Review of 2006 Part 1
The Year Of The Wallchart
If I were forced to sum up the year 2006, I'd say it was hard. January to June were dominated by the writing of Not Going Out. Half a year on one project that resulted in far too many seven-day weeks due to my ongoing 6 Music commitment, which really took it out of me, physically and mentally. And then the book filled my days between July and November, its deadline kindly put back by my publishers, but with no room for manouvere. It's easy to get sucked into this kind of working practice when you're self-employed, but I vow here and now never to do it again. I've always considered myself a good time-manager, but in 2006, I let go of the reins.
It was a sad year at home, due to the death of Chilli, and the inadvertant stress caused by - although apparently not to - the lovely Paddy. It was also a decisive year, moving back to London, which has made a huge difference to the general outlook. The bird feeders are alive with visitors now, with goldfinches the most recent addition - eight at a time! - and a few noisy parrots to remind me of Reigate. (Did they follow us up here?) A small garden is better than a big garden: the year's big lesson.
Professionally, I was very proud of Not Going Out when it aired on BBC1 in October and November, and the fact that the viewing figures went against the general trend, rising from 2.8 million to 3.6, still swells my chest. Here's to the prospect of a second series, albeit let's hope a less stressful one for all. I enjoyed doing my weekend shows on 6 Music, with quite a community built around Sunday, one that I hope will follow me to Saturdays in January; my talking head work moved away from nostalgia shows (I did some stuff for The Greatest Disaster Movies in January which has yet to air, and may never, for all I know) towards slightly more intellectual documentary strands on BBC4, such as The Cinema Show and anything made by BBC Bristol, who allowed me to present The Making Life On Mars, which granted me a splendid day in Bath, driving a Ford Cortina into shot and "walking and talking". I'd love to do more of that in 2007. I look forward to That's Me In The Corner finally being published in May. I don't anticipate a bestseller, but I'll be the proud owner of a trilogy either way, and I will no longer have to explain how I got where I am today to media students. Just read the book! I'll let the review of the year unfold in bits, as I remember them.
Magazine Of The Year
The New Yorker, what else? It continues to act as a challenge every week: read me. Come on, read all of me, even the article you don't fancy much. Alright, you don't have to read the baseball article. The coverage of the midterm elections was illuminating, I now rely on Sermour Hersch for a deeper, unspun understanding of American (and therefore global) politics, and Anthony Lane continues to be my favourite critic in the world.
Small Triumph Of The Year
Finding a mistake in the militarily fact-checked New Yorker. Issue dated October 30, 2006, page 99, a picture caption accompanying a review by John Lahr of the play My Name Is Rachel Corrie at New York's Minetta Lane Theatre. Under an illustration of actress Megan Dodds - yes, our Megan Dodds - it calls her "Megan Dobbs". You've no idea how thrilled I was to find this. It makes them more human.
Farce Of The Year
The Wallchart Wars. What began as a sweet but badly-executed marketing idea by the Guardian escalated into copycat warfare. Educational posters of varying quality and usefulness came at us from all angles, as if perhaps the newspapers were giving them away as a parental gesture of philanthropy, rather than to raise their ABC figures using a method much cheaper than licensing old films on DVD. The baroque period was reached by the Guardian in November with a series that included pigs and horses and cows and goats, each one dominating that day's cover above the masthead as if perhaps Vic Reeves had taken editorial control. No more please.
Disappointment Of The Year
Robin Hood. Oh dear.
Columnist Of The Year
OK, there are too many columnists writing too many columns in too many supplements of too many newspapers about too little, but the truly unmissable ones rise to the top. All of the best ones are in the Guardian - although I get an enormous amount of perverse pleasure from Peter Hitchens in the Mail On Sunday - and for me, it's a draw this year between Simon Jenkins on politics (here's a good example, in which he wrote, "Terrorism is 10% bang and 90% an echo effect composed of media hysteria, political overkill and kneejerk executive action") and Jenni Russell on kids and social issues (I particularly liked this one). I always read George Monbiot, but he descends into self-parody and sometimes seems to feel he has to generate righteous anger even if he's not angry, and John Harris gets better and better, although he's my friend so I would say that.
Late Starter Of The Year
I've never been a trendsetter. I'm the first to admit being last on the block. As previously confessed, I didn't even like Curb when I first saw it. And the Wu-Tang Clan were two albums in before I sussed that they were one of the greatest bands in the world. You redeem yourself through retroactive gorging. As I did this year with The Mighty Boosh. Where had I been all their lives? Tore through both TV series on DVD and now wish I'd been at Brixton on one of those five nights. Vince and Howard, or Noel and Julian if you prefer, are now installed in our house as comedy gods.
Bird Of The Year
As ever, the commonest of garden birds gave me the most pleasure, simply by visiting my feeders in Reigate and London: the tits and the finches and the robin. Three cheers to the goldfinches and the long-tailed tits and the starling that's started to appear on the peanut feeder, but if I had to single out one bird, it would be a lifer, the Common Kestrel, which we saw on a post by the railway line on the way into B&Q. We sat and watched it preen for quite a few uniterrupted minutes from the car, before it flew off. A stunning sight, and right in the middle of urban London. Now, back to the finches.
Reality Show Of The Year
You don't have to be a complete snob about these, just selective. I avoided the big ones - I'm A Celebrity, Big Brother, Love Island - and the low-rent hey-it's-for-charity ones - Only Fools On Horses, Celebrity Scissorhands - but showed great loyalty to the ones that worked: Celebrity Big Brother (priceless), The Apprentice (improved for its second series, despite repetition, the scourge of all reality formats), and, the winner, Make Me A Supermodel. Perhaps the only show apart from Diet Doctors I watched on Five all year, but compulsive. It had everything you want from a reality show: idiots, villains and total artifice. I have zero interest in the exploitative, air-filled, eugenic fashion industry, so perhaps that's why it grabbed me.
Website Of The Year
It has to be Wikipedia, for the sheer amount of traffic I've put its way in 2006. It still knocks me out, although I've learned to just assume it's all wrong, and if it's right, that's a bonus. My one niggle with it is the strict search engine, which does not allow for mistakes, and has only grudging guesswork capacity. (I discovered the fact-checkers at Radio Times won't accept Wikipedia as a source for movie trivia. So I only use it as a guide, not confirmation.) My most hated website of the year is MySpace. I wish I had whatever it takes to remove my profile from it and release my 860 or so friends back into the wild. I don't hate the people on it, obviously, I just hate myself for being on it.
Book Of The Year
The mark of a good book is that I cannot wait to sit down on a train to get it out of my bag. All of the following effected this alchemy in 2006 (and very few of them were published this year): The Hungry Years by William Leith; Beyond Belief by Emlyn Williams; Amongst Women by John McGahern, who died this year; Sein Language by Jerry Seinfeld; Chronicles by Bob Dylan (until I stopped); Here At The New Yorker by Brendan Gill; The Years With Ross by James Thurber; and Saturday by Ian McEwan. My book of the year, for all that is tells us about the world we live in, is Bad Food Britain by Joanna Blythman. It's a depressing picture she paints of this once-great nation, and certainly one that Nigella Lawson wouldn't recognise from her glowing hearth, but one that must be addressed.
More to follow in Part 2
posted by Andrew Collins @ 7:18 AM
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18 Comments:
Magazine of the year: Mojo, still the best music mag going.
Not Magazine of the year: Q, lists, lists and more lists.
Website of the year: Modesty forbids me from nominating my own efforts at www.jocknroll.co.uk (thanks for your votes Andrew) but I'd plump for MySpace. It's almost a year since I started and I've made two really good friends out of it, which makes it all worth while.
Documentary of the Year: "When The Levee Broke" by Spike Lee. I haven't been so angry watching a documentary in a long time.
TV Treat of the Year: I'm sure we all hoped, it would be a success but it soon become compulsary Friday night telly. "Not Going Out" was a joy and had more decent gags in one episode than an entire run of "My Family". Well done Lee and Andrew.
Resolutions for 2007: Pass driving test, get a new job in broadcasting and lose weight.
Andrew
How do you find time to read all these articles, books and watch all that television with your hectic schedule? You must have excellent time management. I'm sure I don't have as hectic a lifestyle as yours but I never seem to find the time to read and watch all I want to - especially good newspaper articles which often get binned after being in the house for weeks unread.
Also I thought that Not Going Out was terrific and thoroughly deserves a second series - it is really too good not to. It just has to happen!
It's easy to delete your profile from myspace - I got rid of my personal one not long ago as I too couldn't see the point.
But if you have something you'd like to promote, it's a useful tool.
My website of the year is www.football365.com - it's rare that wry wit and football can share a platform.
Wondered, Andrew, if you'd ever been to Stokenchurch, near High Wycombe. I was recently living there and some time ago they introduced several pairs of kites into local woodland who are evidently doing well - some days there are 15 or so of them swooping over the rooftops, low enough to see the patterns on their wings. They're stunning birds just there to be seen.
Andrew
Like Gwen, I am astonished that you find time to do, read, listen to and watch all this stuff - not only the activities, music, books, newspaper columns, films and TV programmes that you've singled out but also the ones (by implication) that have failed to make the Collins' shortlists of the year.
Much as I find the maintenance a chore - especially summer lawn mowing - I do think a bigger garden is better. For one thing, you get more species (not just birds, although they are the most interesting - obviously!) if you have a good assortment of habitats. My butterfly of the year was a stunning male Clouded Yellow. A first for me. There was a general influx this year and Cheshire, for once, got its fair share. Birds of the year were Barn Owls - on one great Sunday in April we had a pair in the garden and later hunting over the fields around the house .
Andrew, thanks for helping me to cling on to The Culture. Have a peaceful Christmas.
I don't find time to read and watch everything I'd like to and I'm at school! I am barracaded into my bed by stacks of books and magazines!
Not Going Out fully deserves a second series. I wasn't too hopeful after the reviews but it turned out to be fantastic. Merry Christmas!
It's nothing to be proud of but didn't the Independent's dull political maps of Europe come before the Guardian's first wallcharts? I think they did.
Hello, Andrew - nice to see your blog. I'm currently about halfway through reading "Heaven Knows I'm Miserable Now", and a fine read it is too. I've read "Where Did It All Go Right?" as well, and I'm glad someone has seen fit to write an anti-miserable-childhood book.
Anyway, I have a blog myself at http://primitivepeople.livejournal.com, and I'm always whoring myself about for new readers, so drop in and say hello. :)
I don't see your big problem with the free wall charts, Andrew. They're free, and my 9 year-old daughter has taken loads into school this year, and quite a few have been used in lessons.
It's hardly a hardship to toss it in the recycling bin if you don't want it, is it? And, as far as I'm aware, it has no infringement on the quality or quantity of the actual main publication. Soe of these wall charts are of use to some people, I promise!
Hey Andrew
A brief defence, if I may, of "the baseball article" in The New Yorker. It's an annual piece penned by the quite brilliant Roger Angell and, as ever with all the best articles or movies about sport, means so much more than just the game.
To wit: "Following baseball in New York this summer was like being in a bar where two enormous and tumultuous conversations were going on side by side. Sometimes, whichever group you belonged with, you'd catch the laughter and excited faces of the strangers in the next bunch and begin to smile and nod, too, even if you didn't know what was going on".
And wouldn't you agree that for all the headlines made by the likes of Hersh, Hertzberg and Remnick (have you bought 'Reporting' yet?), it's the little bits like the restaurant reviews and shouts and murmurs (and cartoons, obviously) that make one smile the most? But of course, when all's said and done, Anthony Lane is the best in the business.
Good to see John McGahern getting a flag (albeit posthumously) from you. For me, he is second only to William Trevor - high praise indeed. My 'alchenic effect' book was 'The Winter Book', by the late tove Jannsson, who created the Moomins. Very odd, very Scandinavian, very understated.
With you all the way on the wallcharts; I was amused, then embarrassed, then enraged by them. nice to know that some got used for their intended purpose, I guess, but if (as I suspect) the majority went straight into the bin or the recycler, that is not good enough to have justified their existance. So there.
Enjoyed 'Bad Food Britain' hugely; however did feel that Joanna Blythman had a particularly "certain type of Britishly" misty-eyed view of France. France has changed hugely in its culinary habits over the last ten years ( a 'Buffalo Grill' on each and every French roundabout must have been one of Mitterand's last bequests). But I don't have 3,000 words to do THAT one justice here. Anyway, great read.
All in all a fine year of work for you, Mr C ( only caught 15 mins of your sitcom but did laugh aloud in that time, which I so rarely do). however, no job is ever worth martyring your health to. You could end up like Rod Liddle.
Have a good Winter Solstice. Get in touch with your inner druid, and build him a bonfire.
Here's to Saturday afternoons...
So many comments to reply to and so little time between decorating and shopping . . .
First, Paul, Gwen, Ishouldbeworking and Aidan: thanks for the nods to Not Going Out. Much appreciated. A second series is on the cards for 2007. Meetings are already being held.
E. Louise, I haven't been to High Wycombe, but I have definitely seen kites over the area when I drive up the M40 towards Northampton. Unmistakable even from a moving vehicle. I'd love to see them on foot though.
Chris, my comment about garden size was a veiled one. I'd rather live in London than Reigate, basically, for many reasons. A small garden is the price you pay for that decision, but one I am prepared to live with. I'm not likely to get a family of beautiful deer in my London garden! I'll miss them.
Splee, thanks for you kind comments about my books. I'll have a look at your blog.
Dave, you could be right, historically, about the first wallcharts. The Guardian's certainly started the madness this year.
I fear, Stef, you slightly misunderstand my problem with the wallcharts, which is not necessarily the wallcharts themselves. My problem is the lack of dignity in the newspaper wars. There were some good free DVDs during the DVD wars, but the scrapping was unsightly. I'm glad people found use for the posters, especially kids. I wish more kids were interested in birds and the human body, rather than My Chemical Romance and texting. Hats off to your nine-year-old!
Great defence of the baseball article, Glen. I selected it only because I'm actually quite glad to have an article I don't need to read occasionally, and I'm not big on sport, as we know. I've just been reading about Somalians in Maine and it was enlightening. I nearly skipped it, but I'm glad I didn't!
Have a happy Christmas Andrew and all the best for 2007!
Andrew,
I too just experienced a small triumph when I discovered an error in the current issue (winter fiction) of the New Yorker. The magazine had the charismatic front man of Gogol Bordello as Eugene Hurtz, instead of Hütz. Oh, how I love that magazine. And for some curious reason, even more so now.
Happy holidays to you and your readers!
Thanks for the tip-off, Gaby, I'll look that one up when my subscription copy arrives (I've only just received the pre-Christmas issue). It seems that surnames are the magazine's Achilles heel!
You're allowed to wish people in the UK a happy Christmas - we don't mind!
Always enjoy reading your blog Andrew (and the interesting comments on it). I hope you have a good Christmas and new year.
If you're going to delete your myspace profile, perhpas you could send out a bulletin first explaining why. Is it wading through the friends requests or messages?
Best wishes to you and yours
I too was a late Boosh convert - I reckon it was the line about dropping in some Weather Report that did it. Actually, I swear I saw Naboo serving in the Victoria Station branch of HMV a few weeks back. The Boosh DVDs had been given a real point-of-sale push too, which is a cunning bit of marketing, when you think about it. Perhaps Bono could get a serving position there the day U2's next album gets released, if only for the fact that he'd have to remove his sunglasses to avoid violating the company dress code...and we all want to see those eyes, what has he done to his eyes...
As for MySpace, it's easy to give up - even if you're trying to promote a CD like I was. As Beth says, it's a good idea to post a bulletin highlighting why. I did - it was very therapeutic and, along with £14k of analysis, helped me through the withdrawal symptoms I got until I realized how much time I'd wasted contributing to their insecure "phenomenon".
And if you like The New Yorker, you might want to check out Emily Gordon's blog: http://emdashes.com/index.php
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