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.
Friday, January 15, 2010
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."
Thursday, January 14, 2010
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
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.
Tuesday, January 12, 2010
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.
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".
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".
Monday, January 11, 2010
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.
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.
Wednesday, January 06, 2010
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.
'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.
Monday, January 04, 2010
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?".
Friday, January 01, 2010
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.
Thursday, December 31, 2009
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.
Sunday, December 27, 2009
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.
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.
Thursday, December 24, 2009
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.
Wednesday, December 23, 2009
Tuesday, December 22, 2009
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.
Sunday, December 20, 2009
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.
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