Chance would be a fine thing

I've just finished a review for the Oldie of the soon-come DVD of Chance in a Million series 1. For the uninitiated, it was a sublime yet subtle send-up of sitcom conventions, starring the splendid Simon Callow as a man plagued by coincidences and Brenda Blethyn as his loyal librarian girlfriend. Subtle? Yes, for all of its satirical intent, it could also just about be taken on face value as a pure sitcom, and probably was by many viewers when ITV repeated it a few months after it had premiered on Channel 4. At one point in the first series, it was 4's 4th most popular programme, its 3.1 million viewers putting it just behind International Snooker and the two mid-week editions of Brookside. My 11-year-old self adored it from the first bar of the theme tune, a Ronnie 'Two Pianos' Aldrich arrangement of 'Taking a Chance On Love', and my 36-year-old self adores it no less. I'm still trying to work out which I love more out of Ms Blethyn or the character she plays, an outwardly timorous yet seethingly passionate specimen of womanhood. When I first met young Masterton in a radio dungeon beneath the Psychology department at Lancaster nearly 20 years ago, a shared love of the series was one of the things that sealed our friendship. Anyway, it's great to have it on a shiny disc (to say nothing of the untransmitted pilot version of episode 1 'Plumstones'), even if the ad break captions are missing. It's a small point, but the jump cuts from part 1 to part 2 really jar with me. Even though I've watched it all many times, one line still made me guffaw earlier. Playing a paratrooper on a treasure hunt, the late Jeremy Sinden remarks on the extreme unlikelihood of finding the requested nude picture of Shirley Williams that "I know one of the lads is prepared to give it a go with chloroform and a Polaroid". Maybe it's the rhythm, maybe it's the choice of words (hats off to Andrew Norriss and Richard Fegen for the gleeful scripts), maybe it's the image. Maybe it's all of the above. Certainly it's funny.

Cycle path on the loose

Walking back from the shops along our local cycle path yesterday, I had a strange encounter. At a junction, I'd walked across and as soon as I had, I heard a bicycle moving slowly behind me. I made sure that both I and the dog were on the side of the path marked out for walkers and carried on. The cyclist moved to the half of the path marked out for bikes (the one with the big bike painted on it), and as he passed, I saw he was a child (of no more than 12) in a hooded top on a BMX. No sooner had he passed me than he turned around and shot me a look of purest contempt. I met his gaze. He turned to the front briefly, before looking back over his shoulder again, maintaining that look. I kept looking ahead, that being the direction in which I was going. When he was about 20 feet away from me, still cycling, he broke the silence. "Fucking cunt". To which I replied "Turn around and face the way you're going. You might fall off". The reply came: "Fat fucking twat". To which I responded: "Face the front and keep cycling". He got a little further away and stopped, before delivering another volley of insults. Unfortunately, he was too far away for me to hear them properly. I merely reiterated my suggestion that he should go about his business and leave me to get on with mine. As I drew closer, he resumed his journey, taking a short cut through the cemetery, which was slightly annoying as that was what I was planning to do, and now I couldn't without appearing slightly creepy. That was the last I saw of the wee chap. So, I'd been on the right side of the path and been facing the direction of travel, but I was the cunt of the piece? Strange. Or was he simply hoping that I'd bite and get angry with him? Even more strange.

Metropolis regained

Full marks to the German/French arts channel Arte for going to town with the restored version of Fritz Lang's Metropolis. The screening of the reconstructed film was preceded by half an hour of speeches and interviews, then followed by a documentary on the restoration. I had planned to record the evening's proceedings for later viewing, but I found myself caught up in the excitement of the occasion, unable to tear myself away, just about following the captions and commentaries with my rusty schoolboy German. The idea that I was sitting in my Lowestoft living room experiencing this film in something resembling its entirety for the first time in 83 years, at the same time as the audience in the Friedrichstadt Palast in Berlin, was ever-so-slightly mind-blowing. The idea that I was experiencing it in a relatively warm environment while thousands froze their extremities off at the Brandenburg Gate to achieve the same end made me profoundly grateful for my £30 Lidl satellite box and the hours I spent up a ladder aiming the dish.

What of the film? Well, I'll be honest. I'd never seen it before, not even in the 1980s pop version by Giorgio Moroder. However, having seen it now with the restored material, I can't believe that it made any sense at all in its edited form. Every single reinstated frame seemed vital to me, no matter how dire the picture quality. I say dire, but the restorers have worked miracles with the 16mm reduction print found in Buenos Aires. This clip gives a rough idea of how much work they've done.



It's like patching a 30ips audio master tape with sections from a wax cylinder, but the most important thing is the story, and the elements told in those flickery fragments were meant to be there. And now they are, again.

I'll expect the same gala treatment from BBC4 when the telerecording of Fred Emney Picks a Pop finally surfaces.

Barrymore spiked

When the Irish chap in the previous Barrymore clip mentioned a troublesome encounter with Spike Milligan, I suspected very strongly that the Cheeseford archives held a copy of it. So it proves. Interesting to see how Barrymore deals with a turbulent guest. Interesting also to see how much Spike was relying on verbatim recitations from his war memoirs by this point. Apologies for the long-play VHS recording on threadbare tape via indoor aerial-type quality of the clip.

Barrymore is less

Cards on the table: I like Michael Barrymore. I saw him live at his mid-1980s peak, and I've never seen anybody control an audience like him. The self-destructive urge within him prevented him from becoming one of the greats, but, on his day, he was a stunning performer. As for the Stuart Lubbock thing, the basic, horrific fact is that a man drowned in his swimming pool. However, the same happened to Art Malik, and nobody blames him for what happened. Relative values at work again.

Fast forward to Barrymore's recent appearance on an Irish chat show with right-wing crusader and host Brendan O'Connor. If ever something deserved the description "car-crash telly" this is it. With a strong, intelligent interviewer, Barrymore would be a worthwhile guest. He needs someone to say "Sit down and stop showing off. You're here to have a conversation with me". Brendan O'Connor isn't that man. Barrymore evades every question in the most unsubtle manner. O'Connor should have opened with a couple of softball questions, just to see if Barrymore was in chatty mood. Then, he could have asked about the comedian's fall from grace. Instead, he opened with it, and was met with a rambling and unfunny flight of fancy about being the patron of the Sheep Society, followed by an audience participation version of Charles Aznavour's 'She(ep)'.

From there, getting any sense out of Barrymore was impossible. The male guest (who he?) almost managed it by remembering Barrymore trying to keep a similarly wayward Spike Milligan under control. For a second, it looked like Barrymore was going to respond with a proper anecdote about working with Spike, but he was distracted by a gap in the sofa and the thread was lost again, with Barrymore standing up and asking the audience if they liked his shoes. That this interview should be such a jaw-dropper for all the wrong reasons is a shame, because Barrymore's looking better and sounding more lucid than he has in years. If he sat down, behaved himself and talked like an adult about his life and bad choices, maybe people wouldn't think so ill of him. The odd thing is that his success was based largely on refusing to sit down or behave himself. Barrymore remains constant (the Jedward gag near the end is a genuine flash of the old mad brilliance of the man, and also a fine example of his utter fearlessness on stage), but the context has changed. Pre-Lubbock, the public were happy to indulge him, but the goodwill is no more.

Sir John Dankworth (1927-2010)

When I heard the news of Sir John Dankworth's death on the radio this morning, I thought I was hallucinating. I hoped I was hallucinating. After attending the 3 Bonzos and a Piano concert at the Bloomsbury Theatre last night, I and a few friends had stayed up all night talking (mostly moaning about the non-existence of this 24-hour drinking culture that's supposedly breaking Britain even further - try getting a glass of milk in Soho after 3am and the options are limited to Balan's Cafe and Bar Italia, each not much bigger than my front room and thus rammed to bursting), so my brain wasn't exactly in peak condition at 7.30am. Unfortunately, what I'd heard was real, and so my sleep-deprived brain had to process the fact that one of my lifelong heroes was no more. Fortunately, he leaves an amazing legacy of music, including a TV theme tune that did a lot to get the infant me into this thing called jazz. Condolences to Dame Cleo, and to Alec and Jacqui. A few years ago, I was covering a jazz festival in Guernsey for Crescendo, at which the JD5 - Sir John, Mark Nightingale, John Horler, Dave Olney (depping for son Alec) and Allan Ganley - were performing. They opened the second set with the Tomorrow's World theme, and very little can match the feeling of glee that overtook me. That was the only time I met Sir John, but I'm happy to report that as well as being a first-class musician and composer, he was also a genuinely nice chap. RIP, Sir John.

Bellamy's People

If you're not watching Bellamy's People each Thursday on BBC2, you should repair the omission ASAP. Go to the iPlayer and start with last night's. The whole world needs to see Anglophile African catering student Julius Olufemwe (Felix Dexter on blistering form) questioning Brian May's patriotism, while Gary Bellamy (Rhys Thomas) struggles to avoid corpsing. It starts at about 13:10 if you're feeling impatient.

The Dude abides

Woo's got a bee in her bonnet about the sort of person who goes to Tesco in their pyjamas. She's got a point, but not everyone who goes to the shops in their boudoir gear ends up looking like Waynetta Slob. Some can make it seem like a statement of effortless cool. Like The Dude, pictured above. If you need an explanation of this picture, just get hold of The Big Lebowski on DVD. You'll thank me for the tip.

That's Torn it

It's been a strange week. Just when I thought I'd got a handle on it all, this happens. Now that's random, and, yes, it made me do a LOL.

Hi-yohhhh

An early start in the morning: I'm booked on the 07.55 Waveney Flyer from Lowestoft to Liverpool Street, in order to attend the Oldie of the Year beano for the (I think) 12th year in a row. It is, quite simply, the best show in town. Sir Terence Wogan will officiate, as ever. He'll do the same jokes, as ever. We'll love every last punchline, as ever. The great and the good have their gongs. The Oldie tends to recognise only the good. Long may it continue.

Having such an early start, I should have retired about 10pm with cucumbers over the eyes (not slices, whole cucumbers - I'm a heavy sleeper). Instead, I type at 02.13, having watched a shedload of Tonight Shows with Conan O'Brien and Johnny Carson. Any amount of lost sleep is justified by this 1969 Carson gag:

"On the way here, I stopped to watch a Hollywood funeral. That sounds callous, but in New York, you don't often get to see a topless kazoo player riding a yak."

Embarrassed by your mistakes in procrastination?

I'm just about keeping my mind on my work at the moment, but it's not at all easy. The BBC has, rather unhelpfully, put online a documentary that I've wanted to see for years. I reckon that after another hour of transcribing, I'll have earned the right to watch it. It's part of a tranche of programmes from the rather wonderful history series Chronicle. By Cribbins, I love the Internet.

Gag reflex

Even in the pre-Internet days, humorous responses to events showed a degree of uniformity. The "Who let the woman drive?" gag about the Challenger disaster was universal and instantaneous. How did these lines make it around the world? Answer: It was a coincidence. Different people thought the same way about the same events, independently of each other, and shared the result with their friends.

An example of this occurred today on Facebook. Two friends, one a professional comedy writer, one an old schoolfriend with no professional connection to the gag trade, each made the observation that, now that Kraft is taking over Cadbury's, they didn't fancy the idea of Cream Cheese Eggs. It's a great line. And it occurred to two un-connected (unless you count me as a common denominator, which would only work if they knew of each other's existence) people at roughly the same time. Which is why, unless the plagiarism is verbatim or the concept is so out there as to be instantly identifiable, it's problematic when comedians accuse each other of stealing material. A lot of comedy is simply a clever reaction to something, and, being human, we shouldn't be surprised if a lot of people react the same way, completely independently of each other.

He who pays the Piper should demand a new logo

With ITV reducing its commitments to regional broadcasting, the BBC has been taking up some of the slack. A manifestation of this is Late Kick Off, a football show that began last night on BBC1. The version we get in the east is produced by Kevin Piper, who presented Anglia Tonight and Anglia's various football shows for aeons before the retrenchment. Not giving a toss about football, I can't say whether the show's any good or not, but I'm glad that Piper, who always seemed likeable on-screen, is keeping busy.

However, with my doctorate in blue cardboard and Letraset studies from the Border TV Academy of Graphic Design, I am qualified to pass comment on his company logo, which, sad to say, is not of the same quality as the Anglia silver knight. While it's nice to see something on the BBC free of the tyranny of Gill Sans (which I once loved with a passion, but now regard with the contempt that familiarity breeds - meanwhile, the Richard Levin-designed 1958-1997 BBC logo will always be my favourite piece of corporate design, in all its variant forms), the design for Kevin Piper Media (I can't decide whether I like or loathe the Ronseal naming policy - He could have had something far cleverer with a name like his) looks like something a bored sixth-former might have knocked up on the school's new Mac in 1990 (that being the last time and place when I knowingly used the Avant Garde typeface for anything). If he'd had the company and logo lying dormant for years, it could be forgiven (just about) but a swift gander at the Companies House database shows that Kevin Piper Media Ltd was incorporated on 20 September 2009.

In fairness, the logo isn't all bad. The one saving grace is the colour bars, which are obviously a comment on MonkeyMFC's antics at Millwall Online.

How the Daily Mail works

There's an interesting story on the Daily Mail website about Millwall supporter Rod Liddle and some messages he posted on a football forum. The piece is headlined "Former Today editor Rod Liddle under fire over 'racist' posts on football supporters' website". Note those single quotes around racist. When used in a newspaper headline, they indicate that the paper's making it up. As it proves. The hack makes much of Liddle's forum handle, MonkeyMFC. Why? Maybe I'm being over-cynical, but it appears to have been done largely so that a stupid person reading the story could well come away and say "He called them monkeys. It's true. It was in the Mail". For what it's worth, the word 'monkey' figures in the email address Liddle used to return my Merry Cuntmas message. So, it would appear to be his nickname. A term of endearment to which the gibbon-visaged rabble-rouser answers quite merrily. So, its presence in his forum handle is irrelevant, and its use in this story adds nothing except a nasty taste in this reader's mouth.

Then there's this: "After abusive comments about [Kevin] Amankwaah by other users, Liddle writes he has heard [Millwall player Neil] Harris's alleged comment was: '**** off you spearchucking African ****'." Again, a stupid person could come away from reading the story thinking that Liddle had actually said that about yer man Amankwaah himself, rather than quoting what he'd heard. But then, 'Millwall player shouts abuse in heat of moment' is a bit dog bites man as stories go.

Helpfully, one of the commenters on the story has quoted the main body of what Liddle said: "There's thousands of organisations catering exclusively to black and asian minorities. **** 'em, close them down. Why do blacks need a forum of their own? As a power base and cash cow for ****s and in order to perpetuate the myth of widespread discrimination". Is that racist? Or is it just a broadside against lobbying groups? To be honest, I read it almost as if Liddle's paraphrasing 'Melting Pot' by Blue Mink. I suspect that it all depends very much on whether you're out to get him or not. While he might be a cunt (as am I), the Mail's miles cuntier.

Le-no comment

The revelation that a cunt might become a newspaper editor (and people acting like it's unprecedented) is a minor sideshow compared to the meejah story of the moment that really matters: Jay Leno vs Conan O'Brien over the future of NBC's Tonight Show. Five years ago, to keep the very bankable O'Brien sweet, NBC got a commitment from Leno that he'd step aside from the Tonight Show and let Coco take over in 2009, which he did. However, Coco's lost a few of the show's older viewers, in favour of a younger audience, while Leno's new show has lost most of its viewers, whatever their age, and has been cancelled. So, NBC proposed that the Tonight Show be moved back 30 minutes to 12.05am, to be preceded by a new Leno vehicle. O'Brien seems to be regarding this as constructive dismissal, and not without reason, as it's not the Tonight Show at 12.05, it's the Tomorrow Show. Over at ABC, Jimmy Kimmel has been playing a blinder, including ripping Leno a new one on his own show.



Meanwhile, over at CBS, Johnny Carson's rightful heir Dave Letterman has ordered in the popcorn and is watching with glee as the rival network tears itself apart, rather as it did when Leno pipped him to the Tonight Show in 1993.

Belated birthday greetings to Kenny Wheeler

Kenny Wheeler was 80 yesterday. Most remiss of me not to mark the occasion by listening to him tear up Seven Steps to Heaven with the Tubby Hayes Big Band, one of my favourite pieces of anything ever recorded on rust-covered Sellotape. I'll have to repair the omission right now. Happy birthday, Kenny. I interviewed him once - not easy, as he's a chap who prefers to speak through music. With a couple of quotes here and there, I cobbled together a piece that made clear my love and admiration for the man and his work. Anyway, here he is in the early 1990s with Gordon Beck on piano, Stan Sulzmann on tenor, Tony Oxley on drums and a bassist I can't quite identify at the moment, playing an unrecognisably ferocious version of Bill Evans' Waltz for Debbie in 4/4 time. Oxley's at his barking best on this one, omitting to bring anything resembling a snare drum to the gig, a decision that I gather drove a massive wedge between him and his long-time collaborator, Beck. I can't mention him without reminding this blog's reader of Stan Tracey's summary of his exceptional, if idiosyncratic talent. "Jazz drummers play ten-to-ten, ten-to-ten, ten-to-ten [the phonetic representation of the ride cymbal swing pattern]. Tony's more a-round-a-bout-a-quarter-past-eleven."

Public service announcement

If you get an email like the following, ignore it. It's a scam. Naturally, being just before the deadline for self-assessment submission, a few people might think "Oh dear, better click on the link and see what they want". At best, you'll end up with a virus. At worst, you might lose money:

Taxpayer ID: [part of an email address I've never used for tax correspondence]-00000472970993UK
Tax Type: INCOME TAX
Issue: Unreported/Underreported Income (Fraud Application)

Please review your tax statement on HM Revenue and Customs (HMRC) website (click on the link below):

[Link removed]

HM Revenue and Customs

A Liddle hypocrisy

The aforementioned comment on Woo's blog resulted in a strange and slightly creepy but highly illuminating stream of communications from Rod Liddle himself. To think that he had time between paid opinions to Google his own name obsessively and give little me a piece of his mind, gratis. Truly I am blessed. In it, I see that he called me a "Typical fucking gobshite public school coward, devoid of talent, wit or interest. Or courage. Hopeless little beardy cunt".

Gobshite? Almost certainly. Devoid of talent, wit or interest? I'm probably not the best judge of my own attributes. You decide. Courage? I wish they'd bring back Imperial Russian stout. However, like Liddle, I went to a comprehensive. Still, why research when you can assume, albeit wrongly? As for being "beardy", what's this I see before me? I reckon that he was just jealous because I can actually grow something other than bumfluff.

Gilding the Lily

A penny has just dropped. Looking for something in some old emails, I noticed a message from a Cambridge undergraduate called Lily Cole, asking for details of an old cinema she was researching historically. I replied with details of a book that would supply some of the basic information she needed, and got a very prompt thank you email in return. You're way ahead of me, I can tell. Must be, mustn't it? Probably best I didn't make the connection at the time, as she's rather lovely, and I might have entered 'Can I just say what a smashing blouse you have on?' mode.

I've just had a vada at the Daily Mail story on Ms Cole's first-year progress. Girl done good, apparently. What do the commenters say beneath the story?

"No big deal. History of Art is a soft option. The courses are normally full of little rich/ sloanes- girls who really have little interest in the subject but did not get the grades to study anything else. It actually denigrates this whole beautiful subject and the tutors get very despondent with the apathetic stupid students they have 99% of the time." Sam, Australia.

"History of Art? Ha ha! Hardly difficult to get a first when you're studying the Degree of Choice for toffs, celebs and anybody else who can't get a proper degree. Oh, let's look at paintings and sculpture for 3 years, how mentally challenging." James, London.

"Wow, history of art - that's a real degree isn't it!" PureScienceFTW

Define a proper/real degree, James and PureTwatteryFFS. The mental challenge is in putting what you've seen into a historical context and supplying a meaningful critical response to it, as with any other historically-based degree subject. And, Sam, even if degrees are becoming devalued, how does someone apathetic and stupid get a first exactly? The real question, though, is why I even bothered to look at the comments, knowing exactly how small-minded and twatty they'd be without reading a syllable. Mercifully, a couple of commenters recognise and laud Ms Cole's achievement, and, oddly enough, they get more positive ratings than the naysayers, but I still feel dirty.

Every Liddle hinders

I see that Rod Liddle's in the frame for the editor's chair at the Independent. Well, that should ensure that the paper finally joins Today, the News Chronicle and the Daily Sketch, and cast a few mates of mine out onto the dole queue in the process.

Never mind the all-encompassing history of the record industry what I wrote. You can keep the soup-to-nuts overview of light entertainment that followed it. When looking at my achievements, I am perhaps proudest of having ensured, inadvertently, that this blog post comes out top if anyone happens to search Google for the phrase "Rod Liddle is a cunt".

Caught on the Hopper

Sad news about Dennis Hopper's almost-certainly terminal illness. Almost as sad is the shocking state of sub-editing at the website of the urban freesheet Metro, which reports that...well, see for yourselves. Still, at least he's lying down.

Missing Believed Wiped

Just back from braving the snow-struck public transport system for a visit to London. The purpose of the jaunt was to attend Missing Believed Wiped at the NFT (Yes, I know it's BFI Southbank now, but I still call Hammersmith Apollo the Odeon, nearly 20 years after it changed, because I'm like that). I took a small detour on my way from Liverpool Street to the south bank, via the British Library, to renew my reader pass, guaranteeing 3 further years of civilisation, ready access to a complete run of the Radio Times and free wi-fi. A new picture was taken, and it's a vast improvement on the old one, taken when I was a stone or two heavier and sporting a luxuriant beard. In that one, I looked like an Old Testament rapist. Now I merely resemble a slightly lardy Tin-Tin wearing Ronnie Barker's glasses.

MBW was a splendid affair, as usual. Some of the functioning addicts of the archive TV community gathered beforehand to concoct evil fantasies about TV executives' mothers with a sideline in illegal abortions. Well, that wasn't the plan, but that's what happened. Sadly, the libel laws prevent me outlining the leaps of fractured logic that brought us to that point, but rest assured, if I were to spill the beans, you'd never look at the Young Generation in the same way again. All this before a single alcoholic drink had been taken, too.

Session 1 saw a welcome repeat of the Kaleidoscope documentary on Bob Monkhouse's private archive, as seen at BAFTA last October. This was followed by the near-saintly Ian Greaves introducing a selection of clips recovered from off-air recordings of the defunct satellite broadcaster BSB. Noel Gay Television made most of BSB's comedy, but junked the recordings at some point in the last 20 years, including very early TV appearances by Chris Morris and Armando Iannucci. Both featured in Ian's compilation, but the real delight was a smattering of material from I Love Keith Allen, including a lovely little piece about BSB continuity. Seated at a Yamaha DX7 in a bad wig, Allen proclaimed that the keyboard would be at the heart of BSB's identity, and that his fellow announcers included Bobby Crush, Russ Conway and Mrs Mills. If anyone ever questions the reason for Keith Allen's existence, this clip alone would justify it.

We also got the first episode of Ronnie Barker's 1972 series His Lordship Entertains, in which his Lord Rustless character turned the ancestral seat into a hotel. The plot revolved around the visit from a hotel inspector. I wonder if John Cleese ever saw this show? The final item in session 1 was a recovered Till Death Us Do Part, but I ducked out for a pint with young Masterton, who had just finished his working day at nearby TalkSPORT, which had been more talk than sport, weather having kiboshed most of the fixtures. Even had James not been around, I'd have probably given Garnett a miss, because love the series though I do, I couldn't face listening to the more reactionary members of the audience cackling with glee every time Warren Mitchell said 'coon' and muttering how it was political correctness gone mad that you couldn't shout 'darkie' on television anymore.

Session 2 was music all the way, beginning with the sole surviving edition of Southern TV's 1968 popfest Time for Blackburn (an early Mike Mansfield production, complete with in-shot turret lens changes and very very fast cutting used as a cheap but arresting visual effect), featuring a young Jonathan King holding forth on topics of the day.

Toe Knee Black Burn was followed by a compilation of clips from the late-1970s/early 1980s BBC Midlands regional music programme Look! Hear!, which were a real revelation. After a worrying start with heavy metal dullards Black Sabbath and Diamond Head, things picked up with a raft of fab Two-Tone acts, including The Selecter enduring a stage invasion from the entire audience, and less well-known but utterly adorable Swinging Cats skanking their way through Never On a Sunday. Actually, kids, show, don't tell.



In summary, it was effing marvellous, and I know that I would buy a DVD of the series without a second thought.

Then there was a 1976 TOTP, recovered from David Hamilton's off-air recording. This was another loo-and-bar break for me, as in the last year or so, I've seen more mid-1970s TOTP than my mind and body can truly stand. Finally, it was time to dust off the much-vaunted recently-retrieved clips from a 1967 TOTP, including unique footage of Pink Floyd performing 'See Emily Play'. Unfortunately, the tape seems to have been stored in a vat of cat's piss, and we ran the whole gamut of sound without picture, picture without sound, neither picture nor sound and, very occasionally, picture and sound. As Dick Fiddy said in his intro, the best way to approach it was to kid yourself that you had miraculously tuned into a signal that had been thrashing about in the ether for 43 years, with attendant reception problems. And Thence We Issued Out, not to see the stars, but to drink and be merry. Which we did.

I had the great good fortune to be put up by Roman Empress and Let's Look Sideways at their palatial east end residence, and, to soak up our Sunday morning hangovers, we met up with The Urban Woo for a fry-up at S&M in Spitalfields. Which was nice. Like the knitting needles and gin reverie of the previous day, most of our breakfast chatter is sadly unrepeatable here, so you'll just have to make up your own rumours about Heather Mills.

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.

Meanwhile for day 11, it's the door to my study.



Separated by the Burston School Strike commemorative tea towel (my great-great aunt was one of the children who went on strike in that historic dispute) are two TV-related thingies. The '/B/B/C/ /tv/ colour' replica camera plate is obvious, the other less so. Let's take a closer look, shall we?



I know what it is and where it came from. Do you?

Playing catch-up again, here's day 10:

Day 9. This never gets old.

Day 8. A BBC2 junction from 1987. This is not as random as it might seem.

Day 7. Back when I was a student at Lancaster, a freak of geography meant that from the university campus, the Moel-y-Parc (BBC Wales/HTV/S4C) transmitter was line of sight while Winter Hill and its Lancaster relay (From the North - Granada, etc) were obscured by hills. So, if we wanted to watch TV illegally in our rooms, it was Welsh telly. In its earliest days, before the advent of TWW and Teledu Cymru, Granada made programmes for a Welsh language audience, reflecting the fact that most of north Wales is technically a Liverpool suburb. This is the ident they used.

The story of how a now-prominent sports lobbyist and I plotted to liberate the giant Granada G-arrow sign from outside the White Cross building will have to wait for another day...

More music for day 6, this time from a 1962 Ted Heath spectacular, featuring Ronnie Verrell (left of picture and left of sound field) and Kenny Clare (on the right) in a friendly sort of drum battle. Two drum heroes for the price of one. Can't be bad. The performance was mimed to the version used on the Decca Phase 4 Stereo album Big Band Percussion, so I've taken the liberty of replacing the lo-fi mono soundtrack from the telerecording with the audio from the original stereo LP. Also visible are numerous percussionists including Stan Barrett and Barry Morgan, not to mention bassist Johnny 'Salute to Thames' Hawksworth and guitarist Ike Isaacs. I can't place the ocarina player, though. Any guidance gratefully accepted. The spiffing arrangement is by Johnny Keating. I fear we might be peaking too soon, but what the hell...

A musical interlude for day 5, courtesy of the Dudley Moore Trio. This selection, called Song for Suzy, is in honour of Roman Empress who Twittered about how much she was enjoying this advent calendar, and the Baker/Worthington alternative.

For day 4, we cross the herring pond and commune with director Stan Freberg and actor Jesse White for an alternative to nicotine patches. I realise that I could, quite happily, fill the days before Christmas with strange little Freberg ads, but I'll try and keep things varied. Thanks to Posie Flump, whose tape this comes from, and to whom I really need to send the disc transfer I did for him, along with the bonus Time for Beany episodes I've put on it.

For day 3 of the advent calendar we return to state-of-the-art 1963 visual effects for the sight and sound of Millicent Martin duetting with herself on the final That Was the Week That Was. Anyone not cheered by the presence of Willie Rushton at the start of this clip is not human.

Playing catch-up, day 2 on the advent calendar brings a VT clock from a 1964 Big Night Out featuring Mike and Bernie Winters. Uncharitable souls have suggested that the VT clock was the most entertaining part of the show.

Despite not feeling particularly festive, a tradition's a tradition, so here's the first window on this years Cheeseford Virtual Archive TV Advent Calendar. For the last few years, Nigel Lythgoe - ex-Young Generation dancer, turned choreographer and producer - has been living and working in the US, most recently on a show called So You Think You Can Dance? He courted controversy when he expressed his reservations about seeing a pair of gents dancing with each other Fred and Ginger style. In certain quarters, this would have been bad enough, but he made matters worse by describing the all-male act as "Brokeback Ballroom" on his Twitter feed. The furore led to accusations of homophobia on Lythgoe's part. Tish and pish. This excerpt from a 1984 Central TV Christmas tape shows a young Lythgoe and what looks like Eurovision winner Johnny Logan camping it up something rotten. Obviously, neither gent is gay, but both are clearly happy to be identified as friends of the family.

So, Ian Hart remonstrating with a 'disruptive' audience member was understandable, was it? I prefer Sir John Gielgud's approach, which was to rise above it and press on. At one point in the 1950s, the great actor found himself working with a young man heavily in the thrall of Pinter. It might even have been Pinter himself, I'm not entirely sure. After an epic pause, the kindly Gielgud asked the young thesp a question: "Dear boy, why are you leaving these enormous pauses?". The young chap replied that it was all the rage at RADA now. Gielgud's reply was majestic. "It's nothing new, dear boy. I went through a similar phase myself until one night when, in the middle of a lengthy, dramatic pause, I heard from the stalls a cry of 'You horrible beast, you've just come all over my umbrella'." I wonder how Ian Hart would have dealt with that one?

RIP Malcolm Laycock. The best.

Sitting in Humanities 2 at the British Library, wrestling with a pile of Radiotimes bound volumes in the interests of research, a programme billing from April 1979 leapt out at me. "8.10pm - Accident. A drama series in eight episodes. In the confusion of a road accident ten lives are mixed in a jig-saw of past and present." If you ever wondered what Anthony Horowitz was watching on Wednesday nights 30 years ago, now you know.

I've just taken a momentous decision. When my current stock of blank minidiscs is exhausted, I'm going to buy one of those new flash drive-based digital audio recorders - a Zoom or a Tascam of some description. There are 18 shrink-wrapped discs on the shelf in front of me, and a couple of part-used discs with over an hour of recording time in mono mode left, should I need them. I reckon those 18 discs should allow me to do all the interviews I need for the book I'm currently working on (very slowly, but I've just started to regain a tiny bit of momentum after the events of what Americans would call 9/24, thanks for asking). I have three working portable minidisc machines (one of which has power issues when using the internal battery, which means I've got to search for the nasty, plasticky screw-on gewgaw that enables the user to shove in a bog-standard AA - I could be gone some time. It's a Sony, whereas the brace of Sharps have a built in AA compartment, just one of many reasons why the Sharp portables were so much better than the Sonys), and a small family of stereo condenser microphones, and I'm hoping they'll see me through this project as well. I reached the conclusion when I was thinking "Have I got enough blanks left?" earlier. I was on the verge of buying another 10 from an Amazon Marketplace seller for just under a tenner, when I thought "I'm going to have to move on sooner or later, and this tenner is 1/15 of the cost of a spanking new machine that will allow me to transfer the audio to my computer losslessly and not in real time. What a world that would be. Best hold fire, then". Memories of clearing out my local Aldi's stock of bargain BASF 8mm video cassettes immediately before my 8mm camcorder breathed its last also popped into my mind. Why not get a super zippy modern doodah now? Until I finish this book, any money coming into schloss Cheeseford is earmarked for luxuries like bread and shoes. That's a good gag. I wonder who came up with it?

Memo to BBC News and other media outlets: Celebrity has very mild disagreement with mildly critical fan is not a major story. However, a few people have said to me "Come now, it's not Stephen Fry's fault that the BBC has over-reacted in this way". It is, though. Fry has made such a big deal of Twitter, to the point that I would describe him as a shill if I didn't love him and his work so much. He's created the interest. A (hopefully temporarily) depressed Fry reacted badly to an observation that seems to me to be on the mild side of fair comment. However, the trouble is that a man of his intelligence can't not have known that his loyal followers would react in the way that they did, which reflects badly on him. He would also have had a fairly shrewd idea that it would be picked up by the media, if not of the undue prominence they gave it. To be fair, though, depression is the enemy of rational thought.

Still, it's all been dealt with now, with Fry admitting to feeling foolish. Well, yes. Come here you big lummox and have a cuddle. If there is a story left to report, it's the unpleasant reaction of Alan Davies. One Twitterer sent a message to Fry saying "@stephenfry Please don't be a grumpytrousers. You're much-loved - go get yourself a non-cyber hug immediately". Davies reacted to the whole business with "Anyone who thinks that @stephenfry could even fabricate a toss about anything @brumplum or any such moron says ought to stop worrying". The 'grumpytrousers' poster tackled Davies (hopefully while wearing ear protection) with "There's no need to be offensive. @brumplum said he adored @stephenfry but his tweets could be a bit dull. That's not moronic". Davies hit back with "yes it is moronic, you should know , being a moron yourself". From there, it escalated, with Davies calling everyone who dared to pass comment a 'moron', 'tosser', 'halfwit', 'dickhead', 'idiotic' or a 'prat', clearly unaware that he was confirming his own idiotic comic persona by doing so. Finally, Davies concluded that "Anyone has a pop at your mates you stick up for them.Twittr needs to be more like Essex.If you wouldn't say it to their face then do shut up". Which bit of Essex, Alan? Dedham Vale on a tranquil Sunday or Basildon on a Saturday night? Fry has apologised to brumplum for all of the abuse he's received. He should now have a quiet, schoolmasterly word with Davies, who has been one of the principal abusers.

Davies, in his ham-fisted and oafish* way, does make an interesting point. I've never said anything online I wouldn't say to someone's face, but some find it easy to hide behind a persona and be the fearless fighter that they wouldn't dare be in real life. Tools like Twitter create an artificial intimacy between fans and celebrities, and when you are intimate with someone, you feel able to say whatever you like to them. This started mildly, and ended in the same way. The next time a fan criticises their hero on a social networking site, it might not be so seemly. A celebrity might 'follow' you and might reply to your messages occasionally. However, you do not know them. They do not know you. Proceed accordingly. Celebrities too have a responsibility to make the ground rules clear.

I'm trying to think of an historical equivalent, but I can't. It's a product of the technology. In 1978, Stan Boardman didn't ring everyone up to call them a cunt when Tom O'Connor went ex-directory. Welcome to the modern world.

* EDIT - 21/2/2010 - I've substituted 'oafish' for the original, stronger description of Davies' manner, as Davies is now Twittering about "libellous blogging". The original term was, I believe, defensible as fair comment, but defending it on those grounds would take more time and effort than I'm prepared to put in. I've also removed a couple of comments, which, while true, also come under the heading of "can I really be arsed?".

I'm all in favour of collective bargaining, and can understand the principles behind the Royal Mail dispute. However, isn't striking at the height of a recession to maintain existing working terms, when countless thousands of jobless would happily accept the inferior terms on offer, bordering on the suicidal?

When so many high-profile child abuse cases are in the news, it's sometimes hard for one to stand out, but this one manages it. Being so used to reading and hearing of terrible acts of inhumanity, I find my visceral reactions to situations like these increasingly rare. Rationally and logically, I abhor and condemn the acts, but it takes a lot to make me feel physically sick, as I did reading that report.

And yet in that terrible catalogue of events, there is a glimmer of hope, decency and humanity. The mother of one of the victims is quoted as saying: "[F]or those involved in paedophile behaviour to identify it in themselves and know where to seek help, society must be prepared to discuss this issue. We need to allow an openness within society of where to seek help, just as alcoholics go to AA and gamblers go to GA. Clearly the protection of children must take precedence, but if individuals could have been stopped or deterred, we as a family may not have found ourselves in this situation."

I think this might be the bravest thing that anyone in the public eye has said for quite some time. Prevention is always better than cure, and prevention need not mean the extermination of all paedophiles or bricks through windows. Unfortunately, we won't know what it does mean until we have the openness that this mother requests, and are able to find out exactly what compels paedophiles. Only then can the problem be managed effectively. If this were being said by a social worker or someone else with a need to maintain professional detachment, it would be easy for the 'condemn first, don't bother to ask questions later' lobby to dismiss. However, it's coming from a woman whose child was subjected to vile, awful acts of abuse by men she trusted to care for her child. Everybody should be listening to her right now.

Just seen some rough clips on BBC News. Dimbleby on stunning form. First question about the BNP's adoption of Churchill. Griffin concludes his case for Churchill's natural home being in the BNP with a snide dig at Jack Straw, talking about his own father's WW2 service versus Straw's father being a conchie. Dimbleby - nobody's idea of a Trot - straight in: "What relevance does that have on the question?" (doubtless thinking "If you want to play that game, matey, my father was one of the first Allied personnel into Belsen after the liberation"). Griffin restates the slur. Dimbleby restates the question. Clip cuts off. Later, Griffin responds to suggestions that he said "Thank you, Auntie" with a statement that he doesn't regard the BBC as Auntie, but instead as part of "nasty, ultra-leftist establishment" that is the enemy of Englishness. The response is pure tumbleweed. If the clips are representative, Griffin gets hung out to dry in the fairest possible manner. The British way, if you like.

Roll up for the first must-see Question Time since Ian Hislop ripped Mary Archer a new arsehole in 2002. As a man of the left, I have to say that Peter Hain's posturing has done nobody on the liberal side of the equation any favours. I suppose the protest had to be made, in full knowledge that it would be rejected by the BBC Trust, and I'm just grateful that it was made by the risible Hain rather than anybody I respect. Attempting to silence the enemies of understanding aids their cause (which can also be taken as a comment on the Jan Moir situation).

Whatever happens, it'll be interesting. If sparks fly, it'll be worth seeing whence they come and where they go. If it's dull and polite, that will be interesting in itself, as it's the least likely outcome. I'll be there with popcorn, a tumbler of something cheering and a big pile of cushions to throw at the TV.

For what it's worth, Griffin got a laugh out of me on the radio news the other day, defending the party's decision to use images of a Supermarine Spitfire on its literature. Some said it was an attempt to ally the BNP with our brave boys and girls in the public perception. Griffin said it was merely an emblem of the defeat of European dictatorships. What, Nick? Fascist dictatorships, you mean? The biggest laugh of all, however, came when it was reported that the pictured Spitfire was from the RAF's celebrated 303 Squadron. That was the one composed entirely of the immigrant Polish airmen who came over to our side just before the Nazis occupied France.

UPDATE: Another laugh. After years at Teddington, TV Burp is now recorded at BBC Television Centre, and this week's is being done tonight at roughly the same time as The Jack and Shite Minstrel Show. Question Time is good, but so's TV Burp. Which is better? There's only one way to find out...

So farewell, then, Ludovic Kennedy. Quite apart from being a television heavyweight from the golden age of current affairs, he was also a campaigning, crusading man of principle, whose book 10 Rillington Place led pretty much directly to the pardoning of Timothy Evans. He could do funny too, as his cameo in Yes Minister and his partnership with Peter Cook on A Life in Pieces proved.

This still hasn't turned up, and I'm starting to worry slightly.

Who's the callow youth with the lovely Cleo Rocos' arms draped around him? Its me, over a decade ago, in my early days as a hack on Publishing News, at the launch of her book Bananas Forever. Tony Mulliken of Midas PR was masterminding the publicity for the book, and, in an unguarded moment, I let slip to him my enormous regard for the late Maurice Cole and my profound love for his glamorous sidekick. Tony took great delight in introducing me to my heroine, who turned out to be every bit as smashing and pleasant as you'd expect. Although I was covering the launch for PN's diary column, and was thus expected to merge into the background (as if that were possible with a foghorn voice like mine) and note down vaguely amusing occurrences, as well as taking pictures, rather than appearing in them. Tony, being Tony, however, said something like "Oi, make love to the camera, the pair of you", at which she flung her arms around me, while I tried not to look like someone who'd just been grabbed bodily by a woman he'd quietly adored for years. Anyway, I found it on an old hard drive the other day and thought it would be fun to share. I know it's the visual equivalent of an appalling name-drop, but it cheered me up when I saw it. I bumped into Cleo on several occasions after this at various launches and beanos, not to mention wandering around Fitzrovia, where I worked and I believe she lived, and she always made a point of saying hello. She was then and, I suspect, still is, just a delightful person.

Note well, I will be on BBC Radio Norfolk this afternoon just after 2pm, talking archive TV with the excellent Stephen Bumfrey, talking being the one thing I can still do largely unhindered. Broadcasting under the influence of co-codamol. Hmmm, let's see how that works. Anyway, the whole affair is part of my campaign to take over whatever fragments of the frequency spectrum Iain Dale isn't using at any given time. Today, Radio Norfolk. Tomorrow, the worl...ah, more likely Radio Suffolk. Still, it's a start.

Ben Miller's Radio 2 thing about Benny Hill is in my current queue of things to be listened to, and it will be interesting to see how it views Hill's demise. The more I think about it, especially since a particularly thought provoking email on the subject from Matt Rudd, his worst crime was sticking with producer Dennis Kirkland for so long. Dennis was the perfect producer for him at one time, but not by 1989. I met Dennis once, and liked him enormously, but by the end of their association, his idea of what Hill should be doing had become outmoded. His continued belief in its validity can be seen in the shows he made at Central in the mid-1990s with Freddie Starr, which are latter-day Benny Hill shows in all but name.

I don't think it's madness to suggest that someone like Geoff Posner or Alan Nixon could have taken over and reinvented him. He was still a very capable comic performer, let down simply by material and format. The main sticking point would have been Hill's neediness. Throughout his career, he needed reassurance and molly-coddling from his producers. According to Brian Tesler, studio tapes of Hill's early shows are notable for the number of times when Hill stops and calls out for Philip Jones. The likes of Posner and Nixon would have understood and been able to supply that level of care, undoubtedly, but whether Hill would have trusted them is another matter. It's an imponderable that nonetheless remains worth pondering.

Of course, had he lived even five years longer he'd have had the full wanky student ironic veneration treatment, for what that's worth. Let's not forget, though, his best stuff - the BBC shows and the earlier Thames shows - is top-notch TV comedy.

There's a slightly strange sub-plot to all this arm business. Pretty much everybody who's examined me at close quarters over the last fortnight or so, has observed what splendid working order the rest of me is in. This morning, a very nice physiotherapist reassured me that my good arm was so flexible that, when fully healed, even with a reduced range of motion, my right arm should be not that far off most people's range of motion. This specialist in the hospital offered me stronger painkillers, expressing amazement that I was chugging along on the mild ones. I am lead, therefore, to conclude that I am a strong and healthy person.

Why, then, did the Neanderthal cunts who taught PE at school spend my formative years telling me I wasn't, just because I couldn't get excited about kicking a ball around? I wasn't lazy, I wasn't averse to exercise. By the time I was in the 4th form, I was cycling the 8-mile round trip to and from school daily on my 10-speed Falcon Rapier (or Falcon Rapist, as it inevitably became known). I just couldn't see the point in what they were offering. If they told me to put on hiking boots rather than football boots, and let me go walking for the duration of the games period, I'd have been out of their hair and getting good valuable exercise in a manner that did not seem wholly futile.

I can only hope that physical education in schools has changed for the better in the intervening 20-25 years.

About a year ago, I was approached by a chap from Faber and Faber called John Grindrod, asking if I'd contribute a few hundred words on just about anything to an anthology he was editing called Shouting at the Telly. We e-mailed back and forth, and discovered that we had a lot in common, from favourite television programmes to mutual ex-colleagues, so the decision was pretty easy. I got on one of my favourite hobby horses and did a piece about ITV start-up sequences and continuity.

Last week, when most urgently in need of a boost, a finished copy of the book arrived in the morning post. Some of the contributors are more enjoyable than others, but I'm happy to admit that Sam Delaney has made me reconsider the unfavourable impression I got from him as a talking head on various clip shows, by turning in a couple of very funny articles. His feverish nightmares of being kidnapped and fed chalk by Carol Hersee and her clownish henchman were the turning point for my perceptions of him. Unfortunately, another prominent contributor fails to confound my expectations. Boyd Hilton, TV editor of Heat magazine, lists the 10 sitcoms to which he is most addicted, but does so in a bland, 'this'll do' manner at odds with most of the rest of the book - everyone else seems to relish and seize the freedom and spirit of the project. Also, with the exception of Rhoda, his 10 choices seem to come straight from those spurious polls that proliferate now.

Back to the highlights: a nice piece by Jonathan Carter about sitcom neighbours, with a foreseeable, but still enjoyable, twist; Christien Haywood's fantastic and utterly unreliable account of the development of Knight Rider; Kevin Eldon's memories of ray-gun deaths in Orlando; Susan le Baigue being utterly right and very amusing about property programmes and their responsibility for the economic shitstorm; Richard Herring's post-doctoral thesis on Goodnight Sweetheart; an affectionate and broadly unassailable assessment of Upstairs Downstairs from Andrew Collins; theme tune writer Daniel Pemberton on classic theme tunes; Framley-type Robin Halstead on Christmas television; belting efforts from Ian Jones and Steve Williams of that TV Cream; and all of Grindrod's own warm, funny linking material, particularly the story of how he chose an ad break in Taggart as the moment to come out as gay to his parents, outlining the impeccable logic involved.

The contributors were paid a flat fee, and so I gain nothing by recommending it as an ideal stocking-filler, which it is. It will be in the shops from early November. My fine words also appear in the latest issue of the Kettering, the magazine of elderly British comedy. I am assured that my copy is in the post, and I can't bloody wait.

Re: the Letterman business. Is any of this news to anyone who's watched any Larry Sanders? Dave earns points by responding to blackmail with honesty, nay shamelessness. It's the only way.

A CD reissue of Ivory Cutlery's 'Privilege' arrives in the post. I think the Oldie wants my honest opinion. I know I'll love it.

The op went well, thanks to the expertise of the consultants at the James Paget in Gorleston. Thankfully, they waited until afterwards to explain just how serious my injury had been. My elbow joint had been crushed by the impact, turning it from a nice big sphere to a bag of much smaller marbles. The humerus had snapped like a stick of celery, and the CT scan images were pretty grim. It's all now held together in a very close approximation of its original form with plates, screws, pins and wires. The rest is down to nature and some pretty hardcore physiotherapy, both of which take time. However, I am now pretty confident that I'll be restored to full health eventually. I'm a natural rebel, but I know when orders need to be heeded. Anyway, I won't mope about it here any longer. As you were...