continuing with his act, sitting down and even lying down in defiance against the cretin in the balconies (who may have left by this point, I can't remember). Kitson was also responsible for the apparent suicide of one of the audience members during the interval (again, you had to be there, don't misconstrue this and get me sued for libel).
Tim Key: Key has been one of my comedy heroes since I first heard Cowards on the radio and since then everything he's touched has been gold in my opinion from Mark Watson Makes the World Substantially Better to All Bar Luke to Space Hacks to Herb McGwyer to We Need Answers to Charlie Brooker's Newswipe... I could go on... and on... and on. Basically I'm a massive fan. Key returned triumphant to the Fringe with a 6 night run of last year's award-winning Slutcracker. Approaching the stage in shell suit and cap, smashing a golf club on the stairs, Key changed into his tattered suit and began the business of disarming, poetic comedy. I was tasked with holding the pint (which I did immensely nervously but, according to the man himself, successfully) as the master poet delivered brilliant poem after brilliant poem after excellent film after fantastic clambering over the audience. My night was made by meeting the man himself afterwards. Frankly amazing.

Strange Celebrity Spots

TV's Dan Clark (wearing sunglasses... indoors)
Neil Hannon (talking to David O' Doherty - how about that for a pair?!)
David Mitchell (from a long distance after eavesdropping on a recording of The Unbelievable Truth ((a story for another time perhaps)))

A Well-Groomed Fringe...

2010-08-30T01:48:00.003+01:00

Well, I'm back from Edinburgh, back to crushing reality, but also back to write a blog. A blog of numerous parts covering 3 weeks in the Scottish capital laughing and mooching.

It's Always Right Now, Until It's Later: Another work of genius from Kitson as he weaves together the tales of two lives from birth to death/death to birth, connected by only the most fleeting of meetings. It's everything you'd expect from a Kitson play - the laughter, the pathos, the sheer brilliance of the narrative structure. Staged wonderfully in the Traverse, it was a real tour-de-force of Fringe theatre. You'll laugh, you'll cry, it'll change your life.
Adam Hills: It's testament to Hills' ability as a comedian that he received rave reviews for a show invented each evening and heavily reliant on the audience, with only one or two stories as a safety net. Mess Around was brilliant fun from Hills challenging latecomers to inventing a spy film based on several audience members. Notable incidents included the comedian discovering a German man in the audience and asking him what he thought of the show;"It's not too bad" was the typically laconic, teutonic response that is now emblazoned on Hills' posters around the city and Hills' impression of a Greek/Australian accent that was, I was assured by Simone (to whom this post is a sort of late birthday present), spot on.
The Inaugural 3 Sided Football Tournament: The day started strangely, as it happened that the two football-themed events on the Fringe happened to be taking place at the same time on the same day on in the Meadows and one at Meadowbank Stadium, both on opposite sides of the city. After a quick check at the Comedians vs. Critics we plucked for the Invisible Dot's foray into sports invention. It was the right decision. The sight of David O' Doherty in a headband and yelling "TUCK! TUCK!" alone was enough to make it a day to remember. Other facts we learnt: Areas of Edinburgh smell faintly of Sugar Puffs, Thom Tuck is a tricky left-winger, my neck always gets sunburnt regardless of hair/sun cream/other, no-one seemed as inclined to break Whitehall's legs as I would have been were I on the pitch.
Barry Cryer: As previously mentioned on this blog, I'm Sorry I Haven't A Clue was a huge influence during my formative years and the chance to see Barry Cryer was not one I'd pass up. Outside the Gilded Balloon I saw none other than Graeme Garden wandering around. I mulled things over for a few seconds before thinking that I'd kick myself if I missed this opportunity to go up to him. Inside I took my seat in the Wine Bar, leaving a vacant one on the end of the row, one that was promptly filled by Graeme himself who said "hello again" and so it came to pass that I watched Barry Cryer, all the while sitting next to Graeme Garden, essentially one of my childhood ambitions.
Russell Kane: This year's award winner delivered a show about his 'castle', the council house bought by his family and the sociological impact of that act. He also returned to the much-explored issue of the relationship with his macho father in a show that delivered plenty of big laughs, the customary pigeon-chested marching across the stage and a very poignant finale indeed.
Nick Mohammed: Thanks to Simone who had a spare ticket, I was able to see the brilliant Nick Mohammed again. A hugely talented performer with a great show that left me struggling to believe he was overlooked by the judging panel this year. (See previous blog posts for greater details of the show)
Richard Herring: This day was somewhat of a spare ticket bonanza, as Dr. Simon Best offered me his to see Christ on a Bike: The Second Coming. Herring delivers an hour of blasphemy, but unlike so many modern cynical, atheist comedians, he made some genuinely interesting theological points instead of resorting to cheap mockery of Christianity. His routine about the gospels was absolutely magnificent.

Ok, so that's Part 1 (of 3) of the Edinburgh adventure. There is a huge list of people that I bumped into, so I'll try and select some slightly left-field ones.

Dave Lamb (comic actor and narrator of Come Dine With Me)
Clive Anderson
Your man there from The Proclaimers (I couldn't tell which one it was, but he was queuing to see the Footlights)
Bo Burnham (inexplicably awarded the Panel Prize, from what I can tell, simply for being from the internet)

A Royal Mill...

2010-08-13T16:58:00.003+01:00

If there's one thing I'm pretty good at, it's milling around. Today, my first day of just over a week of Fringe on my lonesome, was spent first by legging it from Haymarket to the Pleasance Courtyard in time for a bacon roll (surprisingly good and not too dear for the Fringe at £1.80 really) and then mooching.

The first mooch was at the Courtyard. This lasted about 1 and a half to 2 hours or so. Me sitting at a bench trying to work out what was happening in Beyond (rehearsals, it turned out) and spotting the Penny Dreadfuls wandering around and entering and exiting the building several times. Then Jo Caulfield turned up and sat on the same bench as me, facing another bench and not me though. After draining my Coke and thinking, 'those comedians over there probably need these benches for their Tesco-based impromptu picnic', I upped sticks... to the Pleasance Dome where I got an espresso and a cookie. Espresso is not the ideal milling around drink, but it does make me feel like a giant (or Greg Davies).

When milling around you do get targeted by flyerers... a lot. One handed me a flyer for the excellent Nat Luurtsema (who I've already seen) which I took (even though I've already seen it - for a memento, you see) and then explained that I'd already seen it to the flyerer. There commenced a nice chat and we wished each other well and went our separate ways. Well, he walked off, I very much remained at the table. It's kind of separate, certainly not opposite ways. You'd probably need some manner of velocity graph to imply direction and explain it... anyway, he went off and I remained at the crumb-covered (ruddy cookie) table with my espresso, of which the remnants were now starting to congeal and solidify. Surely this would give away the fact that I'd been sat here for hours... But no! Several Glaswegians asked to join me and the table and we all had a good chinwag, not one of them noticing that I'd been here long enough for the bit at the bottom of my espresso that was once definitely liquid had turned into that nightmarish, grisly stain that coffee goes... you know the ones... like when you go to a Costa or Starbucks and you get that bit at the bottom that you don't really want to drink because it's kind of solid residue and... ahem... Basically, they didn't notice and we had a nice conversation. They were off to see Emma Thompson in about 30 minutes (I didn't let on that I'd already been there for about 2 hours) and eventually headed off to queue.

At this point I thought 'well, I've proved my point, I've been good enough not just to let strangers onto the table I was hogging with the remnants of my sort of lunch, I suppose, but to engage in a lively conversation with them' and got up to go to the bar, when who should I see at a table in there but Nat Luurtsema herself, writing in a notebook with about 20 minutes to go before her show. I went to the bar and got a lime and soda to counteract the morning/afternoon's caffeine (Yeah, I know I'm lame, I've learnt to live with it, why can't you...?) and took a table. I swallowed a few gulps of fruit enhanced fizzy water (bargain though, it's a wonder anyone drinks anything else... 40p!). If the last few days had taught me anything it was that generally comedians are lovely people and are usually appreciative when you go to bother them, yet it was close to her show and she was busy writing notes. I plucked up to courage to walk over and tell her that I'd seen the show a few days ago and really enjoyed it. She was no exception to the comedian rule and was appreciative despite my timing. We had a quick chat and I went back to the table and was quickly surrounded by the queue for the Footlights.

It's odd, but there's a strange feeling you get talking to your favourite comedians. The ones that I've had the experience of bothering in their day to day lives (again, sorry, if any of you are reading this... not sure why you would really, but hey) have been genuinely pleased to meet their fans and as well as getting a feeling of childish, giddy excitement at meeting them you also come away with a sense that your view does matter to them, that it's nice to hear how much you've enjoyed their work, a sort of warmth at making them feel better about themselves too. I think that's why comedian bothering is becoming so worryingly addictive to me.

It's been a good day for positive outlook and here's a thought: next time you see someone you admire (doesn't have to be a comedian) tell them that you do. Let's all just be encouraging and get along with each other, eh?

Fringing It... Part One...

2010-08-11T20:10:00.002+01:00

Here's the first quick diary. Sort of brief notes and things like that.

Shows I've seen:

Penny Dreadfuls: Very funny and inventive sketches with some cracking running gags. Humphrey may have broken his thumb during the course of the show. Badges were given out at the end- Bonus points.
Two Episodes of MASH: Some terrific and highly original sketches from Diane Morgan and Joe Wilkinson, you can recognise the influence that director Stefan Golaszewski's had on proceedings too. (Daniel Kitson and Matt Crosby were both in the audience for this.)
David O' Doherty: Some splendid songs and standup from the Irishman. Offered bike repair tips, animal facts and a list of beefs for 2010.
Nick Mohammed: Nick Mohammed's Mr. Swallow is a brilliant comic creation. A both well-observed and absurdist take on classic extrovert seminar givers. As well as bringing big laughs, Mohammed also achieves some astounding feats of memory. Stickers given out at the end - Bonus points. Tim Key was sat directly in front of me during the performance. Desperately wanted to poke him or something. He escaped before I could grab him. That's something I've learnt this week, he's elusive, Key.
Jonny Sweet: Been a huge fan since I first saw him live. Delivers his brilliant characterisation and audio-visual delights once more. His delivery is perfect. He kissed me on the cheek on the way in - Bonus points (probably).
The Horne Section: Absolutely tremendous. For my money this is the show of the Fringe. It was brilliant when I saw it in London and if anything it's even better now. Whilst watching it you get the impression that this isn't just a show, it's a happening. Horne and his band bring a number of tremendous musical gags and the guests (regular Tim Key and on this night Josie Long and Mark Watson) were all supremely good. Key is one of the most exciting performers on the face of this earth, the sheer volatility of his stage persona is a joy to behold. We were treated to a quite brilliant impromptu song about the perils of a bouncy castle by Mark Watson, who also drummed while Josie Long sang Livin' On A Prayer. Different guests every night, different show every night but I would imagine every bit as good. CDs available outside - Bonus Points.
Nat Luurtsema: A really sweet, self-deprecating and most importantly of all very funny show, incorporating everything from 'Drill' at a Masonic school (you'll have to see it to believe it) to equipping yourself to deal with bus crashes and post-apocalyptic wastelands.
Alex Horne: I've already raved about The Horne Section, but Alex's solo show is also quite brilliant. As with all Horne projects it focuses on a central challenge, in this case a bet. But you'll learn everything from Quantum Mechanics to golf technique along the way and have a ruddy good time doing it. He's a master storyteller.
Mark Watson: Playing to a packed out Assembly Hall, Watson began with his trademark MS Word notes on the audience and then delivered his quite brilliant show 'Do I Know You?' with his customary neuroticism and self-deprecating wit. A charming and very funny hour with the multi-talented Watson. Which brings me neatly onto-
Mark Watson's Unusually Enjoyable Book Launch: As one might imagine, was very enjoyable. Watson, who is just about the nicest guy you could ever meet, did a series of readings at various locations around the city culminating in a signing at the Princes' Street Waterstone's with free booze. A fantastic day.

People Watching (As in 'people I've seen wandering around')

Crosby
Kitson
Penny Dreadfuls
Key
Sweet
O' Doherty
Morgan
Wilkinson
Golaszewski
Tim Vine
Seann Walsh
Sara Pascoe
John Bishop
Kevin Bridges
Shappi Khorsandi
Russell Kane
Stephen Frost
Neil Hannon

Ones I've Actually Plucked Up The Courage To Approach

Lloyd Woolf
Mark Watson (Who I've now seen on 3 separate occasions in 3 days. He doesn't seem appalled or worried by this. I like him a lot for that)
Alex Horne (Who I have met before, but I think probably still counts)

Ones I'm keen to hunt down (probably the wrong choice of words)...

A Brief Guide to Packing for Edinburgh...

2010-08-05T11:50:00.007+01:00

Ok, last sleep before Edinburgh tonight, which means that really I should be packing my things instead of writing this, but I might as well write about packing while I'm here and dispense some handy hints. I opened this one up to Twitter and all you blog folks can feel free to contribute with comments.

Space-saving Hints

Don't bother with maps and schedules etc. Save it all onto your expensive piece of electronic equipment instead.
Proceed to forget charger for said electronic equipment.
You don't need that many clothes. Clothes take up valuable room that could be used to house books or other paraphernalia that you wish to pester your favourite comedians to sign.

General Tips

Alcohol can be expensive on the Fringe, so why not dedicate one section of your case to a bottle of Jack and a few tinnies and do it yourself?
People will claim that you'll never use that gilet/tuxedo/stripy jumper/military jacket. Prove them all wrong.
You can never have too many flannel shirts. At LEAST one for every day you'll be in the 'Burgh should do it.
Suitable footwear for the Moomin exhibition is ESSENTIAL.

Contributors' Suggestions

Katie (@hoodedhawks) suggests:

Brolly
Pants
Knife (the stabby kind)
Comfy Slippers

I defer to her knowledge of Scotland and am certain that each of those items is absolutely indespensible.

Hoffi (@vanderlily) suggests:

Goggles (for emergencies) ((presumably for some of the scenarios we covered in Monday's blog)
Waistcoat (for fancy occasions)
Notebook ((I was thinking this, particularly one with your own material in it to shove in front of your favourite comedians in feverish desperation))
Inhalers (in case you get too overwhelmed to breathe) ((or require an impromptu snorkel))

Paul (@pauljonlevy) suggests:

Tickets
Brolly ((this is a definite, it's been suggested twice and both time as 'brolly', so there's no excuse now really))
Credit card with a huge credit limit due to massive price increases to buy more tickets and food

Simon (@simonpjbest) (I could have mixed together those last two and said Paul Simon and you'd have been none the wiser, would you?) suggests:

A net to catch Haggis with
A sofa to sit down on when you get tired of walking around Edinburgh.

James (@JamesWalkerMan) suggests:

Well, put all the stuff in a case/bag. Push down with hands. Zip/shut it. Hope that helps.

It certainly does, Walkerman!

Robert Robinson and Some Other Stuff...

2010-08-04T12:15:00.003+01:00

There's not a great deal to blog about today, to be honest, so in honour of the great Robert Robinson, who's retiring as host of Radio 4's Brain of Britain after 3 decades at the helm, here are some comedians doing excellent impressions of him.

Uno

Dos

Also...

After my twitter social experiment yesterday, Julia Raeside herself responded warmly with:

@SamuelERobinson Like durrrrrrr. You should've picked someone more popular. "If you're a fan of our lord Jesus Christ you'll also like me."

Though I'm not sure I could cope with that heady combination of religious ecstacy and Twitter performance anxiety in truth.

Hope your respective days treat you well.

Twitocracy...

2010-08-03T15:44:00.004+01:00

As usual I opened my copy of the Guardian G2 this morning and so was I struck by this particular piece on the opening page.

Now, I can't profess to be an expert on Kanye West or any other rap singers for that matter, but I do know a little about Twitter. Essentially some chap has earned 1,6000 followers overnight for asking this West chap about toothpaste. To someone like me who has spent over a year of effort and acerbic wit on Twitter for a return of 3 more followers than people I follow (at time of writing) it's a bit of a kick in the teeth.

The article makes the very valid point that Twitter isn't a democracy. Some people have millions of followers for tweeting things like "Today I got up", while many, many others have far fewer than they deserve. I could reel off a list of dozens of wonderful people I've met through the medium of 140 character thoughts whose wit merits so much more exposure than it gets.

To offer some manner of remedy to this, Twitter is rolling out a new recommendations system whereby on your profile it gives you people 'like' you. I got Guardian TV critic Julia Raeside (among others) and put out a shameless plug to test reaction

Hello. Are you a fan of Guardian TV critic @JNRaeside? If so, then you'll just love me (according to Twitter). #shamelessplugthatwillnotwork

Sadly, the results of this social experiment are yet to appear. So I can either hold out for a bit or just draw the conclusion that the 'you might like' feature is a complete waste of time that doesn't so much open you to prospective followers as simply show you people with similar quality content who are much more popular than you.

It is obvious that celebrity aids one's quest to reach a gargantuan number of computer screens across the world, but I can't help but feel Twitter is very much a largescale popularity contest, with a smaller cult usage to share jokes and make new friends. Many eminently talented comedians have followings that pale in comparison to, say, Justin Bieber or some other expendable, whiny, popular hominin. While I'll stop short of advocating a full-on meritocracy, there should definitely be some sort of handicap system to stop rap-singers/Bieber/general famous bods from taking over completely.

Ahem...

Blog Bonanza...!

2010-08-02T19:25:00.003+01:00

To make up for missing out on a Pictorial last week, here's a special video to explain what's happening over the next few weeks and dishing out some handy hints.

It's quite long... regrettably long in fact... I'm starting to re-evaluate whether this merited the tit'e 'bonanza' at all, to be honest.

Thorts Hurt My Brain...

2010-07-29T18:37:00.002+01:00

Ok, to cut a long story short, I've been hiking around the landscape of Stonehenge for 5 hours and now my feet are less than pleased with me. Now, I know what you're thinking, you don't type with your feet... and I don't, however I do type with my brain, which has also been left quite drained after all that excitement, so instead of me attempting to think of things here's an interesting article about the upcoming 'Thor' movie.

To which I say: "Come on, Guardian... it's Thor... directed by Branagh. It will almost certainly be fantastic... almost certainly..."

Anyone for Pétanque...?

2010-07-28T13:45:00.002+01:00

Unlikely sports comeback news now. I'm reliably informed that pétanque is very much now the summer game of choice, whether you're one of those trendy, slim actress-y types in hats or even a trendy, slim actor-y type with your own belt. Fancy chucking a ball into a collection of balls aiming to hit a tiny ball? Then pétanque is very much the game for you. What?... Pétanque, it's French and obviously very classy...?... Fancy chucking boules into a collection of boules aiming to hit a very tiny boule? Non?

And just when you thought this assertion couldn't be any more from the pages of Sugar Ape magazine, Olly Dixon of London synthpop group Filthy Dukes recently co-founded the East London Pétanque Association, staging "guerilla pétanque" events at selected summer festivals. I know I say this a lot but THE MEDIA HAS EATEN ITSELF blah, blah, blah HELL IN A HANDBASKET.

Cause...

2010-07-27T01:22:00.005+01:00

Ok, time to champion a cause. What a bunch of Jeremy Hunts the Tories turned out to be yesterday as they revealed their plans to abolish the UK Film Council which brought us films like In The Loop and Man On Wire as a 'cost-saving measure'.

Let's just think about that for a second. The UK Film Council which creates films, one of the most lucrative businesses in the world, which produces £5 for every £1 spent, is being abolished as a cost-saving measure. Don't stand for this, folks. We didn't stand for the planned closure of 6Music and we effected change, so why can't we do it now.

So why not contact Jeremy Hunt at the Department for Culture, Media and Sport and tell him what a fucking moron he's being? Maybe in slightly more diplomatic terms though. And also whack your signature on this petition.

We can't let the Tories win again.

Hayward Ho...

2010-07-26T13:28:00.003+01:00

Well, happy axe news emerged this week with the revelation that head of BP and walking PR Mr. Magoo Tony Hayward would be leaving his post. Sadly this also means that he'll be able to collect a no doubt sizeable pension for mainly fucking up a large section of the Louisiana coast.

This is the man who, fresh in the wake of the disaster, said "nobody wants this to be over more than me. I want my life back". Really, Tony? You know who else want their lives back? The residents of the Gulf of Mexico... oh and all the pelicans and ducks that you covered in your godawful, crude slop, but something tells me that they can't all go to a yacht race and then receive a bung to leave a job that they frankly should have been fired from to 'get their lives back'.

Here are a few of the candidates for the top job at BP-

Mssrs. P & B Chuckle

Mssrs. S Laurel & O Hardy

Mr. B Keaton

All of whom are vastly experienced at royally cocking up almost everything they do and would be very much a like-for-like replacement for the outgoing Hayward. But of course, it's not all male candidates. Similarly qualified are:

Ms. K Woodburn

Ms. A McKenzie

Who are eminently experienced in cleaning up other people's fucking mess. Ooh burn.

And Finally....
The Answer to the puzzler in last week's 'Still Got the News...' was that they were all true. A bit of a trick question you might say, but then the media is pretty much beyond parody these days and enough of the papers already make up their stories *cough, cough* Daily Star *cough* without me adding to the mire of nonsense.

Friday Pictorial the Twenty Third: Birds

2010-07-23T17:55:00.003+01:00

People with iPhones (unlike me) will get this... as will, I hope, people without them (like me), but if you like apps and all that malarkey then this will be right up your street...

Still Got the News...

2010-07-22T12:38:00.002+01:00

Ok, seeing as very little of blog-inspiring importance seems to be happening, we're going to play a little game. I'm going to give you a selection of headlines and synopses of news stories and you have to decided which ones you think are legit and which ones are simply imaginative fabrications from my brainbox.

'Transvestite Had Sex With Dog at English Heritage Castle'
The cross-dressing man, wearing a black dress, mounted the pet in the dry moat of the almost aptly named Pendennis Castle after it had chased him out of sight of its female owner. A spokesman for English Heritage is quoted as saying "this is a very rare incident".

'Mears Hired by Police in Moat Hunt'
News has reached us that Northumbria Police used overgrown public-schoolboy and semi-fictional, forest-dwelling 'survivalist' Ray Mears in the hunt for gunman Raoul Moat. Supposedly, Mears tracked the killer after Moat's campsite was found abandoned, all the while teaching some handy fire-starting and shelter-building tips to the officers.

'Failed Britain's Got Talent Singer Sues Simon (Cowell)'
A rejected act from Britain's Got Talent in the process for suing Simon Cowell for around £2.5 million. Emma Amelia Pearl Czikai started legal proceedings, arguing that she was humiliated and degraded by the judging panel. Cowell's rather watertight defense is believed to be "What the fuck did Czikai think was the point of the show?!"
In other BGT news, there is no resolution as yet as to whether the format will be pulled after a discrepancy regarding the Trade Description Act...

Annnnnnnd... GO!

You've Got A Friend...

2010-07-21T14:37:00.003+01:00

So, I was leafing through the Guardian (mostly the G2 and Sport) as usual this morning searching for something to blog about (yup, it's one of those days again) and happened across this article by the excellent Tim Dowling about renting a friend. As one might imagine, being a unsuccessful comedian and blogger doesn't pay particularly well, so the idea of renting myself out for companionship without having to perform sexual favours for a client is a rather appealing one.

Here are some of my qualities:

Good sense of humour - Particularly with regard to my own jokes.
Not so good-looking that I'll show you up, but also not so ugly that you'll be ashamed to be seen with me - Sort of fair to middlin'.
Vast and eclectic musical tastes - Can discuss comfortably all periods of music from Early, Baroque Classical and Romantic, to Rock, Blues, Jazz, Soul, New Wave and Indie. NO HIP HOP. (Can't stress that last one enough)
Experienced actor - So it'll seem like I'm enjoying your company, even if I'm really not.
Bad at the whole 'eating out' spiel - Coffee or pub is fine though. Don't bother with a fancy restaurant or something like that... it'll be embarrassing for all involved.
Accomplished guitar and piano skills - (While no extra fee is demanded for serenading, a donation is appreciated...)
Owner of no less than 4 pairs of shoes - Basically equipped for any situation.
Decidedly average at most sports - If that's your cup of tea.
Knowledgeable about many periods of history - Useful for broadening your horizons or simply engaging in a heated debate (preferably shouted in a public area).
Once gave a presentation (in German) about the proposed accession of Turkey to the EU.

So, if all that floats your boat, a very reasonable, sliding payscale according to your social status is offered. If you're interested (and, hey, why wouldn't you be... don't answer that), then contact me here.

Changing the World...

2010-07-20T14:37:00.005+01:00

Before Mark Watson disappeared on holiday, he left us with a challenge. To simply 'change the world'. No mean feat, I'm sure you'll agree. Now, he did make clear that it could be only little things, he wasn't expecting us to negotiate peace between Israel and Palestine, just to bring some happiness to the local community.

This world-changing happened to coincide with the weekend of the charity bike ride. I've done it for quite a few years now, but this year I took a slightly more active role in helping to facilitate the running of it, which consisted of clearing some paths of nettles (with a scythe... the manly way to do it) and volunteering to be back marker. Something which goes completely against my nature when it comes to cycling and mostly consisted of making sure no-one got lost and helping tiny kiddies up hills on their little bikes. To handicap myself, I used my new second-hand mountain bike where the top big wheel gear doesn't work and the cadence required to keep up with people on road bikes makes Lance Armstrong's look like Jan Ulrich's. (That's a cycling joke there, for you cycling fans... what do you mean none of you are?!)

A far cry from last year where my Cavendish-like sprint past several miffed looking middle-aged cyclists on the home straight is still local cycle legend to this day. 'It's not a race' They clearly thought. It was so a race... in my head (nothing wrong with a bit of impromptu bike racing... next time you're out on your bike and you see one of those office types on their bikes, race them, they'll thank you for it one day...). I didn't cry like Cavendish though, just sank into a bath and rubbed cream on my perineum. I imagine the HTC Columbia riders have someone to do that for them. Ah, how the other half lives...

As I say, this year was different, this year was about helping everyone achieve their goals, whether it be make it to the halfway point in the forest or full circle to the finish line. The ultimate goal was of course to raise as much money as possible for Children in Distress, a wonderful charity that cares for suffering children in Eastern Europe. And by all accounts, this year's ride was a roaring success on that front. At the finish line we were presented with medals (like the marathon, but without Sue Barker and Brendan Foster, stopping us every few metres), a nifty new addition for the 2010 ride.

Me with the aforementioned medal. Will update you when I have confirmation of final total raised for Children in Distress.

Mr. Big...

2010-07-19T13:04:00.003+01:00

Well, Cameron's launched the Big Society. So, how are we all? Do we all feel bigger? No, of course we don't. From what I can tell, 'Big Society' is essentially Thatcherism for the predicitive text generation, for a generation lazier and less intelligent than that of the 80s.

Just how big is this 'big society'... oh wait, it's not really all that big and it's not much of a society either. It's just an evolution of the classic Cameron "don't like how your local hospital is being run by the NHS? Take it over yourself" presumably followed by the bit we never hear but is every bit as valid: "Because we're too fucking lazy to do it ourselves, even though it's our job." It's the same as, "don't like your school being accountable to some form of government? Are you a completely underqualified, but reckon you could probably have a go because Tarquin's GCSE predictions weren't quite as good as you thought? Well, you can set up an academy."

It's been underway for less than 24 hours, but I'm already tired of it. It's political bullshit of the rankest and most indolent nature. I now have a bit of stand-up where I 'go political'. I didn't want to do it, but thanks to this excuse for a policy I'm now essentially Ben Elton. Elton, you hear me? Bloody Hell!

This day was obviously going to turn out to be ridiculous when Michael Gove (about whom I have made my feelings known on numerous occasions) went on the Today programme and had a go at the Beeb. He's presumably just bitter about them cancelling his children's TV show Pob's Programme, in which he played the titular Pob with Olivier-like aplomb. The BBC remains one of very, very few things to be proud of about this country (a list that doesn't include Gove, one might add) and already Twitter is abuzz with the #proudofthebbc hashtag.

I can't believe he's failed to understand something that was made very clear earlier this year - People like the BBC. They tried to take away 6Music and people got angry. In a war of words between Gove and the BBC, you'd be hard-pressed to find someone to side with the Education secretary a man who, and I hate to shoot a low blow like this, looks as though he has just opened the Ark of the Covenant and the wrath of God has begun to melt his face like a candle.

Viva la Revolucion!

Friday Pictorial the Twenty Second: Advertising

2010-07-16T13:23:00.003+01:00

So, what can you expect from FriPic XXII? Well, the usual really: comedy accents, satire and a wee bit of Curb Your Enthusiasm thrown in for good measure.

When Kraft took over Cadbury it was seen as a bitter blow struck by American big business. But we hadn't seen the half of it...

Get Me to Get Him to the Greek...

2010-07-15T00:35:00.008+01:00

Last night I had the pleasure of venturing to the cinema to see the latest offering from the Judd Apatow stable 'Get Him to the Greek'. Referring to GHTTG as a 'spin-off' from Forgetting Sarah Marshall doesn't really do the film justice and despite the excellent Russell Brand reprising his role as rocker Aldous Snow from the 2008 comedy, this is very much a self-sufficient piece of which Brand is undoubtedly the star. Alongside the hirsuite comedian, is frequent Apatow colllaborator Jonah Hill as Aaron Green, a talent scout for Pinnacle Records run by Sergio Roma (Sean 'Diddy' Combs... think that's the most up to date one, who knows it might have changed to 'The Artist Formerly Known as Diddy' by the time you read this).

I should point out before we go any further that I've been an enormous fan of Brand since his 6Music days with Matt Morgan and Trevor Lock and that this review will perhaps be coloured by that.

We begin with Snow (aided by his girlfriend Jackie Q ((Rose Byrne))) preparing to release 'African Child', an ambitious (if misguided and self-indulgent) album dealing with the problems facing the African continent. For the fans of Snow's band Infant Sorrow and indeed for all and sundry, African Child proves to be the straw that broke the camel's back (or should I say, in that case, 'The Single Factor'. Right, prog fans?). Labelled 'the worst thing to happen to Africa since Apartheid' African Child effectively kills Snow's career and relationship with Jackie, sending him spiralling back into a life of drug-fuelled hedonism.

With the 10th anniversary of Snow's legendary concert at the Greek Theater in LA looming large, Green begs his boss Sergio to let him stage a concert at that same venue, jump-starting the flagging career of Snow who hasn't performed live for 3 years. Roma eventually agrees and orders Aaron to London, but not before his relationship with his live-in girlfriend Daphne, an intern on unthinkable hours, effectively falls apart over an argument about moving to Seattle. Left little time to wallow, Green hops on a plane to London in attempt to get hard-partying Snow to New York for The Today Show and ultimately to the titular Greek Theater in LA. Cue a race against time filled with sex, drugs, rock and roll and hilarity.

At heart, Get Him to the Greek is a buddy movie. Hill and Brand enjoy magnificent on-screen chemistry. I've seen reviews criticise the film for being overly referential, but I, a big fan of cheeky pop culture references it has to be said, found the script (although it would seem that large chunks of dialogue were improvised) to be strong. The film crashed through the 7 laugh test with consumate ease (admittedly I laughed more than several others in the cinema, but then that's their fault for not getting the jokes... ahem... I imagine I'm a nightmare to go to the cinema with; I laugh like a Hyena watching Jonny Sweet live) and kept on giving. Brand is magnificently willowly like a hairy Jagger and more believable as a rock star than many an actual musician. Hill gives a very solid performance, showcasing his more sensitive dynamics and proving that he can carry a film instead of being a Apatow bit-part player. But perhaps the breakout comic performance is from the Diddy man. Aided by some fantastic lines, Combs gives a truly laugh-out-loud turn as media mogul Sergio. Other ones to watch out for are Rose Byrne, who gives a wonderfully self-aware, vacuous performance as Snow's estranged partner, Colm Meaney as Snow's philandering father, Elisabeth Moss as Green's overworked girlfriend Daphne and an inspired cameo by Lars Ulrich (who is on the receiving end of one of the best lines in the film, but I shan't ruin it for you).

Speaking of Colm Meaney, Snow's relationship with his father is not dissimilar to that of Brand and his own father. A good deal of credence is lent to Aldous Snow by virtue of the fact that Brand has been there, taken that, done that and got the t-shirt. The rather humorous rockstar excesses showcased in the film are performed by a voice of experience, but by a voice that has been through it and come out the other side, which brings me on to another, rather interesting point.

Despite it being a raucous comedy, GHTTG has a rather melancholic and serious undercurrent that I find comparable to The Wrestler. Now, I imagine that one wouldn't glean such a link from the trailer or the bumph, but like Mickey Rourke's Randy 'the Ram' Robinson, Aldous Snow is a lonely, broken man who's last refuge is the simple adoration of his fans. Much like The Ram, Snow has ruined his relationships with friends, lovers and family, he's abused his own body to the extreme and has found only emptiness, but if he can't fill the void within himself and provide his own mind with satisfaction, he can at least spread joy to others. As we reached the denouement I did well up a little (because I'm pathetic like that when it comes to films) and for all the laughs (of which there are many during the course of the adventure) there is a rather beautiful ideal resting just below the surface.

For me, this is the funniest comedy of the year so far but far more than that it becomes a rather poignant tale of redemption with (and call me a sentimental old fool) a hugely satisfying resolution and is most definitely on the coveted Or So I Thought... 'Must-See' list. Blackly comic at times and featuring some hilarious comic set pieces, brilliant performances and a marvellous parody soundtrack penned by rock and Britpop luminaries including Caral Barat and Jarvis Cocker, Get Him to the Greek is certainly up there with the very best Apatow comedies. That said, even if it was just Russell Brand improvising on his own for 109 minutes I would still have loved it.

Agents...

2010-07-14T13:19:00.003+01:00

Right, this might be a boring one for people, however today's topic of ranting is football agents. Now, they've been around for a while, so why bring up the topic now? Well, two separate incidents in the last week have rather piqued my interest.

The arrival of agents in the game has been much maligned and I can assure that over the next 5 or so minutes (or however long it takes to read this) they're only going to get more maligned. The first incidence was that of ex-Everton player Dan Gosling. A fairly promising young midfielder and occasional full-back who stunned the club by walking out after only being offered a verbal contract and taking the case to the Premier League, who ruled that the Toffees should miss out on the £4 million compensation they would otherwise have been owed (a drop in the ocean, one might think, in this age where many premier league board rooms are suffering from a sever case of the Sheikhs... ahem... however for a club such as my beloved Everton, where our chairman still has to have a Radio 2 show and put on Blood Brothers in the West End for another year to keep the wage fund ticking over, it's rather a pain to miss out on such an amount).

Us football fans are notoriously fickle and as the story developed, the reaction went quickly from 'let's just wait and see, it's probably just the papers stirring, as usual' to 'I hope the lad never walks again...'. While it's true that the club never submitted an offer in writing, it's also true that Gosling has reneged on a 'gentleman's agreement' offering a contract worth nearly double his existing one, probably in no small part due to his agent. For me, agents have no place in the game and especially not representing players younger than perhaps even 24.

Perhaps it is too much to expect footballers to be anything more than overpaid mercenaries (latest news was that Gosling's Newcastle contract was more than triple his old Everton one) however the agent-led machinations in this case leave a sour taste, that's for sure.

Reason number 2 for agents having no place in the game, is illustrate very nicely by Michael Ballack's agent, Michael Becker, who, quoted in the latest issue of Der Spiegel, refers to the Detusche Nationalmannschaft as 'a bunch of gays'. Reason number 2 is 'because agents say really fucking stupid things.... alll the time'.

Now, manager Joachim Loew may look as though he's stepped straight from the pages of the H&M catalogue, but to assert that most of the team (I say most, he referred to one of the newer members ((not to be named obviously)) as being 'half gay') is gay simply because of their footballing performance is a link which I don't quite follow. He claimed that their more elegant and lighter style of play stemmed from the fact that they were all homosexuals and that they missed out on the final because they didn't have the aggressive edge of the teams of the 70s and 80s.

Now, this delusional nonsense is exactly the kind of thing I would have expected to see Alan Partridge report on The Day Today and yet I find it on the Guardian website. Homosexuality in is seemingly one of the last taboos in football. The point that should be made really is that Germany fielded an ethically diverse team that played an incredibly incisive and eye-catching brand of football. Whether their players are heterosexual or homosexual is neither here nor there and certainly none of the business of the public or Michael Becker and to imply that they missed out on the final simply because they didn't resort to the hatchet man and cheating tactics of both this year's finalists, only leads me to believe that football would be a better place if more teams were 'a bunch of gays' as Becker so tastelessly puts it.

Fashion is Danger...

2010-07-13T00:37:00.003+01:00

Right, this'll be another short one, as I'm called away to rehearse for a show as part of HADCAF (the very same festival that allowed me to chat to one of my comedy heroes Alex Horne last week). Now, this isn't the kind of show you'll be used to seeing me in. In fact, it's a fashion show, which me and my friend (the radio presenter) have somehow been coerced into presenting.

I'll come out and say it. I know sod all about fashion. I've never seen the attraction of Size Zero and I've never watched America's Next Top Model, nor do I understand why anyone would spend more than, say, £20 on a t-shirt. A stumbling block, one might imagine (but then one would be forgetting me and my friend the radio presenter's ability and indeed propensity to bullshit our way through upwards of an hour of stage time). That said, it would help if we perhaps had some basic grounding. We are yet to be informed, what exactly it is that we are supposed to do. Whether we have to just introduce things and keep people entertained or do a kind of Jason WhatshisfaceoutofoffofThisMorning and describe the 'lovely maxi dress that Suzie's wearing, made entirely of hemp' or however it works.

I would imagine all will be revealed tomorrow. I hope. Me and my friend (the radio presenter) do have form for being called in to drag disastrous shows kicking and screaming towards the right side of competency, but then a fashion show? I fear it may be a bridge too far... If anyone needs me, I'll be reading the entire archive of Ask Hadley on the Guardian website...

Feel free to post messages of advice, you'd be hard-pressed to know less about clothes than me...

Oh, and a quick 'Get Well Soon' to friend of the blog Simone.

They Think It's All Over... And, Well, It Is... Definitely...

2010-07-12T13:28:00.003+01:00

So, another World Cup final has gone by. What did we learn, kids? Well, we learnt that Howard Webb shines his head for special occasions (possibly), that octopi are psychic and will surely enslave us all over the coming months (potentially), that Mark van Bommel has to produce a gun and threaten at least 3 opposition players with it to receive a red card (probably) and that when Ivory Coast players fall over to get someone sent off it's terrible but when men with faces much too small for their heads do it (*cough* Iniesta *cough*) it's genius.

What a thoroughly disheartening spectacle. The final was poor, no two ways about it. There were a handful of clear cut chances. Arjen Robben, through on goal numerous times, must surely now be thinking that it's time to dedicate more of the training regime to dinking it over the 'keeper and less to falling over like Tom Daley with pins and needles in both legs. Not even David Villa could score this time and we rumbled through a turgid 90 minutes, with the prospect of penalties looming large. Neither team looked like breaking through. It was a team of hatchet men versus a team of divers. Both cheats, but at least one goes about it in a more distinguished way than the other. Let's face it, kicking Sergio Busquets in the testicles is much, much more impressive than falling to the ground clutching your face like a nancy.

Anyway, as it happens, cheating small-face Iniesta bore down on the box only to hit some manner of ethereal hurdle in the time-space continuum, resulting in the sending off of Everton's John Heitinga, by Rotherham's Howard Webb. Now, I'm just going to put this out there... World Cup conspiracy theories... You can do what you like with that. 6 minutes later, that same shrunken Spaniard was in the box and rifled home the winner.

It was a poor game, not England-Algeria poor, but it nonetheless made me hope for serious injury or some kind of pitch invasion just to liven things up a bit. Highlights included Nigel de Jong letting Xabi Alonso know he was there... by kicking him square in the sternum and a Spanish fan being punched in the face after attempting to put a hat on the World Cup trophy.

Friday Pictorial the Twenty First: Fox

2010-07-09T11:10:00.004+01:00

Here we are, Twenty First Pictorial Fox, you could say (if you wanted, your choice really). Here's a no doubt sensitive and insightful channel Five documentary to look out for.

Fun Fact: Stripes is only the second ever guest star in a Friday Pictorial. (Alright, so 'fun' might have been a strong word...)

Ooh, before I forget, this is a prologue to a longer sketch by me and Tommy Isaac, so hopefully you'll get to see the full feature sometime in the future.

Topical Sketch...

2010-07-08T15:16:00.003+01:00

While thrilled by the news that human remains found in the area dating from 780,000 years ago had revised archaeological theories on the subject of prehistoric Britain, Norfolk Tourist Board were beginning to wonder if their new poster might be sending out the wrong impression...

Hit the Flapjack and Don't You Come Back No More...

2010-07-07T14:48:00.010+01:00

Ok, today we're going to do some baking. MAAAN baking. Flapjacks, specifically.

Things you'll need -
Butter
Condensed Milk
Golden Syrup
Caster Sugar
Porridge Oats

Whack 300g of butter (you could weigh it on scales or approximate. It's essentially much more than you think, but not quite a whole slab) into a saucepan and heat it.
Chuck in about 340g of Caster sugar (again you could measure it, but measuring is very much for losers) and stir -I used a plastic spoon, you can use whatever you have lying around (ruler, table leg etc.).
Fetch your Golden Syrup (if you can get the fucker open, fiddly, so it is) and throw in 4 tablespoons of the stuff.
Get it all over you hands and clothes.
Swear profusely.
Add in 200ml of Condensed Milk, if you can bear to watch it slop into your already slightly sickly mixture (especially the squeezy kind, awful consistency, awful) and take the pan off the heat.
Add in 500g of porridge oats (go for the manly jumbo oat variety advertised by burly Scotsmen in kilts) and stir until all the oats are covered in your frankly disgusting-looking yellow caramel mixture.
Heat up your oven to 170 degrees (if you have one that doesn't work in degrees, then I'm sorry, I can't help you, you shouldn't have got this far without checking).
Pour your disgraceful, oaty slop into a high sided pan, lined with baking parchment (parchment? What is this? Harry Potter?) and pat down vigorously with a spatula (the fun bit, go nuts, son, go nuts).
Shove in the oven for 15-20 minutes and grab yourself a beer, soldier. You've earned it. (Definitely don't forget about it and leave it in the oven though. Definitely don't do that)
Remove from the oven and cut into 16 or so pieces.
Cut self accidentally.
Bleed profusely.
Swear profusely.
?????????
Eat.

Bicycle Race...

2010-07-06T12:57:00.002+01:00

Well, I think I can probably assume that none of you have been watching the Tour de France (by all means prove me wrong by leaving a comment), after all, cycling rarely gets the coverage afforded to other sports (unless it's the kind of cycling where you ride fixies in circles for many laps and Scots win gold medals). But I would suggest that there is a good deal to promote cycling as a spectator sport.

This year's Tour de France is but 3 days old and already there have been more crashes than a stock exchange full of sozzled bankers. Yesterday saw the wet conditions claim a number of high profile victims, including Christian Vande Velde (who was described brilliantly in today's Guardian as a rider so accident prone it's surprising he hasn't reverted back to stabilisers), both Schleck brothers (one of whom managed to crash and then crash into a motorbike seconds later), Lance Armstrong and Alberto Contador. In a Tour that had already seen Brit David Millar (among others) topple over a stray dog in the first stage. Interestingly enough, no the first time a dog has had its say in the standings of the General Classification, only 3 years ago Marcus Burghardt's progress was halted spectacularly by a slightly befuddled mutt wandering in front of a group of riders.

People have been pointing to the difficult stages taking place in the Low Countries, but if they thought yesterday's slightly sodden, hilly venture was bad, then they may struggle to cope with the cobbles of today's stage. There was a time when any self-respecting pro cyclist would partake in the classics including the notorious Paris-Roubaix, known affectionately as 'The Hell of the North', which might as well be held on the streets of Weatherfield. However many GC riders in this age of rolling and face clutching in sport tend to avoid it these days. It should be interesting to see how they cope today...

If you're one of those people who tune into F1 on the offchance that someone does a Kubica (or perhaps that should be a Webber now) then dip into cycling for a change.

Start the Week...

2010-07-05T02:18:00.004+01:00

Those of you who follow me on Twitter will know about my friend the radio presenter. He's very good at it and I'm very happy that he's climbed the ladder.

However, it does also remind me that I'm basically still very much at the bottom of said entertainment career ladder. Amateur comedian and blogger is a fairly low rung. Local radio DJ is definitely higher up. He gets paid to talk. I don't get paid (and sometimes pay other people) to be amusing.

The good news is however, that I now have 8 pages of material (plus a brand new poem and a brand new song) to sift through and polish down (plus add in other already written poems and songs) into a hopefully hilarious end product. Easier said than done sadly.

The other interesting news on the writing front is that the man in the picture with the equally pouty face has returned to write sketches with me. With all that and my play to be written, it's going to be a fairly busy week, but hopefully productive, so if there are some feeble topical posts on this blog this week (like this one), then that's why, folks.

Friday Pictorial the Twentieth: International Men of Mystery...

2010-07-02T15:59:00.002+01:00

Well, we've already discussed my favourite story of the week and here's a FriPic dedicated to that. Join outspoken political commentator Benn Gleck for his take on the scandal.

Get Up, Stand Up...

2010-07-01T14:08:00.004+01:00

My sleep habits are unhealthy, that's for sure. Last night entailed me going to bed as it was actually getting light (about 3.21). (This is written on roughly 6 hours sleep, so I managed hopefully just enough to fuction properly). The night before I managed about an hour earlier (the point where the moon disappears from the view of my window.

These bouts of insomnia are filled with (and quite possibly, in no small part, down to) writing comedy material. Now what with Friday Pictorials, attempted witty tweets and various sketches/sitcom drafts/plays all kicking around, one would imagine that I might have had just about enough of comedy writing, however there's one bit of ground I'm yet to break. The big 'un, the comedy grail: Stand-up.

Now, as primarily a writer, I subscribe to the old literary adage of 'get it writ, then get it right'. I'm very much still at the 'get it writ' stage. It's basically rambling and not funny enough and the 'get it right' stage is very much a pipedream. Like all things, I imagine a good deal of it comes down to practice.

It's fair to say that I have an unusual style in the sense that my influences are incredibly wide-ranging. I've talked before about the profound influence of Cowards on my writing style and indeed Messrs Key and Basden in their own right. Add in touches of Mark Watson, Tim Minchin, Russell Brand, Dave Allen, Willie Rushton, David Mitchell, Dylan Moran and Graham Linehan and you can see the massive melting pot of genius comedians arguing in my head for precedence. This makes writing a rather inconsistent and tricky process.

Fortunately, last night a good deal of potential material was served up by the ever reliably outragous talkSPORT. While waiting for Matthew Crosby to appear in his 'presenter's friend' role, myself and Katie and Zoe from Twitter heard all manner of preposterously outlandish opinions on conspiracy theories regarding 9/11. One man actually said, and I quote, "it's only an airliner, a building like that, the damage would be 'negligible'."

Let's just ponder that point for a moment. 'Negligible'?! At best this man was a cluelessly misguided, if a little offensive, man who spends too much time on the internet. I think the basic principle when it comes to any kind of vehicle crashing into a building is that it will definitely do some damage. If that vehicle happens to be a plane, then 'negligible' is probably not one of the words one should be grasping for. 'Devastating' perhaps, but not 'negligible'. To paraphrase Inigo Montoya, I don't think that word means what you think it means...

That said, if you really want to lose faith in a large section of humanity, then it's worth a listen. Fordy certainly attempts to offer the voice of reason in the face of simply staggering unbelievable bullshit, but there's only so much one man can do. The show certainly picked up for the hour when Crosby was in attendance however, once he had left the airwaves, I followed him (by which I mean, I switched stations, instead of, say, stalking him across the Big Smoke).

Tinker, Tailor, Solider, Real Estate Agent...

2010-06-30T14:36:00.005+01:00

This is Anna Chapman. She's a spy... bollocks, I mean, she's an online real-estate magnate with a Master's in economics. Forget the spy thing... oh, alright, she is a spy. A spy for the Russkies.

Along with some middle-aged families and and a South American journalist, Chapman was (supposedly) planted by Moscow to infiltrate the policymaking circles of the US and send intel back to the Kremlin.

This is my favourite new story of the week. Essentially we are now living in a Len Deighton or John le Carre novel, in which the Russians have sneakily assimilated themselves into positions of power within America. If only Alec Guiness' George Smiley were here to see it all.

Unsurprisingly, Chapman has become the pin-up of this furore, presumably because people don't expect real life covert ops to look like that. But surely she should have some implausible moniker like Pussy Galore, Xenia Onatopp or Tits McGee? Well, yes, if this old world of ours was a touch more interesting, instead of a slow and painful march through encroaching bureaucracy to the grave, then she probably could have gone to Deed Poll and called herself Dr. Holly Goodhead. At least this kind of fun story is a step in the right direction.

Mature editorial comments that I've already spotted whilst trawling the web for material, include 'I'd let her spy on me any day' and 'they didn't look like that in the Cold War...'. Good to see that the media are dealing with this with the maturity required to deal with a potential 'diplomatic incident'. But it could all be brouhaha... alright, so Chapman's facing 20 years imprisonment for spying and money-laundering, but apart from that it could all be brouhaha, right?

Well, not necessarily. The Americans seem to be taking things pretty bloody seriously and what might seem like a ripping yarn of femme fatales and deep cover spying to us, constitutes a breach of trust and compromises the integrity of the highest echelons of the American governmental system.

But hey, at least it's keeping things lively.

To finish, a neat little Steve Bell from today's Guardian.

Media Fakery...

2010-06-29T13:02:00.002+01:00

Right, remember when that fan burst into the England dressing room after the lamentable performance against Algeria? Well, as it turns out, the whole thing was likely orchestrated by a journalist from the Sunday Mirror. Cue cries of "surely not?", "how awful" and "actually, now that you mention it, it does make sense and the 'I was looking for the toilet' excuse was a pretty fucking see-through one now, wasn't it...".

32 year old Pavlos Joseph apparently bumbled into the locker room while searching for the facilities. To be honest, the moment I heard this story the alarm bells were ringing. Supposedly he burst into the room full of dejected England players by accident and, rather than continuing his search for the men's room, he proceeded to inform them that their performance was 'woeful and not good enough' (to be fair, he's right about that one) and then 'had a word' with David Beckham. That basically makes the whole sorry experience a more downbeat parody of this already existing parody.

It seemed a classic 'woops, wrong room' *leaves room* *re-enters room* 'actually while I've got you, you're not fit to wear the shirt' *leaves room* kind of situation. The kind of thing that definitely only happens for Sport Relief comic parodies. Joseph, who has clearly been waiting for this kind of exposure to launch his Stavros Flatley tribute act, Pavlos Flatley (an already depressing indictment of modern celebrity), faces the ignominy of a court charge for trespassing and can now add conspiracy to that.

What's perhaps even more unsettling, is that this could signal the dawn of a new type of football hooligan. The kind that takes a bung from the Mirror or the News of the World and goes covert ops instead of the good old days of the Firms kicking the shi... oh, hang on. I'm not entirely sure which of those two is more depressing.

Soon no-one will dare talk to anyone who leaves their bag on the table in a coffee house for fear that they might be some kind of tabloid hack looking to exploit their idiocy. Yup, it's 'hell in a hand basket' alert time again.

I'm not going to say explicitly that we're all going to hell in a hand basket, but we're definitely all going to hell in a hand basket...

Weekend Stuff...

2010-06-28T15:40:00.002+01:00

Well, well, well. How about that for a weekend. A real mixed bag, one might say.

An epic Doctor Who finale, a bollo performance from England's 'Golden Generation' against the Germans and some tremendous sets from a sweltering Glastonbury served up onto the tellybox by Auntie.

First things first, Who was really excellent. It had me thinking 'this is pretty good for the first few minutes' and then Matt Smith said "It's a fez. I wear a fez now. Fezzes are cool." At which point the entertainment part of my brain blurted out 'Ok, this is the best thing ever'. The performances were towering, the writing nothing short of brilliant and just enough intrigue was left to leave me wondering how I'll get by until the Christmas special.

Second things second, England are a painful team to watch. With my Swiss hopes already dashed by remarkable profligacy in front of goal against Honduras and a rather dubious red card against Chile, I now settled down to watch Capello's unchanged 4-4-2 take on a youthful and exciting German team. England's chances had been talked up by pundits and fans alike, but I (though I must confess I missed the Slovenia game) wasn't so hopeful having seen two uninspired and frankly uninspiring performances against the USA and Algeria. But then, surely this was the moment to step up to the plate and silence the doubters, the moments when things would turn around?

Well, no, not really, as it happened. The positive thinking lasted all of 20 minutes and then 'keeper Manuel Neuer smacked a drop kick 100 yards down the pitch, bouncing over the heads of a hapless Terry and Upson, for Miroslav Klose to slot past a furious David James. Village. The fury was compounded seconds later as dicy German passing led to Lukas Podolski smashing home through David James' legs from the tightest of angles. It was looking as though it could be a cricket score, when a chipped cross from Frank Lampard found the head of Matthew Upson who fired it over a rather flappy Neuer and into the net. The lifeline we'd supposedly been waiting for? It was the much-maligned Lampard who struck again sending a trademark slapshot 0f the crossbar and in. Except well, was it in though? Well, yes it was, but that didn't stop the Uruguayan ref and his assistant failing to notice this.

It all became irrelevant in the second half however as another incisive German counterattack (as a historian it's very, very difficult not to draw parrallels with the Battle of the Bulge and such like...) saw 20 year old Thomas Mueller, one of Germany's most impressive youths along with 21 year old Mesut Oezil, slot home and the quickfire double salvo was completed with another close range finish from the Bayern Muenchen youngster, 3 minutes later. The rout was complete, the misery confounded. Hope was lost the moment that Capello revealed his game-chasing attacking substitution to be Heskey on for Defoe.

It was an abject, miserable performance from the 'golden generation'. Rooney looked as feckless up front as he had done all tournament, Glen Johnson failed to be in the correct defensive position once, Terry and Upson resembled the Chuckle brothers at centre half and all were run rings round by the youthful exuberance of the talented Germans, as painful as that is to say.

An 'inquest' was promised by the commentators. To be fair, Lineker and chums could have summed up the performance simply as 'the Germans were much, much better at football than we were'. Shearer wasn't best pleased either. Hansen declared that the Germans brought 'ideas that England just couldn't cope with'. Yeah, like 'defending'.

The big players didn't perform. It was simple, England weren't a team, they were a collection of egos made to wear the same colour shirt for 90 hopeless, agonising minutes. Rooney is perhaps the greatest villain of all. Knackered and impotent up front, he's made Slovakia's Robert Vittek look like Pele. Hopefully some of the deadwood will have been cleared out in time for the Euros in 2 years time, but don't count on it.

Third things third, Glastonbury has some pretty stonking performances. Obviously on occasions such as these, it is the headliners that draw the most attention. Friday saw Gorillaz deputising for U2 and their crocked, divisive lead singer Bono and, by all accounts, not particularly well. Revellers began to drift away from the Pyramid Stage during a downbeat set which included only a couple of big hits. Contrast this with the other two headliners, Muse and Stevie Wonder, who produced terrific feel-good greatest hits sets (and with my favourite Glasto perfromance of recent memory, last year's epic Bruce Springsteen set) and you can see perhaps why a psyched-up Friday night crowd didn't appreciate a dark, experimental study in melancholia.

Muse were all stadium rock and pyrotechnics, producing a marvellously lively collection of hits from their impressive back catalogue. They finished with a stonking rendition of space western epic Knights of Cydonia prefaced by a snippet of Ennio Morricone's Man With a Harmonica from Once Upon a Time in the West (a personal favourite of mine). Motown legend Stevie Wonder gave a hugely entertaining, light-hearted set, reeling off hit after hit and present Glastonbury founder Michael Eavis with a harmonica during Happy Birthday. Wonder has clearly lost none of his exuberance, giving a wonderful, life-affirming performance to an adoring crowd.

Friday Pictorial the Nineteenth: Tennis

2010-06-25T18:45:00.004+01:00

Well, well, it's been all go down at the All England Club and the Friday Pictorial simply couldn't resist joining in the action. So join pundit and ex-pro Jim Backenroe for his take on the longest match in tennis history.

Anyone For Tennis...

2010-06-24T14:32:00.003+01:00

Well, Wimbledon was pretty bloody exciting yesterday as history was made. Play between Nicolas Mahut and John Isner was halted at a mere 59 all in the fifth set because of bad light.

This was a preposterous tennis match, the final set alone already eclipsing the previous longest match in history. Isner (who appeared to have one sleeve longer than the other for reasons which I don't fully understand) look shattered even before the 9 hour mark and I fully expected him to simply collapse on court, gifting the win to the Frenchman Mahut, however the 6 ft. 9 American dug deep and hung in there, depsite one or two of his serves representing a large Haddock attempting to free itself from a captive grasp.

Mahut certainly looked the fresher of the two, skipping along the baseline in the 30 degree heat while Isner looked as though he'd been taking part in a wet t-shirt competition, but despite this both men had chances to win the match. The games however continued to follow serve for over 6 hours and, just as the umpire looked as though he was going to fall of his perch, Mahut complained about poor visibility and play was suspended. So, at stumps of the first day it was 2 sets all, 59 games a piece in the final set. The second day starts in just under half an hour, will we have a winner before tea? I'll guess we'll have to wait and see.

The Cuts...

2010-06-23T19:52:00.003+01:00

Right, this'll be a quickie (mild relief for those of you who don't like my satirical posts... as if such a person exists...), but as it surely cannot have escaped your notice that yesterday was the fabled 'Emergency Budget' as Gideon stepped up to the dispatch box to deliver basically the opposite of what we should be doing according to American economist Paul Krugman.

So what would the Deficit-busting Budget have in store? Well, poor old Danny Alexander sat wondering what the fuck just happened and why had he been implicated in it. With the departure of Mr. Choppy after a not uncommon breakout of homophobia from the Tories, the Scot (think Beaker from the Muppets made flesh) was given the role of Chief Secretary and boy, oh boy was it a poisoned chalice.

Some of you with long memories might remember, say, 2 months ago when Nick Clegg promised to avoid the VAT bomb. I won't sugar the pill, this was basically a lie. Gideon announced that VAT would rise to 20% in January, among other hikes, cuts and general stuff.

So, what does this mean for their key demographic, the average Tory family (lucrative private sector positions, house in an affluent neighbourhood, 2.4 children, loveless marriage etc...)? Well essentially, I don't know because I'm not an economist, but I do know that the rest of us are pretty much fucked for the next 4 years.

Sweet dreams.

(If you fancy a lighter tale, catch up with my Alex Horne-style adventure on the new tumblr page)

Druids... and The Doctor...

2010-06-22T14:40:00.005+01:00

Well, Monday saw the Summer Solstice rung in in the traditional way. A load of hippie types dressing up and heading to sites of historical interest around Britain such as Stonehenge and Avebury. There are just a few minor issues with this.

Most importantly, how on earth did hundreds of thousands of revellers make it to Stonehenge without being vaporised by a collective alliance of Autons, Daleks, Cybermen, Sontarans et cetera? I mean, The Doctor is still locked in the Pandorica, watched over by this new terrifying Alliance (or, dare I say, 'coalition'), so how did the Druids manage to avoid extermination? Hippie magic trumps cyber technology now, does it?

Actually, allow me to get sidetracked, the opening part of the Doctor Who series finale was an absolutely tremendous high point in a series that has seen the new key talent of Moffat, Smith and Gillan produce some astounding moments. Admittedly, the big twist of the Pandoric being a prison for The Doctor was a touch predictable (although maybe I just spend too much time writing things myself to enjoy the mystery of such things anymore) but there were still a suitable number of questions left unanswered and a few things to make one's brain hurt. Such as, Rory came back as a Roman, but he wasn't really Rory, he was just an Auton programmed to be and think like Rory, but then if he was erased from time and never existed and Amy forgot about him, then how did the Alliance know and... ow, my head.

As well as every star in the universe going supernova and The Doctor being locked in a large cube (maybe Phillip Schofield will appear at some point), we were also left with a dying Amy. Now, I imagine some serious deus ex machina appearing in the next episode and I don't imagine Amy will remain dead any more than I imagine the Doctor will end up imprisoned forever and the writers will leave every star in the universe destroyed. Theories and symposia on possible resolutions that I've read include both The Doctor and River Song being Prisoner Zero, River's vortex manipulator will save the day, that Amy's house is the TARDIS (bigger on inside, blue etc.), some kind of link between Amy POND and RIVER Song. I don't know though, it's all very much nerdy internet ramblings. The long and the short of it is simply wait until Saturday and then we'll all find out.

Anyway, back to the Druids. Flocking to what we now know are in fact the communications towers that are the mysterious lithics of Stonehenge to celebrate what is in fact a festival celebrated possibly as early as the neolithic period, which happily is also the period in which the monoliths were erected in Avebury. So neo-druids flock their to celebrate something not in fact originally worship by Celtic religions at a site that has equally little to do with actual druids.

Now, I don't really have that much of a problem with new-age-y types with beards and robes, however as a historian it does bother me that their research seems to be a little flawed. In the musuem galleries at Avebury there's a child skeleton found on Windmill Hill, a real wonderful archaeological find, but the Druids insist on it being reburied. Now, not only would this set a worrying precedent and possibly end up with a huge number of societies and museums caving in to the demands of a group with little right to force this issue, but in all likelihood the skeleton is that of a neolithic child, given the period of other finds from the same area and again is nothing to do with Druids.

Gah, it just strikes me as misinformed, lobbying for the sake of making it look like you're doing something instead of arsing around in robes. You know it is, it really is.

Some People are on the Pitch! Oh... Wait, That's Just Footballers...

2010-06-21T10:14:00.004+01:00

Bizarre football result news now (I am trying to limit myself rambling about football but it's not so easy, I'm sure many of you still have nightmares about the Winter Olympics and what that did to this blog. I'll try and keep it to 1 or 2 posts a week maximum and find other funny things to ramble about, promise - an example of things that I intend to comment on this week: Doctor Who, the 'Emergency' Budget, ). The World Cup has definitely kicked into action now, you can tell from the bickering within the teams and the inevitable fannying around from supposedly the best players in the world.

Let's deal with this chronologically. Friday saw England play out an awful 0-0 against Algeria that was very much the definition of 'bore draw'. As well as an absolutely shocking performance from Capello's men, it was also one of the most tedious 93 odd minutes of football in living memory. Neither team looked like scoring or indeed looked entirely like they could be arsed (if you want to see the awful spectacle yourself but done in a much, much more exciting way, then have a look at this). That said, it's not as though the other 'potential winners' are faring any better either. France have pushed the self-destruct button and may well end up putting out the coaching staff to face South Africa in the final group game and Italy's campaign has stuttered equallly as impressively as England's.

The current champion's fought back to snatch a draw in their opening game and were forced to do much the same against a spirited New Zealand team. Shane Smeltz stunned the Azurri by poking home the opening goal (from a, shall we say, mildly offside position) past a helpless Federico Marchetti after a magnificent Simon Elliot free kick. Juve's Vincenzo Iaquinta smashed home a spot kick after handbags between Ipswich's Tommy Smith and Roma's Daniele De Rossi (notice the difference there?) in the area. The All Whites held on to clinch easily the best result in the footballing history of a nation that doesn't even have a professional domestic league. So, the embarrassment is being piled onto Marcello Lippi's team but where did the rot start?

Well, fortunately for the Azurri, they still possess many of 2006's World Cup-winning team, unfortunately even then they were considered one of the oldest teams in the competition and the legs have only become more heavy and the faces more beardy in those 4 years (see: Daniele De Rossi, who appears to have spent his end of season break auditioning for a role as Tom Hanks' friend in Cast Away 2 or genuinely on a desert island). Also they lost the one-time 'world's best goalkeeper' Gianluigi Buffon in the first game of the group stage, replacing him with inexperienced Marchetti (just because you dress him exactly like Buffon, doesn't gift him the talent, Marcello) who has at times appeared a little unconvincing as a deputy.

But the madness didn't stop there, in yesterday's evening fixture, Brazil vs. Cote d'Ivoire (it strikes me as odd that we have to refer to them as that or CIV, none of the other countries insist on the native tongue spelling of their country in every other nation), we were given everything from the sublime to the ridiculous. Luis Fabiano opened the scoring with a well-taken finish after a threaded through pass from Kaka (who would still have his part to play in this crazy spectacle) and the Sevilla striker followed up with some flashy skills and after a flick and a jink (and at least two separate handlings of the ball) Fabiano thundered home the half volley. The ref even seemed to check with the striker if he'd handled. "Nope" Fabiano no doubt replied (except in Portugese). "That's good then. Just checking. Wouldn't want to make an arse of myself." The ref then replied (probably), before nodding and winking. Nonsense.

We weren't done with the bizarre yet though, not by a long chalk. Elano scored Brazil's third goal with a deft first touch into the net from Kaka's terrific squared ball (he's still not done though). Elano ran to the TV cameras and pulled down his socks taking out his shin pads (complete with his children's names emblazoned on them - funny place to put them, where no-one could see them, where they'll get sweaty and possibly be clattered into by an Ivorian, but we'll get back to that). It was strangely prophetic, as, just seconds later, Tiene smashed his studs metaphorically into Elano's children (see what I meant about getting back to that). I can only hope that he did actually put his shin pads back on, but then you'd be a fool not to (although, as we've established, you'd also be a fool to put your children's names on your shin pads). Either way he was stretchered from the field of play, while two children were no doubt sobbing in Sao Paulo after being sybolically scraped by an Ivorian's studs. Yet we still weren't done with what was one of the best games of the tournament so far (along with Slovenia-USA) but for all the wrong reasons.

Drogba pulled back a consolation goal for the Ivory Co... sorry, Cote d'Ivoire but they never looked like pulling a miraculous comeback despite the final twist in the tail/tale (depending on your persuasion). The ball went out for an inocuous throw-in but Kader Keita was on the floor clutching his face as if he'd been playing the part of 'Man Who Receives Chainsaw to the Face' in a low budget horror movie. What had happened? The Ivorians surrounded Kaka. Jonathan Pearce was apopleptic with confusion. The replays showed Keita given a cheeky nudge in the torso by Kaka, off the ball. So, he was given a little elbow in the chest. Then why was he rolling around on the floor like the victim of a botched assassination attempt? Well, presumably to get the already booked Kaka sent off. Which happened. Nice job there, folks.

Football, eh?

Friday Pictorial the Eighteenth: Reality

2010-06-18T13:26:00.003+01:00

Right, the Friday Pictorial returns, although today's is perhaps more of a Friday Audio...torial, Auditorial? I don't know, it's basically more sound than pictures anyway.

In exciting news we have a brand new contributor for this one. None other than the legendary singer/songwriter Mr. Tom Waits! Who I commissioned to write a song about reality TV. This is what happened...

Swissophile...

2010-06-17T16:35:00.004+01:00

I've always had a bit of a thing for the Swiss, indeed I've spent so many summer holidays there I'm expecting my citizenship papers to be in the post as we speak, so when in the Listening to Livesey Facebook Group World Cup Sweepstake I drew, at random, the mighty Switzerland from the metaphorical hat, it could only be fate.

Faced with an agonising wait until their opening midweek fixture against the highly-fancied European champs Spain, I sat back and researched the team. Many of those players I remembered from last summer were there - the excellent 'keeper Diego Benaglio, skilful winger Tranquillo Barnetta, seasoned campaigner Hakan Yakin. However one or two surprises cropped up. An injury to target man Marco Streller meant a call-up for 18 year old, Albanian-born Xherdan Shaqiri of FC Basel. I can't claim to have seen much of Kosovan-Albanian-born (do I see a pattern emerging) Albert Bunjaku either, so when the Schweizer Nati took to the field against the would-be champions without pacy utility man Valon Behrami and all-time leading goalscorer Alexander Frei (who has endeared himself to me on numerous occasions, once for spitting at Steven Gerrard and then again in this match for nonchalantly sitting in the dugout with a cup of tea) and captained by Udinese midfielder Gokhan Inler, I suspected them to find it a little difficult.

There's no doubt that in 'der General' Ottmar Hitzfeld, the Swiss have a top-class manager. The German is the only manager to win the Champions' League with two different teams, a feat equalled this season by Jose Mourinho. But even with a two-time World Manager of the Year at the helm, it was hard to look past the talented Spaniards. Surely the Swiss would look to snatch a point with some stout containment of Davids Villa and Silva and midfield dangermen Andres Iniesta and Xabi Alonso.

After the opening few minutes it was clear that this was the plan, now it was just a question of its effectiveness. Hopes took a blow when recently-unveiled Fulham signing Phillipe Senderos left the field with an injury. Steve von Bergen was brought on to partner rugged center half Stephane Grichting. The strike partnership of Blaise NKufo and hot prospect Eren Derdiyok saw little of the ball, as the Spanish stroked it around, sending chance after chance safely into Benaglio's gloves or sailing over the bar.

Then, from nothing, a Swiss break saw Derdiyok charge into the box, Casillas came out to win the ball but only suceeded in bundling the young Swiss over, I was ready to appeal for a penalty, but as my mouth opened, Gelson Fernandes popped up to stab home the loose ball and give Switzerland a remarkable lead over who many considered to be the champions-in-waiting.

The next hour or so saw my nerves shredded. Spain spurned yet more chances and heroics from the magnificent Benaglio and sheer determination from the veteran Grichting. A lively looking Lichtsteiner at right back made a couple of surging runs, but the Swiss found themselves very much penned into their own half. Then all of a sudden Derdiyok popped up again and hit the upright. The Swiss were showing real danger on the break, but that would be their last meaningful attack.

As the game wore on would tired legs be able to maintain the brave defending that had preserved the lead for this long? Spain threw on Torres in a last gasp attempt to break down the highly organised Swiss defence, but he fired his best chance wide and, despite looking lethal throughout, Spain succumbed to defeat in their opening game.

This was a magnificent result and a tactical victory for der General. Swiss Parliament finished early so they could watch the end of the game, car horns were blown triumphantly in the streets of Bern, Basel and Zurich and for a day Alpenhorns triumphed over Vuvuzelas. My national pride was stirred (impressive, seeing as I'm not a Swiss national) and I felt jubilation for the first time this World Cup. Hopp Schwiiz!

Sound Bites...

2010-06-16T16:48:00.003+01:00

Yep, that title has a double meaning. Essentially I've spent most of the day watching television. One particular piece of the endlessness that piqued my interest was Prime Minister's Questions. Now, the format pretty much does what it says on the tin. With one subtle difference.

Where it's generally considered good form to answer the questions from the House, Cameron appears to be bringing a maverick approach and throwing the rulebook out of the window. "Ooh isn't he marvellous, the loose cannon." Is the inevitable response of Nick Robinson and pals. "I love how honest he is, admitting that he doesn't know the answer." Fawns another. But you can be sure that if, say, Gordon Brown had said that he wouldn't answer the question because he didn't know the facts, then people would have labelled him an incompetent arsehole. It smacks of laziness, as does the policy mentioned in the build-up to the election of letting us take over failing schools/hopsitals/police stations/circuses etc. (although I may have made one of those up). You're supposed to sort it out because that's you're job, we're not going to sort the country out for you.

I feel I'm getting sidetracked somewhat. My main gripe was Cameron's description of the Labour Leadership race as 'increasingly like a Star Trek convention'. I have absolutely no idea what that means. Diane Abbott as Uhura? Because that's borderline racist. Also what are the grounds for this. Who's Captain Kirk? It was on Newsnight, is Paxman Kirk? Paxman's probably Kirk... I'm going for Ed Milliband as Spock, Ed Balls as Scotty, Andy Burnham as McCoy and, well, David Milliband as... er... Sulu... The less said the better probably...

These pointless soundbites are arriving with increasing frequency and becoming more and more convoluted. I long for the day when Dennis Skinner would just come out and say he thought someone was a c*** (alright, he might never have actually said that) he's a proper politician who doesn't subscribe to the 'throw in a similie to hide your unoriginality' school.

Coping Strategies...

2010-06-15T14:42:00.003+01:00

Let's face it, life is generally a pretty banal affair sometimes, particularly if you're body clock needs winding up (like mine). I've been stuck with what I deem to be inappropriate times of feeling tired. Roughly around 3.30 in the morning and then whenever I get up. This means that I am at my most awake at around the midnight to 1 o'clock period. Not especially practical.

But how can we steer ourselves through everyday mediocrity? Well, I find that a simple boring walk down the street can be made 10 or 11x more interesting by pretending you're in a Leone film. Pick a Morricone tune (my favourites for this exercise being the theme from For A Few Dollars More or The Ecstacy of Gold from The Good, The Bad & The Ugly) and then stride purposefully along with the rousing score playing in your head. A simple stroll through the park can become a dramatic experience. For added bonus points, keep your choice hand (righty or lefty depending on your handedness) hovering above your waist and narrow your eyes at passers by.

That might be alright for walking, but what about at 1 in the morning where it's very much the convention to stay inside and not pretend to be in a Western? Well, last night I watched TV Club's Bad Film, The Omen (the remake) on E4+1 and joined in with the fun. Essentially, you watch the film and make as many 'sarky and twattish' comments as you like. A magnificent exercise and one that actually makes the film surprisingly enjoyable. It is utter nonsense, of course (as most unnecessary remakes are) but that's the fun of the #badfilm. It's like a counselling session where you all chip in and help each other make it through the movie.

Anyone have any other interesting ways of making life less of a grim march towards the grave and more of a jolly skip?

My Hero, The Satirist...

2010-06-14T19:08:00.003+01:00

Ok, this might seem a little from the left-field but figuring that you followers might have had enough football on TV and Twitter, you might want something a little different. So, here's something a bit personal.

Long-time subscribers will be aware of my deep love of Cowards and how my comedy style has undoubtedly been heavily influenced by messrs Key, Basden, Woolf and Golaszewski and how the acerbic wit of Charlie Brooker is a real touchstone for my own style, but perhaps one of my greatest idols in comedy is someone not many of you will be familiar with.

To preface this, I should point out that I have, for as long as I can remember, had the brain of a 30 year old trapped in the body of a child/teenager/young adult etc. While other kids were finding amusement in urinating on the slide in the park or SMTV Live, I listened to radio comedy. While their heroes were Ginola or Ryan Giggs, mine was a bearded satirist, cartoonist and unquestionable master of Mornington Crescent: the irrepressible, witty, lugubrious Willie Rushton.

Rushton could make me laugh like nobody else. His surreal, yet wonderfully clever contributions to I'm Sorry I Haven't a Clue made the young me yearn to be as wise, wonderful and witty as the great man himself. He rose to prominence as a cartoonist and writer for the legendary Private Eye magazine and rubbed shoulders with the comedy greats of the period such as Peter Cook, David Frost and Tony Hancock. Indeed it was our Willie who brought home Hancock's ashes after his tragic suicide in Australia in 1968.

I was of course too young to enjoy his satirising heyday or his apparently uncanny impression of then Prime Minister Harold MacMillan, but it was as a child that I heard his distinctive voice 'given silly things to do' on ISIHAC. As well as unparallelled skill at Mornington Crescent he was a master of all of the regular rounds, but the feat that sticks in the memory as one of the most marvellous pieces of concise comic parody is his account of the diary of Mahatma Gandhi (which can be found here, he's the last to play the round). While Humph was as good a host as there has ever been and Barry, Tim and Graeme are all fantasticly funny, I only had ears for Rushton.

Perhaps the best quote purely from the top of my head to give you an insight into the mind of the man is when he was invited back to his Alma Mater of Shrewsbury School to open a new wing with a speech. His 'speech' consisted of "the bugger's open". But then he always had a way with words. In his Who's Who entry he listed his hobbies as 'gaining weight, losing weight and parking'. Indeed it was one bout of sudden weight loss, while wrestling with the Diabetes that forced him to give up his beloved beer, that prevented him playing cricket for Prince Rainier's XI. Cricket was one of Rushton's true passions and as well as plying his trade as a panel wit on ISIHAC he could also be heard as a jovial team captain on Radio 4's Trivia Test Match, where his warm wit was equalled by his immense general knowledge of the gentleman's game.

He was admitted to hospital in December in 1996 for heart surgery and tragically died on the 11th of that month from complications, aged just 59. Among his last words was a message to fellow-panellist Barry Cryer, "tell Bazza he's too old to do panto", even with his last words he was magnificently funny. When the news broke, the 5 year old me cried into a cushion, a white one with a zig-zaggy green stripe for about 40 minutes. I can't tell you any other real distinct memories from my early youth but this one is as clear as day in my mind. Willie was like a favourite uncle or a lovable, roguish grandfather and I felt the loss terribly. It sounds a little pathetic now, but hey, I was only 5, life is hard.

Fortunately, while our earthly bodies may perish, the true soul of wit can never fade away and Willie lives on in the hearts and minds of comedy lovers such as myself. I can fully quote his Gandhi diary (on a good day) and I can hear his voice prompting me with it in my head (I know, I'm crazy).

This was a wee bit random and perhaps a touch too personal to be of interest, but the fleeting nature of genius has struck me somewhat recently. So I'll raise a glass to Willie Rushton- Satirist, cartoonist, wit, the greatest player of Mornington Crescent to ever grace this Earth and my hero.