Oh, I've seen some films . . . Due to a combination of preparing for my two-week dep on Radio 4's The Film Programme (April 6, 13), a sit-in for Mark Kermode on Simon Mayo's show on Five Live (April 6), reviewing DVDs for Radio Times and, oh yes, just going to the pictures, I seem to have seen ten films since I last bothered to write about one. That's a hell of a week, and I'm only going to have time to rattle through, so bear with me. Happy Feet (out now on DVD) is an Oscar-winning computer-animated retread of March Of The Penguins that's scuppered by a daft song-and-dance theme (who wants to see these beautiful creatures doing R&B numbers? does that in some way make them better?), but contains some truly head-spinning visuals, not least a show-stopping action sequence with two killer whales (killer whales!). Amazing Grace (in cinemas now) is a high-class period biopic of William Wilberforce and his long, colitis-hampered quest to get slavery abolished, packed with pedigree performances (Finney, Hinds, Cumberbatch, Gambon) and a little bit chopped up into small pieces for an "international" market (ie. Americans). Provoked (out next week) is an Indian/UK co-production (Bollywood comes to Hounslow) whose subject - true life story of battered Punjabi wife who killed her husband and got released from prison, thus changing British law - is vital, but whose execution is woeful. And Steve McFadden is in it. Sunshine (out next week) is the best film I have seen this year: Danny Boyle's tribute to all his favourite sci-fi movies (2001, Silent Running, Alien), but worthy of being mentioned in the same breath. El Topo and Fando Y Lis (out on Tartan video in May, the former gets a limited cinematic run next week) were my homework: cult favourites from nutty Chilean surrealist Alexandro Jodorowsky, who I am to interview. Both insane and amazing pieces of work, the latter my fave, as it has that clean black and white 60s look of La Dolce Vita or The Silence, except it's about a man pushing a paralysed woman over some mountains in a cart. Blades Of Glory (also out next week) is the Will Ferrell movie that might just change my mind about Will Ferrell: ice skating spoof with John Heder with unusually homoerotic undercurrent for a Frat Pack product. Shooter (not out until April 13) is a liberal Rambo with Mark Wahlberg which fans of guns will enjoy, and has Levon Helm in a lovely cameo. Big Nothing (out on DVD, April 16) was unfairly buried when it came out: a Fargo-esque crime caper shot almost entirely at night, which is slightly wearing, pairing my new email buddy Simon Pegg (much better American accent than the bitchy reviews would have you believe) and David Schwimmer (guess what kind of character he plays). I liked Alice Eve in it too. And Marie Antoinette, Sofia Coppola goes to Versailles, and takes her Gang Of Four and Adam & The Ants records with her: not nearly as bad as the French crtics who childishly booed it at Cannes would have you believe. It looks lovely, and Dunst is well cast, but you won't believe how quickly it all ends. Ninety minutes of eating cake (very funny) and having trouble conceiving in a palace, then bang-bang-bang, peasants at the gates with farm implements, and it's all over. Flawed but admirable in its own way.

The Apprentice: it's back
I'd actually forgotten what a unique experience watching this programme is. It's a mixture of enjoyment and pain. Anyone who'd want to be on this programme in the first place (and there were 10,000 applicants this year) is not someone I'd ever want to spend time with in real life, and yet, spending an hour a week with, in this case, 16 of them is oddly pleasurable. In truth, I'd be quite happy to take out of the gene pool anybody prepared to stand up and saying, "I'm dynamic." To the credit of the programme, they don't seem to have changed much of the furniture: more contestants - which means double-firings at some stage, and more of a scramble to get your dynamic face into the edit (there are at least four or five contestants I couldn't yet name, and I really pay attention) - a more moody Siralan in the opening credits, who now seems to travel everywhere by chopper, and an unecessary but entertaining last-minute switch of team leader on the debuting helipad. Other than that, we've been here before: men and women in their late twenties and early thirites in suits all giving it 110 per cent. All bullshitters. All schmoozers. All trying to "second guess" Siralan. And one of them - Tre - actually inciting his wrath before the task had even started by suggesting a name for the "boys' team" - Cirtus? - that was a blatant ad for a client he works for. Idiot. But at the same time, one of the feistiest of the sixteen, swearing already and clearly up for a fight, which is good. I like him - if we accept that I hate him, as I hate all contestants on The Apprentice. For the record, the team names are Stealth for the "girls" (much whooping when that was chosen, of course) and Eclipse for the "boys".

Simple task to start: selling coffee in London's Islington. (Simon asked if they should sell tea? Tre asked him if he saw the word "beverage" on the brief, or "coffee" - it was the latter. Or the latte.) With a van and a stall each, and the misleading information that they could sell a thousand coffees in a day (yes, if they were Starbucks), they were off, with Andy, by far the most irritating of the boys, being grafted as project manager onto the girls, and Jadine, a forthright individual who genuinely believed passers-by in Islington bought coffee from a van for the "experience" but at least knew that business wasn't all "biscuits and sandwiches", attached to the boys. Thanks to judicious editing, it became clear that Andy was going to be fired - the narrative was preordained. He was a twat who was keen to tell us he had a beautiful wife and a lovely house, and he looked like Frank Sidebottom without wearing a papier mache head.

I loved it when Gerri, who comes across as Jo Brand's surly younger sister, was appointed "head of van". Sophie, a ruddy-cheeked, blue-eyed quantum physicist for some unfathomable reason, was sent to buy too much stock (what? a hundred-thousand gallons of milk and a million Nutri-grain bars? - that sounds too much), but at least she bought the right stuff, which Jadine and co didn't. They weren't "coffee experts" though, and you really have to be to know the difference in a cash-and-carry between coffee for caffitieres and coffee that's not for fucking caffitieres. Jadine's back-up plan: to flog the unusable coffee. "I love it," said Paul instead of yes, who I'd certainly guessed was an ex-army lieutenant from the moment he opened his mouth. In the event, both teams ended up flogging stock off (two litres of milk for 50p, or four for a pahnd, but they come in this handy shrink-wrap bag), in that barrow-boy desperation that is always the candidates' default setting on The Apprentice. Eclipse, with their sprinkle logo, made more money at the end of the day, despite Jadine splitting up Tre and Simon (who are one letter away from being a comedy double act) because they were selling too much coffee, but stirring it for customers. Jadine herself was the stirrer. Andy was a truly useless leader, not ansering his batphone, overdressed for street trading, and recalling the van at eleven o'clock because Gerri and Naomi had only sold eleven coffees next to a cafe that sold them for 70p less. (When Gerri proudly reminded us of this figure in the boardroom, Nick came out of his box and said, sarcastically, "Oh well done." Yow!)

"The mistake I made," said Sophie, defending her corner in the boardroom, "was not realising that milk froths." (What do quantum physicists drink? And isn't frothing physics? And aren't physicists supposed to be clever?)

It's great to have it back. These people should be shot, but I'm glad that they're made to do this instead for 12 weeks. Andy was the right man for the taxi, and although you had to feel slightly sorry for him having his dream popped so soon ("We work until we bleed"), and so decisively, at least he was going back to a beautiful wife and a lovely home, and surely he could have his old job back after just a week away? Actually, I don't feel sorry for him. Seeing him kissing and patting the girls and calling them "sweetheart" made my tummy feel funny. Siralan was his usual bearlike self, lit queasy green by the fake conference table, mangling the English language for England ("Nilly willy"?), but I'm looking forward to hearing Gazal, Lohit, Katie and Rory speak in future weeks, and more withering remarks from Nick please!

More pin-ups
Yes, I know it's Sally, but these back-cover pin-ups come from the Judy Picture Library. We should have guessed the recently-discussed Sally Geeson would have merited one - it's from 1971. A "pretty young British actress."



And this one is from 1973, "often seen on your TV screen", although to me she looks younger in this shot, unless it's just the pigtails.

And ... just to show how subtly Judy had changed by the 80s, here are the pretty young pin-ups from an issue in 1985:



The first band I was ever sent abroad to interview at the NME in what must have been 1989, as it was for their Thunder And Consolation album. We were in France somewhere, can't remember where, and I've no record of the piece in my files. Good to see Robb Heaton on the right, God rest his soul.

You might ask who Judy would have on their back cover today, were the comic still going.

Saturday Boy
So, my penultimate weekend passes at 6 Music. Had a lot of fun with Richard Herring on Saturday with he overusing the medical term "faecal matter" and I almost saying "shit", but professionally pulling back after "shi..." and saying "rubbish", thus averting a diplomatic incident, and I also played some corking "free choices" (Fields Of The Nephilim, Anita Ward, Asian Dub Foundation, Colourbox, Gerry Rafferty, Eric B & Rakim, with Nine Inch Nails to finish - there ain't no other BBC radio station like it, I tells yer). My tenure is winding down, or up, depending on how you look at it. And this is how we reached this semi-momentous juncture: two Aprils ago, in 2005, I moved from my five-day, three-hour Teatime slot to the weekends. After three years of broadcasting for 15 hours a week, during which time I had turned into a DJ (something I had never considered myself to be in a decade of being on the radio), I had requested a change. Although 6 Music was still a small digital radio station with a relatively small listenership, it was no longer the slightly ramshackle, big-hearted, let's-do-the-station-right-here, favour-pulling funhouse it had started out as. How could it be?

Some background: I had given up my regular weekly gig on the Radio 4 film programme Back Row and handed in my scriptwriting badge at EastEnders in order to take up my daily post at BBC 6 Music, or "6 Music from the BBC", as we were initially drilled to call it. That's how important it was to me. A big commitment, and a regular income. But, media hyphenate that I infuriatingly am, during those first three years, my first memoir, Where Did It All Go Right? had become a surprise bestseller and led to a two-book deal with my publisher, and my first sitcom, Grass, had been shown on BBC3 and BBC2, leading to the possibility of a second series. So, cramming all of this extra-curricular work into five mornings a week was becoming more of a strain. Also, my style of broadcasting, which was kind of no style at all, had solidified: long, rambling links, Olympian attempts to read out all my emails, unscripted flights of fancy spun off those emails, discursive opening salvos, satirical headlines. Not very "daytime", where trailing ahead, cross-promotion and station idents were exerting a greater pressure. (My first producer, Frank, used to joke in the early days that presenters would one day have to say "6 Music" in every link, and we used to laugh. He would sometimes egg me on to do a timecheck and use the phrase "five 6 Music minutes past four.") The demands on 6 Music to "compete" after we started to live and die by the RAJARs (that is, the quarterly audience figures) put new shackles on someone like me. I still thought of myself as an enthusiastic amateur. So, the combination of too much work and a disinclination to get too "slick" precipitated a change in slot, one which I volunteered for.

It must be said, management were extremely accommodating, and very supportive. It was assumed by those who care about such things that I had been "sidelined" or "demoted", which was not the case. I was offered the Chart Show and a three-hour Sunday show, where I could do my rambling links and read out lots of emails, away from the strictures of a "strip show", which isn't what it sounds like. Even though - irony of ironies! - I was becoming slicker and more professional all the time, talking over intros up to the vocal, "segging" tracks to trails (ie. joining them up using foolproof editing software), I still liked to ramble. I still do. I will go out next week rambling, and I'm proud to say that in five years, apart from recording trails or station-wide competitions, I have never read out a link scripted for me, or that I have previously typed up. (Another funny thing: the non-local-radio-trained among us rarely used to talk over intros in the very early days, beceause it seemed disrespectful to the Clash and Kirsty MacColl and the Strokes and even the Avalanches, but do you know what? Talking up to the vocal sounds brilliant when you get it right. It does!) Let's make no secret of this, either - because 6 Music shared a controller with Radio 2, it may have been seen by certain presenters as a stepping stone to a national station with a reach of millions (we were always thumbnailed as halfway between Radio 1 and Radio 2 in the first place). And, in truth, it does sometimes act as a fame academy or halfway house - look at Russell Brand, and Steve Lamacq to an extent - but most were happy, indeed happier, where we were. That said, my experience of presenting in the evenings on R2 involved having a stack of CDs, and playing them - hardly handing your freedoms over to The Man.

In the beginning, when we were the first new BBC radio station to be launched for 12 years, nobody quite knew what we were, but we knew what we were not. We were not commercial and we were not old and we were not chart- or hype-driven. We were a bunch of music fans, most of us well-known for other things like comedy or music or television (Phill Jupitus, Sean Hughes, Tom Robinson, Suggs, Tracey McCleod, Craig Charles, Bruce Dickinson, Brinsley Forde), some of us known for our work on other radio stations, both national and local (Liz Kershaw, Gideon Coe, Chris Hawkins, Gary Burton, Stuart Maconie, myself). In this regard, little has changed. We were backed by a fine team of enthusiastic producers and BAs and even managers, also feeling their way around this new train set, and given if not carte blanche to do what we liked, certainly the freedom to try this radio station lark out and see if anyone liked it. They did. In small numbers, but that had been the idea, hadn't it? Contrary to what purists might think, we always had a playlist, and new records were put into heavy or light rotation depending on whether they were "A" or "B" list. (I think we had a "C" at first, too.)

I remember we were all ready to have the BAs send in fake emails on that first day in March 2002, in case we didn't get any. But there was no need. We got emails not just from this country, but from abroad, thanks to online listening, something we hadn't anticipated. (I remember there being an early dictum about not making too much fuss of foreign listeners on air, as they didn't pay a licence fee and this might rub the BBC brass up the wrong way. How innocent those times seem now. We ignored this and made a fuss anyway.) 6 Music was a proper station - it had its own news teams, its own idents, brand new digital desks and a largely untested computerised playout system called DALET (now upgraded), which Chris Hawkins had trained us all to use (I thought he was the training guy and was surprised to find out he was a DJ too, and given his own show at the weekend). But it was also finding its feet on air, 24 hours a day. We didn't have a weekend breakfast show in those old days. Or Roundtable, or a Chart Show, or a Music Week, or 6 Mix. But we did try unusual people out when regular presenters were away, like Tony Wilson, Arthur Brown, Paul Morley, Lauren Laverne, Justine Frischmann, Clint Boon, Terry Christian (less said about him the better), Stewart Lee, Dave Gorman. This was in the spirit of the station. The spirit has survived, but the Message Boards have got noisier and grumpier. Presenters have come and gone, as have our launch bosses, John (moved to the private sector) and Anthony (moved up the chain of command). Vic went round the world. Lauren slipped through our net. The top-of-hour idents have changed. We have sometimes advertised on telly, using our most famous presenter of the day. The listening figures have gone up, then down a bit, then up again. Let's keep things in perspective.

Anyway, when I moved to the weekends, I started a blog on the 6 Music website, as a way of "staying in touch" with my listeners, who were used to hearing about my mundane "life" stuff on a daily basis. The first entry, on my first non-working Monday for three years, ran like this:

Monday April 4
First day of Freedom. All of a sudden, after three years of broadcasting every afternoon, and with my first weekend shows coming up, I suddenly have my life back. Had two meetings, one with that nice David Hepworth of Word magazine, the other with my publisher. We still can't decide what to call the third volume of my memoirs, which I have started writing. He favours MY BRILLIANT SHOWBIZ CAREER, but will people get the irony or think I'm a tosser? This afternoon I went to the shops to buy some eggs. Why? BECAUSE I CAN.

And the last entry in that first week went:

Friday April 8
More writing with The Fast Show's Simon Day. This means I have effectively worked EVERY DAY this week. What was that about freedom? My brilliant showbiz career.

So, you can see, even in that very first week, trouble up ahead. Working weekends was great fun, especially as my second Teatime producer Leona had come with me, and we really enjoyed giving a facelift to the Chart. But finding the equivalent of a "weekend" in the week was never a picnic. In my line of work, which is to say, my lines of work, it's difficult to say no, for fear of cutting off an avenue that might in the future become profitable. And thus I ended up working more than five days a week, all too often. The nadir was reached last year when I was writing with Lee Mack, Mondays to Fridays, and going into work Saturdays and Sundays. That's not healthy, hence the latest change. Queens of Noize take over the Saturday show from April, and I wish them well. The Chart Show will also see a new host, as yet unconfirmed.

The thing I have loved the most about my time at "Radio 6" (our name hasn't exactly entered public consciousness in five years - even people who love it or have been on it call it fucking Radio 6 - but it's too late to stop now) is the listener response. And playing the Goth records of course, but even then because of the listener response. The emails and texts are what made the job worth doing, for me. I don't love the sound of my own voice, as some of you might think. It's a bit nasal. But I hope in talking about myself it has merely acted as a cue for listeners to do the same. At best, it's a dialogue. That's how I will remember Teatime and the Sunday/Saturday show. I plan on spending weekends like normal people do from now on (you can devote yourself to a radio station, or you can treat it as a job of work and try and make it fit in around your life), and I'll carry on spinning my media plates during the weeks. I'll be back on Radio 2 with The Day The Music Died this summer and on Radio 4 at the helm of the third series of Banter, which will at least give me chance to spar with the incomparable Richard Herring, who was always a highlight of my weekend. New book in May. Sitcom and one-off comedy drama still to be written. Two weeks sitting in for Francine Stock on Radio 4's Film Programme (the son of Back Row), starting April 6, and another dep for Mark Kermode on Simon Mayo's show on that same Friday. These things please me no end.

The views expressed in this column are the views of Andrew Collins and do not represent the views of the BBC. Yeah, I'll be glad not to have to live by that diktat until I land the Newsnight gig.

The Not Going Out Juggernaut Rolls On!
We are starlight, we are golden. We've only gone and been nominated in the Best Sitcom category at the 47th Rose D'Or (ie. Golden Rose) Television Festival in May, which used to be held in Montreux on the Lake Geneva shoreline where smoke was once famously on the water, but is now held in Lucerne. I doubt there'll be a lot of litter, either way. BBC comedies dominate the category: we're in there with The Royle Family, The Thick Of It and, irony of ironies, My Family - as well as some foreign sitcoms like Germany's Turkisch fur Anfanger and Finland's The Lighthouse, which I would love to see. There's a Best Comedy category too, which we're not in, but includes Vicar Of Dibley, Man Stroke Woman, Green Wing, Tittybangbang, That Mitchell & Webb Look and The Worst Christmas Of My Life. It seems that UK comedy is all over the nominations, which I believe is quite typical. I suppose we have to be good at something in this country.

Anyway, whether Lee and I will be going out to Lucerne, I don't yet know. If I may just add this: bloody hell.

Rough justice from the Bunty sisterhood
Here are four back covers from issues of the Bunty Picture Library from 1967. Pin-ups for girls, role models if you like. The bitchiness comes from the captions, which you should read in descending order.









Cheers! Judy Geeson doesn't get a "beautiful", she's merely "talented". But Shirley Anne Field (my favourite of the lot, for what it's worth, Bunty Junta) is a plain old "star of stage and screen." Her only adjective is British. Miaow! Who needed Heat in 1967?

Mind you, Virginia McKenna may be "beautiful", especially with that light shining in her eyes, but she's not "talented" like the un-beautiful Judy Geeson. The past is a foreign country, they do things differently there. As you were.

The Sunday film
To catch up with two films I've seen at the cinema: last Sunday, The Illusionist, this Sunday afternoon just gone, Factory Girl. Completely different in any number of ways, and neither likely to set the annals of moviemaking alight, and yet neither anything like bad. The Illusionist is one of those films with unfortunate timing, a victim of the "two buses" effect, in that it and The Prestige arrived at virtually the same time, both about magicians at the turn of the century. Although The Prestige was ornate and handsome, and gave Michael Caine another chance to do his twinkly old man act, it was too predicated on the audience being "fooled" by the stage illusions of Christian Bale and Hugh Jackman. In other words, you were on your guard, and frankly, once you (or indeed, an 11-year-old child) had worked out the "twist", it grew tiresome. Which was a shame, as there were some nice visuals (a field full of light bulbs, a pile of top hats), and David Bowie was better than expected as Tesla. The Illusionist, made by Neil Burger, never attempts to get behind the tricks performed by Eisenheim (Ed Norton) - it's not about that. It's a love story, a fairy tale, in which the peasant attempts to woo the princess away from the wicked prince. Yes, there's a twist, based upon illusion, but I didn't see it coming, as I wasn't looking for it. Again, it looked beautiful, with flickering gaslight, smudgy darkness and sepia effects for the flashbacks, and Norton played his showman quiet and unassuming. It has been said that he's an unsatisfying leading man. Too humble. Too introspective. Well, he kept The Illusionist in check. Paul Giamatti, who used to be an unknown character actor who did this tubby, nasal character, is now an Oscar-nominated characer actor who does this tubby, nasal character - very good as the detective. Rufus Sewell's was the standout performance as Prince Leopold - he almost turned into that other eminent Austrian Adolf Hitler at one point. And always a thrill to see Eddie Marsan, star of the little-seen BBC sitcom Grass in a Hollywood studio picture. If you see this film, you won't wish you hadn't paid the money, but it's not going to have you recommending friends and family to catch it. That's not a crime.

Factory Girl also ended up as a fairly inconsequential piece of work. A rich girl called Edie Sedgwick (Sienna Miller) gets picked out by Andy Warhol to be the Factory's latest "It" girl, takes a load of amphetamines, accidentally falls for Bob Dylan (whose lawyers have made it clear is not Bob Dylan), falls out of favour and ends up back in the mental institutions where she spent much of her youth. It's a fascinating world, the 60s New York art scene, but like any biopic, you have to care about the central character, and icon or otherwise, Sedgwick is presented by George Hickenlooper's film as a victim: flighty, easily led, guileless, wreckless with money. She even carried with her the confused guilt of having been abused by her father, a man she and the rest of the family call "Fuzzy", which would fuck anybody up. An important point to make: Sienna Miller, whipping girl of the British media because . . . I can't for the life of me remember . . . is very good in the Sedgwick role. It suits her, the posh American accent is sound, and she plays the "runny makeup" downfall convincingly. But she's doomed from the start. The clock's ticking from the moment she sees a Warhol flyer in a bus shelter. And if we can't care about her, the Warhol played by Guy Pearce with Stars In Their Eyes accuracy is no more than a pantomime villain: cold, calculating, selfish, fickle, unreliable, cruel. Even after Edie's death at the end, he is seen unable to properly react to the news in an interview. Factory Girl could put you off his soup cans forever. (Actually, that's not true - it's the art, not the artist.) You make a film about Sedgwick, you're really making a film about Warhol, and this doesn't get under the skin of Warhol at all. A few scenes with his Polish mother don't add up to character study. Not in any way badly made, the film captures a fleeting essence of something now passed, and Hickenlooper's grounding in documentary adds a certain energy. It certainly loves New York, but at the same time presents Los Angeles as a safe haven (Sedgwick ends up in Santa Barbara and almost pulls through). The weak link is Hayden Christensen as not-Bob Dylan. This is a performance that sucks the life out of everything around it, and it hobbles the film: unconvincing, stiff, parodic. Who put money on him being able to pull this off? You need an Ed Norton to do Dylan, someone with depth and poetry. For every minute Christensen is on screen, the film is drained of blood. Ah well, as I say, not bad.

Can not-bad films sustain us though?

We come to praise them:
Arcade Fire, Brixton Academy, Saturday March 17, 2007
Never seen them live before, so this was something of a pilgrimage for me. (I piped Neon Bible into my head on the train journey there, and Funeral on the train journey home. It was an Arcade Fire theme night, when nothing less would do.) I knew in my bones, and from what I've read, that it would be a semi-religious experience, and when I saw the huge church organ onstage, reassurance set in. "Look at that organ and shit," exclaimed an eloquent young student standing behind me. The age range was broader than I expected. Gender mix fairly even. A lot of people in glasses. I went on my own, which added to the sense of awe. I found myself in glorious isolation, but at the same time part of a congregation of other believers. This was Arcade Fire's fourth night at Brixton. That's a lot of worship. The last band I saw at Brixton were Kasabian - also a night of hands in the air and bowing down, but one laced with flying beer. I only saw beer fly twice tonight, and both liquid explosions occured during the encore, as if idiots could contain their excitement no longer. At least they're idiots who love Arcade Fire. Reading down the official forums at Us Kids Know, it seems that those hardcore fans who were down the front experienced some aggressive mosh action, and not all of it nice, which strikes me as disrespectful in a church. Where I was standing, just in front of and to the left of the mixing desk, it was all polite jigging on the spot and Radio Ga Ga-style handclaps. I allowed myself to get sucked into a maelstrom of bodies at the last Arctic Monkeys Brixton gig, but a) it was unavoidable, and b) it was apt, even for a gentleman of my years. Tonight was not about bashing around.

Neon Bible currently sits at number two in the UK album charts, behind the Kaiser Chiefs' Yours Truly, Angry Mob, which I like very much, but is not in the same league in terms of cosmic wonder and apocalyptic beauty. (Arcade Fire turn us all into Paul Morley. Which is a very Paul Morley thing to write.) It also sits at number two in the Billboard album charts, behind Notorious BIG's Greatest Hits, so perhaps an album about death ("working for the church while your family dies") can never beat an album propelled by death. It will still be one of the Albums Of The Year in nine months' time. It might well stay in the charts for the whole of that time. It is an album for our time. It speaks, bravely, of rising seas and falling bombs, when so few albums do. If Arcade Fire had simply presented this album, in order, live, from one end to the other, we would have thanked them kindly. As it was, they mixed it up, beginning with Keep The Car Running and following it with No Cars Go, perhaps the most commercial tracks. Neon Bible itself was absent. They also dropped in Haiti from Funeral early on, but kept back most of the crowd-pleasers from the that album for the back end of the set and the encores (Power Out was astonishing, and straight into Rebellion/Lies, my favourite - no Crown Of Love, until I was on the train platform). There were nine people onstage, swapping places and instruments throughout. I only really know the names of Win Butler, who said little, but seemed sincere and friendly when he broke silence, and Regine Chassagne, who seemed to be everywhere, but the ginger fella (Richard Reed Parry, I think) was full of beans, as was the one I now understand to be Win's brother Will, if he was the one who threw the drum in the air. I am a fan of their music rather than the kind who remembers all their names, but tonight's experience made me want to know them better.

What I love about their music is its expansive nature, the way it fills every corner of the room, a cacophony without pain. There's so much going on. But rather than a funereal experience - and the subject matter is hardly a laugh a minute - Arcade Fire are a celebratory experience live. They may well be singing about the power being out in the heart of man and a great black wave in the middle of the sea but they do so with a unifying melancholy joy. We're all in this together, after all. Singing hallelujah with the fear in your heart, indeed.

I must say I've seen some pretty spectacular gigs at Brixton over the last couple of years - Arctic Monkeys, Kasabian, Bauhaus, Goldfrapp - but this was in a class of its own. I'm glad I waited until I knew my way around the album before I saw them. There's a really sweet post on the forums from a girl who queued from four in the afternoon to get one of the 50 extra tickets released on the day of the gig, the only caveat to which was that you had to remain inside the venue once you'd got your ticket. She ended up being given an after-show by a kindly security guard who recognised her from the queue and she describes her awe at seeing Win Butler up close. "Win is massive," she writes, presumably still experiencing the afterglow. "He's so tall and beautiful and has these amazing eyes. When he looks at you, even if it is for a tiny second, you feel a bit as if you were naked, or, like, crying." (I have punctuated that for her and put in some capital letters.)

Oh, and they did a well-intentioned but oddly underwhelming unplugged rendition of Guns Of Brixton, with Butler on megaphone. It's already on YouTube, naturally, although I make no claims for the quality of either recording or performance. Anyone remember a time when the technology wasn't available for this to happen, and you weren't allowd to take cameras into gigs?

Our Sixcom Hell
Comic Relief came to 6 Music yesterday and provided for me a memorable day during my last couple of weeks at the station. It was all that is good about the place: people pulling together without the muscle of being a huge national terrestrial radio station, doing stuff for the love of it, having a laugh (6 Music was, five years ago, built on having a laugh) and pulling favours (it was built on pulling favours too). Jon Holmes and me had written a four-part sitcom to be performed live, throughout Red Nose Day, set in the newsroom - as charity fun on telly is always about newsreaders sending themselves up, so it seemed in the correct spirit - and called Drop The Dead Junkie. There was loose talk of it being written live too, but why make life more difficult than it already is? We wrote it beforehand, which allowed us to make last-minute casting changes dependent on which comics turned up (in the event, Jon Culshaw, Marcus Brigstocke, Lucy Porter and Stephen Merchant, all of whom got small but important speaking parts), and to write in two topical jokes for two winning listeners to read out in Episode Four, which they did, playing "stringers" filing news stories.

Harvey Cook and Julie Cullen, familiar voices to 6 Music listeners, took the bulk of the acting, with an actual intern, called Jimmy Bird, manfully taking the actually very significant part of the Work Experience Boy. He was great. They were all great, combining Goons-style gusto with an admirable sense of self-parody, including supporting news players Adrian Larkin, Clare Runacres and Lucy O'Doherty as themselves. Jon and I mainly provided moral support, although I did get to do one of the few live sound effects: coins rattling in a tin. I was very proud. Hats of to producer Claire and technical crew Jules and Jo, who were on hand all day to make it happen (wow, there's a BBC mantra you don't hear any more). Also, a tip of the hat to DJ Osymyso, who wrote us a theme tune.

A fabulous, if knackering, day. 6 Music at its let's-do-the-show-right-here finest. Due to a no-show by Russell Howard, I had to be a contestant in Nemone's radio darts quiz, which was fun. I met Leigh Francis, who was in for an interview, as himself. It was that kind of day. Thanks to all concerned. I've never done anything for Comic Relief before, and it felt good. I dare say the money we raised through texts and donations was modest, but hey. We are a small radio station. We should, by rights, be happy to be a small radio station. We can't all be Radio 2. The BBC should be able to support a number of smaller operations without any spurious drive for ratings getting in the way of the spirit. You can watch the video of Episode Two and listen to all four here. Thanks to Catherine Chambers and Kris Shaw for filming this, editing it and getting it up before the end of Red Nose Day.

Now, time to start putting my stuff in a box. It's been a key week in terms of the career crossroads I find myself at. I met Mark Radcliffe in a sandwich shop this morning (he's been down in London filling in for Steve Wright, which is in itself a thrill), and I told him that my stock at 6 Music is down, but my stock at BBC1 is up. His reaction was: what are you worried about then?

Here's a photo from the RTS Awards of me and Lee accepting our award, even though I am obscured in the photo - as in life - by him. You can see my hands, which look like they are coming out of his trousers. And that's Mark Austin, still basking in the glow of his Reginald Bosenquet anecdotes. Thanks to Robert Pine of IMG Media for sending me the photo. You'll just have to believe me when I say I was there.

And the winners are ... fuck!

RTS PROGRAMME AWARDS 2006, Tuesday 13 March 2007, Grosvenor House Hotel, Park Lane, London W1

It is half past seven the next morning and I still cannot believe it. Lee and I won the Breakthrough award for writing Not Going Out at the Royal Television Society Awards last night. Certain among the top ranking Avalon executives on our table seemed to have an inkling, but Lee and I did not. I was in a state of shock for the rest of the evening. Ours was fourth in a ceremony of 29 awards, so at least the agony was brief. Host Mark Austin read out this quote from the judges: "the winning programme was a real treat - well observed and well-written, with a stream of non-stop, laugh-out loud gags." (during which we worked out it wasn't the Moors Murderers or the documentary Banged Up Abroad that had won). The rest is a bit of a blur. Stephen Merchant won for his performance in Extras. Bruce Parry for presenting Tribe. Craig Cash and co won two for The Royle Family, so we were glad we weren't up against them in the sitcom category. Alan Sugar went up for The Apprentice. And Richard Curtis got the Judges Award, after a dull citation by Ben Elton.

They encouraged recipients not to give speeches, but certain among them - I mean, us - did. Lee made a gag about beating Myra Hyndley and Ian Brady (as we'd beaten the producer of See No Evil, the excellent Moors Murderers drama) and I thanked the other writers, Paul, Simon, Derren, John and Tim Vine. Neither of us thanked anyone else. It was all a bit unplanned and wide-eyed and shambolic.



I must admit I had a glass of champagne, then switched back to water (gallons of it, actually) as Lee and I are, ironically, supposed to be spending the day storylining for series two this very morning. Once we'd won I literally refused to let the award (we got one each) out of my sight, or even out of my hands. In the winners' enclosure afterwards, where the likes of Alan Carr, Catherine Tate, Craig Cash, Ben Elton and that bloke who sailed somewhere with Ben Fogle gathered. I congratulated Stephen Merchant, and Simon Amstell (I think I may have gushed in the heat of the moment), and spent a long time chatting to the charming and gentle Richard Curtis about Comic Relief, Ray Stubbs, premium rate phone lines, poverty, Bob Dylan and the fact that after Vicar Of Dibley he is still waiting for the BBC to offer him his next sitcom. BBC economics editor and Dragon's Den host Evan Davis joined us, with his camp wallet on a chain, and we discussed the chances of Cameron at the next election (Evan says 40 per cent). What a jolly television gathering it was. I still cannot believe it. Never once when Lee and I were slaving away in that soulless Oxford Street office did we think we were writing something that might win awards. What a vindication.

Oh, and you can hear our acceptance speech on Media Guardian. Click on the MP3 link at the top. It's right at the end, so you can zip through past Mark Austin; we're after Craig Cash and Phil Mealey. Sorry I didn't pronounce my "t"s properly in the word "writers". It was the excitement of winning.

What does it all mean?
I had my recurring dream again last night. Haven't had it for a while. I've been having it in various forms for most of my adult life. This is not one from childhood. In the dream - and, as I say, the set-up varies - I find myself at a dophinarium or zoo, and there are killer whales swimming round in a pool, usually two of them, and either I'm watching them from the side of the pool, or through glass, and there's usually a danger of me falling in the water, or of the killer whales jumping out. In the version I had last night, the pool was glass-sided. I didn't fall in. But I was filled with the same mixture of tension and pleasure I get from the possibility of being near whales, especially killer whales.

Some important facts that will help you interpret my dream, whether qualified to do so or not:

1. I love killer whales. I mean, I love them. The way they look. The way they move. The way they sound. I have been fascinated by whales - and not the more user-friendly dolphins - ever since my childhood. The Whale Hall at the Natural History Museum (these days called the Mammal Gallery, I think) blew my mind as a kid, on a trip down to London, and it has exerted an almost supernatural pull on my soul every time I've visited since. (Luckily, even though museums are all about interactivity and moving dinosaurs and "experiences" these days, they have failed to ruin the whales at the Natural History Museum - that amazing space is still dominated by the full-size blue whale, and you can listen to the mesmerising, almost heartbreaking sounds of different whales too. The killer whale noises are my favourite.) Whenever I catch a glimpse of a whale on television, the hairs on my neck stand up. I love all birds and animals, but no other animal has this effect on me. I was a proud member of the Whale & Dolphin Conservation Society in the 80s (even though they care about dolphins the same amount they care about whales). I love killer whales so much, I couldn't stop myself from visiting Marine World in Vallejo while on honeymoon in San Francisco, where two killer whales perform. (These days it's called Six Flags Discovery World, by the way - I checked.) I had shivers down my spine just approaching the arena, and I sat by the viewing window and had a full-size killer whale swim right past me, just as one had done in my dreams so many times. It was unreal. Now, intellectually, I despise zoos, and I hate that two beautiful killer whales live in a swimming pool, but I was drawn to it, so that I could see my favourite creature in the black and white flesh. I feel guilty for giving them my money, and for having my photo taken with the whales. I'm conflicted about it, all these years later. I accept that most decent zoos are all about conservation and education now, but Marine World was all about entertainment, and that's so wrong. Anyway, seeing two orcas in real life didn't stop me having the dream.

2. I don't like water. I can barely swim. I never cracked swimming as a kid. As such, I am afraid of the water. I don't like being on it. I get seasick on boats and ferries. (Funnily enough, we went by boat to Vallejo from San Francisco, as it's on the northern shore of San Pablo Bay.)

3. The dream is not a nightmare. I rarely actually fall in the water and I never think the whales will hurt me. They're just so big. The thrill I get from seeing them on telly (and in real life that one time) is replicated in the dream. The best way to describe my feelings towards the whales is awe.

Why I dreamt about the killer whales again last night, I have no idea. In some ways, it's great to have them back. Because I love them.

A decent primetime ITV documentary, then
The Truth About Size Zero was on two nights ago. Watched it last night. It was an hour and a half long (albeit about 20 minutes if you forwarded over the adverts), and thus a big commitment by ITV to a burning issue that concerns me less because it's about fashion, more because it's about the media, who are, after all, in bed with fashion. In it, Louise Redknapp, formerly Louise Nurding, formerly Louise, footballer's wife and Clothes Show presenter (I didn't know that, but I can't say I've followed her career in much detail since she stopped being a singer and started being an FHM cover star), aimed to get her not-considerable weight down to the fabled Size Zero in 30 days. For the unitiated ie. me, Size Zero is the American conversion of our own Size 4, for some reason. I don't know too much about dress sizes, but I know that Size 4 is tiny, because Size 8 is pretty slim in itself and Sizes 12 and 14 are medium. For the record, Louise began as a Size 8 and didn't look to me like she had much to lose. Her footballing husband, Jamie, said he liked her "curves" and rued the day she decided to do this experiment in the name of shaming those that crash-diet.

This was Super Size Me in reverse, and much less sensational and LCD than you might expect from the channel. I've read on Clair's blog that this wasn't an original format, having been done on BBC3, but I didn't see that one, so it was new to me. Basically, Louise seems a likeable young woman. She and Jamie and their baby were filmed around their house, which although spacious and with its own gym, was a world apart from other footballers' houses I've seen the interiors of, which are ostentatious and cold. When the Beckhams had that documentary crew in, the most telling thing was that clearly neither of them ever used the kitchen. I believe that Louise knocks up a stir-fry or pasta dish for her family. Anyway, she went to LA to be trained at Barry's Boot Camp, and after seeing a Harley Street doctor who told her not to do it, and that she would get bad breath, started a new dietary regime: no carbs, one-egg omolettes for dinner, a bit of salad, some steamed fish and a side order of nothing. The endless gym sessions, morning and night, combined with the no-laughs diet, knocked pounds off her (she went from 7 stone 10 to 7 stone 3 in a week); it also made her irritable, tired, vomity, jealous and pissed off. She started shouting at her fat bulldogs when they'd done nothing wrong.

The change was palpable. Ignoring a slightly-staged warning from her doc halfway through to stop, she made it into a Size Zero dress after a month and looked like a grey, hollow-eyed, knackered apparation of her former self. The programme constantly snapped back to rostrum shots of skinny models and actresses with their bony chests, concentration-camp arms and that frightening gap between the legs - as if their limbs have been screwed into the pelvis too far apart - and you couldn't help but see some kind of conspiracy against women. Louise visited a clinc for young girls with eating disorders, the youngest of whom was a recovering anorexic aged 12 (yes, 12). It was interesting that all of these girls were well-spoken. Is the eating disorder a product of Affluenza? Jamie Redknapp spoke for all heterosexual men when he said he loved Louise for her curves (these "curves" of course, are relative - but his point is sound), and that he didn't know a single bloke who fancied stick-thin women. Nor do I. But then, we are talking about models and film stars, the sort of people who wear high-fashion clothes in public, and are thus unwitting - sometimes witting - victims of a multimillion dollar industry's tyranny. Clearly a nice new dress will actually look best hanging on a wire coathanger, so turning women into walking, pouting bone versions of the same is good for fashion shows. Here's a controversial thought: is it because most male fashion designers are gay? (You will probably tell me that dresses designed by women are just the same. But why are women made to look like long, thin boys? That whole Sophie Dahl thing lasted about two weeks, didn't it?)

Hats off to Louise Redknapp, anyway, for putting herself though hell and hating every minute of it. And don't feed your bulldogs pasta.

Miami Vice meets the West End
Almost forgot! As part of my birthday celebrations, I went to see Guys And Dolls in London's West End. I've stated before that musicals are much better value than dramatic theatre as you get loads of people singing and dancing brilliantly for your money rather than just a man and a lady talking near to a table. I have never seen Guys And Dolls in any format and thus knew almost nothing of the story, except that there's a character called Sky Masterson in it, played by Marlon Brando in the film, and that they all look like 30s hoodlums. (I walk past the Piccadilly Theatre often if I am on my way to my agent's office from Piccadilly Circus Tube, and the big photos outside always made it look really exciting.) Because I am deeply shallow, I prefer it if people off the telly are in stage musicals I have paid good money to go and see. On that score, this did not disappoint, with Mister Don Johnson in the role of craps game supremo Nathan Detroit, Mister Ben Richards (Footballers Wives - and no it doesn't have an apostrophe) as lady-gambler Sky Masterson, and Mizz Claire Schweeney from Brookside as sexy dancer Miss Adelaide (returning, I believe, to the role, and just in the nick of time). As with Porgy And Bess, I didn't know whether I knew any songs in it or not, but it turned out that I knew Luck Be A Lady Tonight and Bushel And A Peck, which was reassuring. It was much more of a traditional Broadway musical than Porgy, which is a sort of folk opera, and although my teeth usually threaten to fall out when faced with English actors doing American accents, especially Noo Yoik ones, I have to say they weren't too bad. Claire Schweeney is certainly more American when she's singing, but then most of the time she is. And what a proficient singer and dancer she is. (There's one scene in which she and her fellow lady dancers take their tops off during a routine, but they are facing backwards, so don't get too excited. It was still pretty racy, I must admit.) Don Johnson naturally got a ripple just for coming on stage at the beginning, and he doesn't do too much hoofing, but he was ideal for the part of the old, gruff, world-weary, marriage-shy roue with a twinkle in his eye. All in all - and I realise I am not qualified to be a theatre critic, since I rarely actually go - it was a top night out, and the set design was very clever, not least when they went down into the sewers. Yes, I am gay.

Album Of The Year
I was unfortunate enough to catch Newsnight Review two Fridays ago, or at least the last bit of it, where Arcade Fire's all-important second album was under the pretentious hammer. I don't watch this programme any more. Not because they have never invited me back on it since my debut in October 2005, but because ever since they took Mark Lawson off it and added a superfluous fourth panellist, it's been a shadow of its former self. (Nothing against Kirsty Wark - she presented it when I was on, and she remains a rigorous, likeable and fair chairperson - but I miss Mark Lawson.) Anyway, not watching it any more, I occasionally catch the end of it by mistake, and the last time I did this, I saw my friend John Harris manfully defend The Good, The Bad & The Queen against an onslaught of ill-informed, lazy critique from someone called Bidisha, who turns out to be an all-rounder whose first novel was published when she was 18, and actor-playwright Kwame Kwei-Armah, who couldn't even be bothered to learn the names of the songs and called them "Track 1" and "Track 8" (imagine a book of poetry being subjected to this kind of insult - Poem 7, Poem 15 etc. - it would never happen). John was eloquent and enthusiastic and, most importantly, right. That album is a masterpiece. Conceptually and sonically. What a collaboration. And Green Fields, as good as any slow song Blur have ever made, is immaculate.

Anyway, two Fridays ago, there was John again, in the same spot on the Newsnight sofa, this time standing up for Neon Bible by Arcade Fire. Bidisha was there again, slagging it off, and Toby Young was there, reciting an awfully clever tirade against American indie bands he'd prepared earlier (even though Arcade Fire are from Montreal), and a third woman, Anna Blundy, another novelist, appeared not to have listened to the album at all, and kept attacking its "14-year-old" politics. Well, once again, John Harris was right. "It will sell a million copies," he stated, confidently. It amazes me how badly pop music is treated on this programme unless Paul Morley happens to be on. It struck me that only John had given this magnificent album more than a cursory background spin. It is, as he rightly pointed out, a profound piece of work, lyrically reflective of the scary, uncertain world we now live in. I've only listened through to it about four times, but every track matters, even the one the woman sings. My standout thus far is Windowsill, which deals with climate change and wider issues of American global arrogance. It's angry and it's sorrowful and beautiful. That'll do for me. Although it took me longer than it ought to have done to see the light with the band's first album Funeral, once the pieces fell into place on Redhill station platform through my iPod, it engulfed and obsessed me. Well, this one worked its magic immediately. Recorded in a church, it certainly has a funereal quality, and it sounds like all those people are playing on it at the same time. Maybe they are. I know I missed some London gigs of theirs recently, but I wouldn't have wanted to hear the album played live without knowing the songs. It would be a waste.

I'm glad I never saw Newsnight reviewing the Klaxons album, if they ever did. It would have been too much.

Happy birthday, Bobby Womack!
Today I am the age that is also the meaning of life. This is handy. (Bobby Womack is 63 today.) Thanks to Darren in Manchester for telling me that the popular song Happy Birthday To You was first published on March 4, 1924. This is also handy. I think it may be time for me to do or produce something profound. Having recently finished organising my working life (1988-2006) into a book for publication in May, I am more than aware of what we must call my achievements. I also know that I still haven't found what I'm looking for, jobwise. I've done quite a few things in the world of the media, most of which have been superceded by other things. At the moment I am still a DJ, albeit less of one than I was two years ago. I am, however, more of a scriptwriter than I was two years ago. The plates of my indecision constantly shift. I am an author, but not of anything made-up. I'd like to rectify that at some point in the near future. I'm not much of a journalist any more, even though that was my apprecticeship. I write occasional book reviews for the Times and at least one monthly column for Word, plus other bits and pieces when I have the time. I have just finished reading a beautifully written piece by David Denby in the New Yorker about the move from the fringes of filmmaking to the mainstream of fractured narrative. It would be lovely to write something as beautiful as pretty much anything in the New Yorker. It would also be nice to write something with a fractured narrative.

I have this week finally seen Pan's Labyrinth. Although fantasy is not my number one favourite movie genre, I must admit I was hooked in very early on. Guillermo Del Toro is a hugely imaginative filmmaker, and I don't just mean in terms of the weird monsters he cooks up in his notebooks. To make what he describes as an "anti-fascist fairytale" is a tall order, but he's pulled it off with style and subtance. I realise I'm a late arrival on this film, but it's good to catch up. I can say now with confidence that Del Toro was robbed at the Oscars, coming away with just three technical awards and seeing best original screenplay go instead to Little Miss Sunshine! Can any screenplay be more original than Pan's Labyrinth? In 1944, at the end of the Spanish Civil War, an eleven-year-old girl goes with her sickly, pregnant, widowed mother to live with her new husband, a fascist torturer, Captain Vidal, in the middle of the woods where remnants of the republican guerilla army need to be mopped up. Here, she retreats into a fantasy world, where a faun sets her three tricky tasks, by completing which she may return to her rightful place in the underworld, as a princess. Although hardcore fantasy fans may wish the film had less Spanish Civil War in it, and fans of war and 20th century European history may wish there were less vomiting giant toads, you have to admire Del Toro for taking this on, and making both "levels" of the story work - and intertwine so poetically.

What I love most about it is that having watched the illuminating DVD extras, I now have a greater understanding of the film. This reminds me of when Mr Gilbert, my English teacher, unlocked TS Eliot for me at school. I knew I loved The Waste Land but it wasn't until we studied it, in detail, that it came to life. Similarly, I appreciate Pan's Labyrinth more for knowing that, for instance, the tree that the little girl, Ofelia, enters in order to complete her tasks, is shaped that way to resemble a womb, with fallopian tubes either side, because she wishes to return to the womb, where she felt safest, and where he unborn brother currently resides, equally safe. For as long as the baby is unborn, her mother is safe from the murderous treachery of her fascist husband, who tells the doctor to save his child, not the mother. As Del Toro says, it's not monsters we should be worried about, but humans.

Imagine writing something that profound. And then having your Oscar taken by Little Miss Sunshine! I hope Bobby Womack had a nice day. I had a quiet one, and then watched both parts of ITV's newest grisly detective drama, the wishy-washily-named Instinct, starring the bloke who played the policeman on Shameless, Anthony Flanagan. It was one of those with a serial killer who spent an awful lot of time and effort trying to put everyone off his scent. You get a lot of those in ITV dramas. Not so much in real life. Guess what? It was entertaining, but not as profound as it appeared. I'd quite like to write one of those, one day. Plenty of time.

Link
A nice man called Mr Joe Blogs (not his real name) has just interviewed me for his website Mr Joe Blog's Blog!, where he interviews people whose blogs he likes. To his credit, he took my ribbing about his incorrect apostrophe use in the correct spirit. There is also an interview with Richard Herring, the comedian and actor, another man who can't use an apostrophe to save his life. Although it's unlikely using one would save your life, you never know how things are going to pan out.