One Mop, One Future



Sorry, but I had a moment in Homebase, Reigate, yesterday. I was in there to buy a replacement cleaning head for a Vileda mop. I found the mop aisle. I could not find the correct cleaning head. There were countless mops, many of them by Vileda, and countless cleaning heads, but none was the exact fit of the mop we had at home in the futility room. (Indeed, the latest Vileda is called the Rapid AttrActive, which is a fucking stupid name. It squirts water, which is handy, as filling a bucket with water is so difficult.) What was a man to do? I was forced, by market forces, and the great conspiracy of built-in obselescence, to buy a whole new mop, and with it some replacement heads for the future. But what future? (I bought an Addis mop this time, just to spite Vileda, who appear to be doing what all companies interested in making a profit do, and that's constantly "upgrading" their products, thus creating an artificial demand that they can breezily supply.)

It was at that moment, in Homebase, that I dreamt of State Communism. Imagine it! One standardised mop, manufactured by the state, so that we all have the same mop, and require the same replacement cleaning heads! Less discarded mops! Less stress in the mop aisle! More time for cleaning! A cleaner world and one wiped clean of doubt! (I hesitate to advertise Addis, who are, after all, a company that makes plastic things, thus filling the world with unbiodegradable waste and adding to this with their constant upgrades, but they were the lesser of two evils. In fact, they and Vileda seem to have the mainstream plastic mop market sewn up between them.)

Sometimes market forces are idiots.

*Scarface, where Al Pacino is being questioned by US Customs and Immigration

Happy birthday, happy birthday

It is with a blush of personal humility that I wish TV Cream a happy fifth birthday, for the esteemed TV knowledge and fun site, plus essential newsletter, have chosen to mark the occasion with a truly astonishing not-for-profit Look-In style comic edition. You can download "the whole ruddy thing", as they put it - 36 pages! - in high-res here or, on a smaller scale, download the whole ruddy thing - still 36 pages - in nasty, blocky low-res here. Or subscribe here and have it delivered to your inbox. The reason I'm blushing is because they've rather flatteringly made a comic strip of my life. Here's a bit of it.



Thank you, especially Graham and Jack. And here's another bit of it.



I actually don't know what to say. Subscribe immediately. These people are unique.

Radio 2's best-kept secret!
Yes! The Day The Music Died returns! The topical comedy half-hour that treats the music it loves with the ridicule it so clearly deserves is back for its fifth series.



Radio 2 are nice enough to keep recommissioning us, and producer Will Saunders (who we've watched rise to the ranks of something important in radio entertainment from virtual nobody) is nice enough to keep laughing at our jokes and then telling us to say them again to make it easier for editing. So we were back in what we call The Day The Music Died Studio, but isn't, at radio powerhouse Wise Buddah, to talk over each other and mis-cue the clips and inserts for about 50 minutes that will become a tight 30 under Will's iron thumb.



That's me, Jon Holmes and Robin Ince. The most important thing about this fifth series, apart from the fact that we're trying to make it a bit looser and less scripted (ie. doing less preparation for it), is that Radio 2 have kind of recognised us. We have our first ever photo session - albeit quite a shiny one - and our own BBC website and our own MySpace page.



This clearly means that this is our last series. So enjoy it. It's on after Jonathan Ross (let's see how many of his listeners we can drive away) on Saturdays, starting this Saturday.

Punctuation Mark

I am a great admirer of Mark Lawson, but I'm afraid to say that there was a misplaced apostrophe in his piece on critic-proof products in yesterday's G2: "Julia Robert's current Broadway performance in Three Days of Rain met thumbs jabbed down . . ." Clearly, pieces for G2 are written in haste, often overnight, so I'm going to forgive Mark this slip of the key, but where were the subs? On the bench?

A TV ad for the new Red Hot Chili Peppers' presumably appalling new album Stadium Arcadium features the following caption: "The Chili's first studio album for four years." Actually, it's in capitals:

THE CHILI'S FIRST STUDIO ALBUM FOR FOUR YEARS!

And, as if to destroy my theory that the poor English that now proliferates the media is a result of Thatcherite education policy in the 80s (and subsequent failure to mend it), I've just finished Fred Harrison's book Brady And Hindley: Genesis Of The Moors Murders (as recommended here), published in 1986, and it contains not one but three instances of a house belonging to the singular - eg. "the Smith's house". (On an unrelated note, he also likes a cliche, Mr Harrison, and actually writes, "He would make him eat his words with a knuckle sandwich.")

Be careful out there.

In case you missed the fireworks display that marked its launch, All The Way From Memphis, Radio 4's first rock'n'roll quiz show, compiled and presented by that nice man James Walton, returned to the airwaves for its second series last Wednesday. (I am one of the team captains; Tracey MacLeod the other - our guests in the first show were Mary Anne Hobbs and Dave Gorman.) We must be doing something right, as a man called Trevor Lockwood has posted his feelings on the Radio 4 Message Board:

Radio 4 is a the best speech radio channel in the world. It is not a music channel, certainly not one based upon Memphis. I can just about take Counterpoint, although even that may get a more receptive audience on Radio 3, and Desert Island Disks is a national institution where the music is not really allowed to intrude too much upon Sue Lawley's excellent interviews (who will do the job as well?). I can't take Memphis. It is awful. Full of the usual band of 'here I am being funny' celebrities that most of us have never heard of, led by a man who speaks far too fast for Radio 4 and is clearly related to someone in authority. Move it to Radio 2 - they'll like that sort of stuff there. Leave us with Radio 4 where good language, well spoken, is still hanging on my its fingertips.

It's unfair to pick apart one licence-fee-payer's message, but let's do it anyway. I don't mind him not liking our little quiz show, what I find curious is his inisistence that Radio 4 is a speech station and this cannot take any music, even though Memphis, as he calls it in the rather over-familiar manner of a fan, only uses clips to illustrate questions. Who are the 'here I am being funny' celebrities he's never heard of? Dave Gorman. Me? Mary Anne, a Radio 1 DJ? Tracey, a respected Arts broadcaster and journalist? James, a journalist and Radio 4 presenter? What Mr Lockwood's post tells us is that he finds rock'n'roll a bit distasteful and has very fixed ideas about what Radio 4 should sound like. And he can't spell Discs, the tool. Anyway, I've had my right to reply. The second edition of the show is on tomorrow night at 11pm.

Well, almost. These larks occured on the Russell Brand Show on 6 Music this morning, between 10 and 1pm. I missed the context, but Russell, 6 Music's star signing, and his comedy sidekicks Trevor and Matt were moved to disrobe whilst on air, thus captured by the studio webcams, which take pictures automatically every five minutes. Without the webcams, this would, of course, have been pointless radio, but it turned into something of an event. They even removed their pants at one point, sufficient to be warned by someone high up at the BBC to cease and desist - such censorship very much grist to the crazy comedian's mill. Fortunately, the webcam missed any penis display. I was sitting upstairs in the 6 Music office, preparing for my 2 o'clock show and was moved to email the gentlemen and remind them that other presenters would be using the furniture over which they were nakedly draped.



In this second picture you can see that Matt, the long-haired sidekick, is actually in his pants, but these were later removed, and that is my chair! (In the top picture you can see Julie Cullen, in the green, pre-recording something in the next-door studio. In fact, she was the first to use the arse-chair for The Music Week, which comes between Brand and my show.) I'll admit, even though I was a fan of Russell on Celebrity Big Brother's Big Mouth with his weird Dickensian speaking style and dandyish gait, I was unsure about his arrival at 6 Music, where all before him were expected to bow. And there was a lot of argy bargy to begin with. But, he seems to have bedded in, as they say in radio, and, what with his podcast hovering around the outside of the Top 10 Podcasts after just a couple of weeks, and this pants business, and Noel Gallagher being on the phone again (Russell is a celebrity magnet), he appears to be a juggernaut, and resistance is futile. And there is a huge groundswell of objection to him on the 6 Music Message Boards, so he must be doing something right.