Good news about the news

The announcement that Moira Stuart is to read the news on Chris Evans' new Radio 2 breakfast show is very pleasing. Quite apart from giving the obvious ageist nonsense of her ousting from the breakfast prog on BBC1 a well-aimed kick in the balls, having met Ms Stuart on a couple of occasions, I can testify that she's fun, twinkly and mischievous. Here's hoping that side of her comes out fully with Evans.

Transcription ahoy

As part of my new year work ethic, I'm getting stuck into my transcription backlog for the Dawson book. During my chat with Con and Dec Cluskey of the Bachelors, Con remembered the medical advice given to Tony Mercer of Black and White Minstrel Show fame:

'He was told not to drink. He said “I do like a drink” and the doctor said “Well just have a glass of wine”. So, he started drinking pints of wine.'

Which is a funny story until you remember that Mercer died in 1973 at the age of just 51. Heavy drinking was the norm at one time, and it continues to astonish me how much actually got done considering how pissed everybody must have been. One comedy writer told me that seven rounds of drinks in a standard lunch hour was nothing unusual, and that they went back to work afterwards, and produced good stuff. Now he says he can't concentrate in the afternoon if he has a glass of wine at lunch time. I know what he means. I once drank a lot more than I do now (well, I suspect that I spent 1998 to 2002 at least slightly drunk, with all the book launches I felt compelled to attend), and I enjoy what I do drink far more.

Credit crunch computing part 1

Over the last few weeks, my XP-equipped desktop machine (the core elements of which I've had for nearly 5 years, although the rule of Will Hay's mortarboard applies) has been freezing and slowing. As I've been doing much the same, I've been inclined to forgive it. However, in the last few days, it was getting so painful that I was considering a clean reinstall of XP, never something to be undertaken lightly, even with my rigorous backup procedure in place. It didn't occur to me until yesterday that the heatsink might be clogged up with dust. After all, I last flushed it out a few months ago at most. When the brainwave landed on my bonce, I checked the CPU temperature and, sure as eggs is eggs, it was nudging 60 deg C, which while not meltdown is far from ideal. A quick go over with the compressed air and we're back down to 30 deg C when idle, and 40 deg C when pushing the system very hard indeed. How many people get to a similar stage and think "Computer's fucked. I need a new one?".

Hoaring himself around

A new year, a new decade, a new dawn, some new potatoes (with roast chicken and peas, I think) and a new blog to share with you both. My chum John Hoare will be spilling his guts and speaking his branes at Transistorized. Expect porn, scatology and trenchant analyses of near-forgotten Thames sitcoms. While we're here, John's other half, Tanya Jones, runs a splendid blog called Gypsy Creams, which highlights embarrassing and baffling adverts from 1960s and 1970s women's magazines. While the rampant sexism of many of the ads is unintentionally funny, my favourites are the hideous recipes made with the ingredients of what was then regarded as progress - frozen crap, canned vomit, desiccated piss in a sachet, etc. Now, I love mash, and I love corned beef (especially in a crusty roll with pickle - a favourite from the EMI canteen at Hayes when I was researching my first book), but you'd need to drug me and hog-tie me to make me go anywhere near corned beef Alaska.

Doing the BBC's work for them

While programmes of dubious merit get trailed to death, I've seen nothing to promote BBC4's repeat of the Faces' 1972 Sounds for Saturday performance. It's on tomorrow - New Year's Day - at 22.50, and having seen clips on various things, I can't wait to see it all the way through. The following cover of 'Maybe I'm Amazed' is from the show and it's just jaw-droppingly fantastic. I love Macca's original, but this tears the song a new arse. Lovely relatively gentle opening vocal from Ronnie Lane before Rod the Mod takes over, and just listen to Kenney Jones, whacking the Ludwigs in a manner that would have made John Bonham doff his cap. It's quite simply the sound of a great band at the top of their game.

Same procedure as last year?

Well, it's New Year's Eve, or as the Germans call it 'Silvester'. A rather endearing Silvester ritual is the tendency of their TV networks to put out a strange little English music hall sketch called Dinner for One (see left for its stranglehold over the New Year's Eve schedules on the regional German stations). I've explained the phenomenon before and offered the whole thing as an XviD AVI file for viewing in the comfort of your own home. As the link's now dead, here it is again, this time in the original monochrome 1963 recording. Happy Hogmanay.

Present tense

Merry festivus everyone. I hope the season brought you everything you desired. Personally, I can't complain. My main presents from Mrs Cheeseford were the Palin diaries volume 2 and Seasonal Suicide Notes by Roger Lewis (the latter of which has just provoked several laughter-fuelled coughing fits in the bath - his footnoted ruminations on the size and purpose of Billie Piper's mouth were particularly joyous) , with the rest of my gift haul being perishable. And that's the way I like it. A couple of years ago, I picked up on Mrs Cheeseford's cogitations on the value of owning a strimmer and bought her one. It has never left its box. Since then, I've bought her port, sherry and confectionery, because I know they will be received with delight and used with joy, and not stuffed in the under-stairs cupboard.

When I was a trade press hack, I became incredibly blase about books. If there was anything that took my fancy, I could probably find a copy under a colleague's desk and swap them one of equivalent value from my pile. Failing that, I could ring a publicist and scrounge one, in return for a commitment to write a diary paragraph on one of their lesser-known wards. I stopped giving books as presents because friends and family knew I'd got them free. Now that I'm forced to pay for literature once again, there are always a couple of titles in the autumn schedules that I know I'll need. I could buy them myself, but I prefer dropping heavy hints from October onwards ("Have you seen the discounts on books in Asda? Disgraceful. Michael Palin's diaries are half-price. £10! Madness.").

I should perhaps mention another book that I received just before Christmas: a copy of 65: My Life So Far by Jonathan King. I'm in the process of writing a review that will hopefully appear in The Oldie. If it doesn't make it over the editor's boredom threshold, I'll post it here. The book itself is overlong, and worth reading with a very sceptical eye, but it's rarely less than interesting. Madame Arcati's already reviewed it at length and had to deal with a shitstorm for not condemning the book and its author utterly. The orthodox view seems to be that "A convicted nonce should not be allowed to write his memoirs. End of." What about unconvicted nonces? Did anyone organise burnings of Stone Alone back in the day or even murmur slight disapproval when Bill Wyman popped up on The One Show recently? I'm really interested in the relative values at work here. In airplay terms, there's a D-notice on Gary Glitter's records, but DJs have no qualms about playing tracks from convicted murderer Phil Spector's Christmas album. Leslie Grantham must be very grateful that he only killed a man, instead of touching up the doomed cabbie's daughter.

And so we come to the last day of Advent, and the last window on our calendar. A couple of people have wondered aloud whether it is possible to top yesterday's entry, a view with which I have some sympathy. Vincent Price predicting Keith Floyd 15 years before his rise to fame is something to savour. However, while the Vincent Price thing is funny, the clip that follows is funny, utterly adorable and just the thing to spread very welcome tidings of comfort and joy. From Christmas Eve 1961, here are Hattie Jacques, Eric Sykes and Billy Cotton with a little help from a Beverley Sisters record. Merry Christmas, grownups.

Nearly there, and to help us to day 24, we have Vincent Price in comedy mode on the 1970 LWT Christmas spectacular Holiday Startime. Your hostess is Australian person Maggie Fitzgibbon. No, me neither.

With barely a couple of minutes of day 22 left, it's time to open another window. Through this aperture we are whisked back to the late 1980s and Top of the Pops, but not as we know it. Using a library piece that sounds enough like Paul Hardcastle's 'The Wizard' to get the point across, while at the same time sounding absolutely nothing like it at all, this is the opening of the British Gas Video Unit's attempt to create a pop chart of great inventors, aided by David '(Who are you trying to) Kid' Jensen. The true glory comes when a rather more sober voiceover chap takes over talks of the lasting influence of inventors compared to the "here today, gone tomorrow" impact of pop stars. Up pops a Quantel extravaganza of pop star mugshots. Who, he asks, 20 years on (which is just about now, as it happens) will remember these faces? Yeah, what did happen to Kylie Minogue, Bono and the Pet Shop Boys? If anyone wants to see the rest of this 12-minute edition of Engineering's Not Dull, just say.

Apologies for the delay. Here are the contents of yesterday's window back-dated. It's the Peddlers with an organ shuffle thing called Southern Woman. How does one move like a mustang, exactly? Still, smashing groove.



PS Have this to make up for the delay.

Day 20, and a clip with a personal connection, taken from the 21 February 2001 edition of BBC Breakfast. Tiger Tim Waterstone was threatening to launch a takeover bid for his old company, and, desperate for someone with a bit of book trade nous to fill in the background, reporter Brian Milligan (no relation to Spike, but brother of Stephen) called the offices of Publishing News and asked to speak to chairman and all-round grumpy old sod Fred Newman. Milligan and crew duly turned up and, for some unknown reason, it was agreed that it would be best if Spint (as Fred was known - long story, some of which can be found here) sat on my desk to deliver the piece. So, from about 1:41, you can see a bit of my personalised partition, covered with detritus designed to elicit a chuckle during the darker moments of press day. Just behind Spint's right ear is the Times obituary for Rev Bill Westwood, former Bishop of Peterborough and father of 'urban' music advocate Timothy. If this were in HD, you'd be able to see the rap slang speech bubble that my colleague Ralph Baxter had added to the accompanying picture of the deceased churchman. Then, by Fred's left ear, you can see a masthead from Simon Heffer's Daily Mail column with something obscene or absurd (I forget exactly what, but it looks like a pie of some description) scrawled on it by me or Ralph in a moment of severe vexation with the Tory philosopher. You can also see the luxuriant pube-like thatch of Roger 'Eraserhead' Tagholm bobbing about in the background, no doubt thinking up clever but unfunny punchlines for the diary page. That's no judgment of Rog, who is one of the funniest people I know. It was a sort of challenge among him, me and Ralph to put in the most laboured yet unamusing shite we could think of. My personal best was describing Politico's bookshop as "a home from Douglas-Home". Geddit? No? Good. Love the misspelling of Spintola's name and Tanya Beckett's pay-off, by the way. "A very interesting story, and a very interesting man...indeed. Another interesting man..." [Creak, groan, rictus grin, etc]. We'll be the judges of that, thank you, Tanya, unless you were talking about Fred, in which case, oh yes. A fascinating study.

A double-yolker for day 19, as a result of YouTube's 10-minute limit. From the 23 December 1986 edition of Des O'Connor Tonight, here's a bit of Burly Chassis. Clip 1 is her opening song. Clip 2 is a brief interview segment, then her second song. The interview takes place at a bar, from behind which pops fellow guest...well, just watch it. The plan was obviously to create one of those unpredictable moments that people talk about years later (doubtless this bit would feature in the trailers if the programme were being made now), but you can't create unpredictability. Nonetheless, Des doubles up and pisses himself gamely. I can only assume that it's genuine amusement or an act of kindness rather than des-peration. You are permitted to chortle at the cocktail, but that's all.

Day 18: at some point over the festivities, Two Way Stretch will be watched, as recorded at some point during Christmas 1994. Never mind your Carry Ons or your Ealing comedies, this is the apex of the British comedy film, and it was a favourite of mine and my mate Stephen Evens during our shared drab suburban adolescence. Even if the plot and script weren't absolutely first-rate, which they are, the presence of Bernard Cribbins, Beryl Reid, Liz Fraser, Irene "You're obviously mistaking me for an actress who gives a fuck*" Handl, David "I'm Dave Lodge, I was in Cockleshell Heroes" Lodge, Thorley Walters, George Woodbridge, Mario Fabrizi, Maurice Denham and just about all the greats would see you through. Lionel Jeffries is the man of the match, though. It takes a true great to outshine Peter Sellers on peak form, and he did it. Yes, he was superb as the Marquess of Queensberry, but Prison Officer Sidney 'Sour' Crout is his finest moment in a career of distinction. Oh, and it has the best theme/opening titles combo of any British comedy film ever. Ken Jones, we salute you.

* Apologies for mangling the quote. The full story is explained in the accompanying comments, and it's a corker.

And on day 17, Paul Daniels made a studio camera disappear.

Now, I'm a massive Vic and Bob fan and, for day 16, we visit Hull's premier nightspot for a date with Mandate. The series this came from, Bang Bang It's Reeves and Mortimer, seems to get overlooked when Vic and Bob's career is being considered, but elements of it are, for me, the best work they've ever done. Not least the spoof docu-soap, The Club. All of The Club was great, but I think this might be the peak of the run, at least in terms of quotability. The presents from the staff sergeant ("many of them gold"), the romantic links with celebrities ("I am shortly to be married to DCI Jane Tennison of Primal Scream"), Kinky John Fowler extolling the virtues of his boyband proteges ("I swear on my neck...and lips..."), and the revelation that Paul Baron, the Tesco Value Stringfellow, was never really in the SAS, but was really a slipshod "wepairman for Wediffusion - he use shoddy cables...". Unlike Paul Baron's jewellery, gold-plated at Timpson's ("and I have to say the tolerances are absolutely minimal"), this is real comedy gold.

Day 15 and we find ourselves rushing back to the Jazz 625 cupboard. This clip never fails to live up to the title of the tune they're playing. Benny Golson's still above the ground and active, but Alan Branscombe (on piano here, but equally at home on just about any instrument you cared to thrust into his hands), guitarist Dave Goldberg and the wonderful Tubby Hayes all went long before their time was due. Superb support on drums from Allan Ganley, another much-missed figure. I was too young to ever meet Branscombe, Goldberg or Hayes, but I met Allan on a couple of occasions, the last being at a jazz festival in Guernsey where I sat about 6 feet from him and watched his playing like a percussion-mad hawk.

For day 14, it's a south-western puppet rabbit, with music by Ed Welch.

On the 13th day, Erroll Garner made his bassist & drummer play a guessing game about when the tune was going to start. He did this a lot. It was one of the things that made him fab. This clip comes from the second of Garner's appearances on Jazz 625, repeated on BBC2 in 1985, and recorded by me on a JVC E-180, which I treasured until I found a DVD of both shows on sale in New York a few years back. Enough of my yakkin'...

For day 12, we return to the stage of the BBC Television Theatre at the height of Beatlemania (10 May 1964, to be precise). In charge, at centre stage, Billy Cotton. Enter stage left, Terence Alan Milligan with a jam jar of She Loves You and a deluxe Merseybeat wig. Comedy ensues, as does jazz, with Spike showing what a handy trumpeter he was, while making a prize nana out of poor old Bill Herbert on the banjo.