Bird, plane, whatever!
Back online. Nice to be here. Rented Superman Returns last night. Watched about an hour of it. Went to bed. Took it back to the video shop this morning. Well worth the $270 million Warner Bros spent on it! Aside from Kevin Spacey, slumming it like a total mercenary, and Parker Posey as his sidekick, there was no personality on the screen! Kate Bosworth? Brandon Routh? The chap who played Jimmy Olsen? Even Frank Langella was so lugubrious he almost slid off the telly. I'm sorry, but these people just sucked the life out of the story. I was raised on the high comic-book camp of the Christopher Reeve series. It may have all been a bit Fairy-Liquid-bottle-and-string, but it was colourful and enticing. This, with all its digital effects and gloomy pallour, was a massive comedown. (And from Bryan Singer, too.) Yes, the bit where Superman rescued the stricken airliner was quite exciting, but this was just a set piece, and I couldn't be bothered to wait for the next one. Superman Returned.

I haven't time to reveiw this one at length as I am about to go offline for a few days as I'm moving into a new office, with a new broadband connection. So, very briefly:


The Apprentice: it's art
"I don't think he knew what he was talking about," said Tre, as the team walked away, bemused, from the Brixton flat of photographer Nigel Grimmer, who felt "squashed" by their attempt to woo him for his photos of family members with masks on. I liked his photographs. But Tre didn't. He didn't think that Nigel knew what he was talkinga about when in fact it was Tre who didn't know what he was talking about. The man who has nothing to learn. Tre and the fine art world do not mix. Having rejected Nigel (just as well - he said he wouldn't let them show his work anyway!), they went for the lady who took black and white photos of fish and crustaceans, one of which - some nipples being tweaked by a lobster - Tre actually censored. He refused to even show the nude photos in the gallery from which his team were to sell them. Now, we must respect Tre's religious beliefs, but that's got to be a point against him in business. As it happened, his team, under the leadership of Kristina, won by a mile, leaving Natalie's for the daubing. (They plumped for the photographer who was, let's say, a handful. Although I loved it when she quoted a price for "nine-fifty" and Adam genuinely thought she meant nine pounds fifty, rather than nine hundred and fifty pounds.) Natalie tried to deflect onto Adam, who sold art like he might sell cars - ie. successfully - and could probably get a good price for his forehead, but the fact that she's a mum with a business degree (right up there with Michelle's difficult childhood and Syed's East End upbringing) couldn't save her. I actually decided halfway through the programme that she was my favourite to win.

I'll leave the detailed dissection to you. Back soon.

The book may or may not be out there in the shops yet, but all is not lost. Those extraordinary gentlemen at TV Cream, the web's favourite telly archive, have done it again, producing this hand-tooled exclusive adjunct to That's Me In The Corner, comprising all the "deleted scenes" I gathered up after the final draft was signed off. We're talking about anecdotes and offcuts and aborted attempts at starting a chapter that were trimmed from the final manuscript for reasons of space or quality. I've annotated them all, and Graham Kibble-White did the rest, with some never-before-seen pictorial matter too. Big thanks to TV Cream (whose homepage is here) once again.

Thanks to Clare for pointing this out. It's from Play.com, and she suspects the hand of Richard Herring. (Yes, or one of his evil disciples.)

My brother went into the army at sixteen. He made corporal and opted out after many years' service - to joing the police and relocate his young family to Northampton. I visited him at his barracks near Hanover in Germany and in Colchester. As such, I am unable to maintain the kneejerk antipathy to the military that ever other fibre of my body is dying to have. I may disapprove to the very marrow of my bones of illegal wars and foreign adventures dressed up as "humanitarian intervention" or "regime change", but I can't just write off soldiers as willing, unquestioning servants of Queen and country, or tools of imperialism and state terror. Even though by definition they are. My brother found a career in the army that made not a man of him, as per the recruiting posters, but a citizen. As a policeman, now CID, he is forced to almost be a social worker to meet the constraints of the modern force, and is anything but a bigoted bully boy. I was uncomfortable when he did tours of Northern Ireland, as by then my worldview had started to take shape away from the shadow of my parents. For all the reflex protestations about there being "a bloodbath" if the British Army pulled out, I couldn't see past the image of colonial Britain, almost on my doorstep. Meanwhile, I was aware that my brother could get killed. I think what I'm driving at is a broader understanding of my reaction to The Mark Of Cain, Channel 4's apparently controversial drama by Tony Marchant about our boys in Iraq, three months after the invasion. Rachel Cooke in the New Statesmen really took against it, describing it as "anti-British propaganda", and "unfair" and "unjust". Was it?

She was quick to praise its star, Gerard Kearns (Ian in Shameless), who played one of two young soldiers court martialed for their part in the abuse of Iraqi civilians while in military custody in Basra. Matthew McNulty (above), whom I didn't recognise, played the other. These two put in exceptionally rounded performances, Kearns obsessively trying to scrub the desert sand out of his hair, McNulty blowing the gaff by showing his "holiday snaps" to his girlfriend, back home, who was horrified by what she saw. (We didn't see what actually happened when she did, just the reflected light of a laptop in her appalled eyes, but we could guess. The drama's only real weak point was in buckling under the pressure of the Big Reveal and showing us, graphically, what actually happened at the end, in flashback, as the military tribunal unfolded. This was unecessary. We got the picture, without seeing the picture.) With a large dose of A Few Good Men, this was not so much about Iraq, but about military justice. In-house, as it were. It all came down to regimental loyalty in the end: would Kearns and McNulty testify against their fellow soldiers, including their corporal, and point further up the chain of command, or take their punishment like men and keep to the mantra What Happens On Tour Stays On Tour?

If you didn't see it, or chose not to watch it because you've had your fill of real events in the Middle East, I recommend The Mark Of Cain, should it be repeated (which is why I won't talk about the ending). Certainly, the British Army didn't come out of it smelling of roses, from dozy officer to dimwitted grunt, but at least we saw what pressure they were under, at one stage advised by the Iraqi military police to "keep the peace" by taking a Kuwaiti petrol smuggler and beating him to a pulp, to avert a riot. The implication was: out here, the rules are different. It was the obliteration of a commanding officer and a Territorial in a mortar attack that ultimately led the men to their vicious treatment of seemingly innocent suspects, one hot night.

I haven't yet consulted my brother on the realism of this drama, and he never served in the desert, so it may be that he won't be able to say for sure, but my guess is that men lose it out there. Men who are told they are liberators and peacekeepers and are yet treated like the enemy. Men who spend an awful lot of time doing very little but sunbathing. Men who are fully aware that the war they are fighting was based on flimsy evidence. (We heard snippets of news stories about David Kelly.) Let's not be coy, the army attracts a certain type of person. It has to. I wouldn't last five seconds. It's about as far removed as any job I could ever imagine myself doing. Thus, it's hard to get inside the mind of a soldier. I think Tony Marchant did a half decent job. It's the polar opposite of those Army recruitment ads, and in many ways better than Jarhead, the recent Gulf-set Hollywood movie whose message seemed to be: these guys are simply bored. They have to let off steam.

Interesting that The Mark Of Cain was pulled from C4's schedules during negotitations with Iran to get the hostages released. What did they think might happen?

Catching up on some telly from the week in which I was unable to watch telly due to being "on lates". A Cutting Edge documentary on urban foxes looked right up my street, as urban foxes are, indeed, right up my street. (Being driven home at one in the morning in a BBC cab guaranteed at least one fox darting across the road. This is their time. London is their kind of town.) I think I have already confessed to putting food out for foxes in Reigate, which was a semi-rural kind of setting, and didn't feel too wrong. However, we're talking about chicken bones and meat offcuts and leftovers, all of which vanished, often, during the longer days, before our very eyes. This seemed like the circle of life. Never did we put out chocolate swiss roll, something I mention only because certain residents of Stoke Newington, the focus of this film, do just that. Although Meet The Foxes had the feel of a nature documentary about, well, foxes, it was actually about humans. And a pretty bloody unedifying lot we are.

While the anthropomorphised family of foxes ("Naughty Fox", "Shy Vixen", "Sickly Runt") went about their business of survival, which involves such antisocial behaviour as procreating and eating, this pathetic bunch of Nimbys showed all the characteristics of a species that have put this planet in such a parlous state - basically, understanding wild animals only terms of how "human" they are. (On which note, we are also keeping up with Meerkat Manor on BBC2, which they've bought in from Animal Planet, which takes the naming and humanising of wild animals to the degree of soap opera, but wins the day through sheer patience and access of footage gathered. Yes, they look like little men when they stand on their hind legs to sniff the air for danger, but they are not little men. They should be grateful they're not.)

The real villains of the Cutting Edge film were a family trying to be "green" (their word) by keeping chickens, for a supply of organic eggs. (I'd like to have seen what was in the feed they were putting out for these chickens before I am convinced by this organic self-certification, by the way.) Unfortunately, their idea of "green" and "organic" did not stretch to any wider understanding of the natural world. Foxes eat chickens. They bite their heads off and eat the nutritious brains, sometimes in bulk. It's what they do. If you are provocative enough to put out some chickens for them, as a kind of all-night buffet, in a pretty coop, leaving just a thin layer of chicken wire between predator and prey, you cannot then complain about the consequences in the morning. This bunch of arrogant, controlling, and ultimately bloodthirtsty twats did. For some reason, they felt that their hens had more rights than the foxes which actually live in Stoke Newington, even though their hens were artificially shipped in. Thus did they employ a "pest controller" (foxes are not protected and are listed as vermin) to sit in their bathroom all night with a rifle cocked and to shoot a pair dead, one a pregnant vixen, tempted out into open ground by some meat laid out by this sadistic, snuff-loving family. At no stage did the particularly gung-ho dad question the "organic" nature of having a bullet-headed middle aged man with a firearm sitting on his toilet in the night. This family, who make me despair for the human race, even had a cat. If their cat went out at night and killed a mouse, would they expect their cat to be shot by a paid marksman?

Another family had a fox trapped, "humanely", by the same firm. The poor little fella was left in a cage all night in the rain, shivering with cold and mortal terror, and they all came out to gaze at it, like an animal in a zoo. All for the crime of existing. It was taken away, like rubbish. At least the smaller of the kids seemed distressed to see it cowering there behind bars. An elderly lady opted for the same service when she had spotted a fox with mange. She had fantasised that it would be taken to the vet and made better. Unfortunately the pest controller informed her that the mange was too far gone, and that it would more likely be shot in the head with a pistol. She at least seemed alarmed by this, but didn't stop the man taking its quarry away. (Vets can treat mange at a very late stage. It is not necessarily a death sentence. Although left to its own devies, a mangy fox may die of an infection, which is nature's way.)

The teenage daughter of the bloodthirsty chicken-keeping "organic" family said this about the death of the hens: "It's just really unecessary." Too true. You smug, self-serving bullies.

At least there was a ray of humanity on show amid the mounting fox body count: two lovely old toothless chaps from the National Fox Welfare Society, who respectfully but firmly rescued an injured vixen (ahem, "Miss Fox") from beneath some decking and took it back to their sanctuary, where - according to the narrative bolted on by the filmmakers - it apparently recovered fully. The fox purporting to be "Miss Fox" was subsequently seen allowing one of these animal-loving saints to hold it like a baby, soothed by his kindly noises and the fact that she could sense that it meant her no harm. However, a glance at the indignant statement on the National Fox Welfare Society website reveals that the injured fox was actually put down due to internal injuries, the vixen being handled was one with mild brain damage that could not be released back into the wild, and the one released was a further fox that had been brought in for mange. How different from the "story" being told by the documentary (albeit the NFWA gentlemen were at least portrayed as gentle, humane, selfless souls, which, as volunteers, they surely are). The charity also made it clear that releasing a fox "back" into the wild ie. away from where it was caught (as suggested by this film), is cruel, as they are territorial creatures and would likely be killed in a foreign patch.

As the NFWA statement makes clear, this programme, set up to offer an insight into the urban fox, ended up playing into the hands of the hunt lobby, who would have us believe that this is a vicious, scavenging, indiscriminate killer, with no redeeming features, even though it keeps rat and mice populations down in urban areas. Tally ho.

Hats off to Matthew Macfadyen, usually seen saving the world from terrorists and our own goverment with his oblong jaw and tiny mouth in Spooks (or failing to convert the mums and Bridget Joneses who preferred Colin Firth in Pride & Prejudice) playing the paedophile in Secret Life on Channel 4 on Thursday. Written and directed by Rowan Joffe, son of Roland, it did the brave thing and humanised Charlie, the three-time sex offender ("vaginal, oral and anal" - no punches pulled here) attempting to cope with life after prison. Macfadyen imbued him with an unnerving palette of nervous ticks, which allowed us to see him relax only when in the company of children, during an edge-of-the-seat encounter at a funfair. Kevin Bacon probably took a greater risk in playing the paedophile in The Woodsman as it had a theatrical release and image counts for a lot in Hollywood (although they have Megan's Law in America, and thus, you might say, the battle is won, and presenting a paedophile as human is a bit like closing the gate after the horse has bolted). But we should applaud Macfadyen anyway, for taking the path of greater resistance as an actor. To get the cover of the Radio Times, as a paedophile, is quite a career move. And he did it well. As did Phil Davis as fellow offender Rudi, who, for all this one-day-at-a-time bonhomie, turned out to be less than "recovered". That said, this film made it clear that paedophilia is not a disease, it's a choice, which lets nobody off the hook. It was so satisfying to watch a one-off play on television about an area usually only touched on for sensation in police dramas. The only officer of the law we saw was a prejudiced desk sergeant. Justice was meted out by tabloid readers with baseball bats. The moral was: if society has already hanged Charlie, without trial, what's the point of trying to be good? May as well hang yourself. A happy ending for Rebekah Wade; something for the rest of us to think about.

The Apprentice: it's a jungle out there
Tre didn't like the smell when he and the rest of the candidates walked into London Zoo, but you'd think he'd be used to horseshit by now. Week four, and Siralan dummied the troops by briefing them at Hamley's, "the most famous toy shop in the world" (well, London), but they weren't going to be selling toys, they were going to be making sweets and selling them in the zoo. This task, I admired, because it involved industry, the physical act of manufacturing, which meant less scope for jargon. Equally, it was less fun to watch, except when whichever team it was walked away from the chocolate machine and was told by the stern chocolatier that they'd have to wait another two hours before it would be ready, because you could make fingerprints in it. (I honestly don't think the kids in London Zoo would have minded that, as long as it had a monkey face on it.)

Problem: I found it difficult to keep tabs on which team was which. They both made chocolate lollies, one with the monkey face, one with a paw print, but these were supplemented by bags of fudge on one side, and the infamous Natural Orange Lolly on the other. Sorry, Tiger Orange Lolly. This was Adam's team, although what they were called, I can no longer tell you. Adam, a man who should stop eating sweets, judging by his forehead, is a bluff, no-nonsense northerner who could fill in for Shaun Keaveney on 6 Music should car sales go belly up, and I didn't mind him as a project manager. Nick was out of order when he bitched about him behind his back in a pantomime style ("An animal theme? In a zoo? Fuck off!") - and Adam was at a disadvantage from the start: he wasn't named after a zoo animal. Meanwhile, Gazelle's team designed the cuter product, but only made "150" of them out of the proposed 300. (I say "150" because that's what Gazelle, sorry, Ghazal, intercommed her marketing team. It was, in fact, 110. But that's business. Buy for a penny, sell for a pahnd. Make 110, say you've made 150. Buy and sell, buy and sell. I'm actually feeling quite intimidated just writing about Ghazal. She intimidates people - I know this because she fluttered her spider eyelashes and said so. But then, as she also said, she's not here to make friends. Good job, as you can't understand what she's actually saying. Now that's intimidating.) Somewhere in the background, Tre was saying that this was all fucking bullshit, which now seems to be the only record on his jukebox. I am losing faith in him.

So it was that the two interchangeable teams, made all messy and non-gender-specific by Siralan's meddling, set themselves up at London Zoo, that spectacular wonderland of concrete, bars and scrub by the road in Regents Park, Adam quite prepared to do so next to a generator and some Portaloos behind the business centre, until wily Simon stepped in. (You have to watch what you step in at the zoo.) I like Simon, although it pains me to like any of these idiots, because he wanted to stop and look at the animals. "Giraffe! Giraffe!" he squealed, while the others went, "Bring it on!" and "I am dynamic, and have nothing to learn." Anyone else get a whiff of the Mighty Boosh from these zoo-based antics?

Tre was notably quiet en zoo, but they had to make some room in the edit suite for mystery 25-year-old Arab, Lohit, who seems quite camp, especially when holding Unnatural Orange Lollies up to the sun to reveal the hallucinogenic patterns created by the supermarket-bought hundreds and thousands and the carcinogenic E numbers therein. Could he be the first gay candidate? (I'm not a sales expert, but surely you don't buy your ingredients in Sainsbury's?) The labelling of the lollies was Adam's team's downfall, and looked to be the cock-up that would sign Natalie's death warrant. Adam made it quite clear that the sweetmeat was to be labelled a Tiger Orange Lolly, and Natalie, who has a child and seemed to care about stuffing it full of chemicals, gaily labelled it Natural. It took a lot of hustling before she'd admit this in the boardroom. However, she had an unecessarily rough time of it, being taught how to sell by a man in a lion suit, and then being accused of having something personal against Adam. This isn't personal. They're not here to make friends.

Siralan was on form. Looking for all the world like a man wearing the head of a lion costume himself, he berated Sophie for her failure to want to make a profit (she sold virtually no lollies, hampered by the fact that they weren't worth the money, ie. they cost more than a penny). This, he surmised, calling her "love", was because she was more concerned with her "scientific protons and neutrons." (He also had a go at the pharmaceutical industry, which would almost have got him a column in the Ecologist.) Gazelle's team won by ten quid, which, fittingly, earned them just an afternoon out at a bowling alley, albeit the bowling alley of the stars. (The stars weren't there that afternoon. I daresay Tre thought it was all fucking bullshit.) Quite how they managed to make the winning of the two paltry profits when they had run out of product by about 2.30, I don't know. It was a bitter pill for Adam's team to have to swallow. Mind you, they did give a lot of their stock away, the only time Sophie was comfortable as an E-number usherette. Paul, by the way, disguised his lack of chin with a part-monkey costume, and really seemed to get into it. Perhaps it reminded him of a game they used to play at Sandhurst, albeit without the broomstick up the arse. I am constantly awestruck by these prop hire shops they find in business parks two hours outside London. Who knew such places existed?

It was between Adam and his nemeses Sophie and Natalie in the end. I hoped Natalie wouldn't go, as she has more spirit than the despondent, wobbly-chinned quantum physicist, and she said "shit" in the boardroom, which I suspect scored points with the vulgar Siralan. Sophie got the finger. Philosophically, in the cab she decided that she didn't want a job in business after all and went back to her protons and neutrons.

Meanwhile, somewhere in the distance, a couple of hundred kids finally came down off their Tiger Lolly high.

Archive:
Episode Three
Episode Two
Episode One

Normal service
Hello. Sorry I haven't blogged for a couple of days. I won't be blogging tonight after The Apprentice either. It's because I find myself doing the late shift on 6 Music, filling in for newboy George Lamb, 10pm-1am. Although it is good fun to broadcast that late at night, and it's nice to be back at 6 Music, ooh, a week and a half after being dismissed, the late nights leave me unable to watch the telly in the evening, and very, very tired during the day, when I don't have the luxury of being able to lie in and recharge my batteries, as there's a sitcom to be written, and all sorts of other stuff. At least I'm no longer working the weekends, so there's always Saturday and Sunday, like normal people.

So, I won't even be watching The Apprentice until tomorrow (Thursday) probably. Bear with me. A review will follow as soon as I can physically find the time and energy to do it.

Kurt Vonnegut: a tribute
The ultimate tribute, in fact. Today, I read a Kurt Vonnegut book. Or re-read, as I think I've read all his books, as previously stated. I chose Slapstick (subtitled Lonesome No More!), published in 1976, because I remember loving it the first time, and it was no less entertaining the second. I love the look of this 1978 Panther paperback edition, which I feel sure I picked up circa 1990 at Merton Abbey Mills market in South London, which used to have - and may still have, I've not been back since developers built a leisure complex on the car park - a perfect second hand book shop, the source of so many of my "used" books. I remember feeling quite odd when I found my own Billy Bragg book, Still Suitable For Miners on sale in there, but I have since come to celebrate having my books in second-hand circulation. This was back in the days before eBay orthodoxy. Let us celebrate the handing on of books. Slapstick cost me a pound. If I'd bought it in 1978 it would have cost me 75p brand new! (The best thing about old books is the musty aroma and the discoloured pages.)

Anyway, like many of Vonnegut's books, it's short, and chopped up into bite-sized fragments which are rarely as long as half a page, sometimes only a single line, each one separated from the next by a symbol made up of twelve little diamonds. A novel set a couple of generations into the future, it falls loosely under the sci-fi banner, but Vonnegut only uses the form to free up his imagination. It's a darkly comic novel about a deformed brother and sister who are a genius when they get together and are cruelly separated not by twelve diamonds but by two uncaring rich parents, who allow a twisted psychoanalyst to allow her class-hatred to split the siblings up. Thus, he, Wilbur, who can read and write but not understand the words, is sent off to boarding school, while she, Eliza, who can't read or write but has great understanding of everything, is banished to a hospital. Anyway, I won't do the whole plot, which is punctuated with the phrase, "Hi ho" (Vonnegut lives for sly repetition) and takes in a flu epidemic that kills millions and a problem with gravity that causes a horse called Budweiser's insides to fall out, but it's such a breezy read, despite being loaded with philosophical ballast, and comment on the world we live in now, or lived in in 1976. Vonnegut's books are all about the human condition, and despite the fantasy element, rooted in reality.

It begins with an autobiographical prologue, written with pith and depth, revealing how Vonnegut's sister Alice died of cancer at 41 and that up until that point, he wrote everything he wrote for her (he never told her so): "She was the secret of whatever artistic unity I had ever achieved." It's very moving.

This is how the prologue ends (and if you like what you've heard, and what you're about to read, perhaps Kurt Vonnegut Jr is for you. He is very much for me):

The old man is writing his autobiography. He begins it with the words which my late Uncle Alex told me one time should be used by religious skeptics as a prelude to their nightly prayers. These are the words: "To whom it may concern."

Hi ho.

Arctic Monkeys, Astoria, London, April 13, 2007
It's funny, I mentioned to one of the producers on Simon Mayo's show today (on which I was filling in for Mark Kermode) that I was off to see Arctic Monkeys tonight, and he responded, "Why on earth would you want to do that?" It's amazing how some people just take against them. I still love them, and tonight was the seventh time we've seen them. What was strange about tonight's gig - sold out, obviously, since the demand for tickets for their current, all-too-modest UK tour far outstrips supply - was that the album from which most of the set was taken is not yet released, and thus, nobody knows the songs. This has never happened before, because even before Whatever People Say I Am Etc. was released, the fans knew every word to every song due to the sharing of the demos. Certain new numbers have been added to the setlist in the meantime to keep us on our toes, but by and large, a gig has been a communal experience. Tonight, the difference in reaction to old songs versus new was marked.

Choice cuts from the first album (Still Take You Home, Dancefloor, A Certain Romance, Sun Goes Down, Mardy Bum, Dancing Shoes) were greeted like old friends ie. with thrown beer. (Do you greet old friends by throwing beer at them?) The new stuff, barring the public domain-residing Brianstorm, went out unsung, which was an almost eerie experience at an Arctic Monkeys show. I know it's a media privilege, but having had the album in heavy rotation for some weeks now, it was a real treat to hear such in-house and in-car favourites as Balaclava, Do Me A Favour and If You Were There, Beware live - they reproduced every guitar subtlety with amazing precision, and it was interesting to see how the duties were split between Alex and Jamie, with Alex taking on much of the detail. He's quite the musical genius. Shame not to hear The Only Ones Who Know, 505 or Fluorescent Adolescent, but they only play for just over an hour, with no encores, so you have to be grateful for how much they do cram in, especially with two full albums to draw from now. Mark my words, by the time of the festivals, the crowd will have even the tongue-twister lyrics to Teddy Picker down pat. And the line, "Dorothy was right, though" (or "Dorofy was right, vo," as Alex sings it) will be a communal cry. Can't wait to see them at Glastonbury. On the telly.

A word about the venue: the Astoria, home to the Monkeys' coming-out ball, may be historic for them, but it's not a patch on Brixton - which, of course, they could have filled for at least a week - and standing towards the back downstairs, the sound was muddy and undynamic. Perhaps it sounded fuller upstairs, where I hope and assume people were having a better time than those on the guest balcony, who seemed immobile.

A word about the fans: are they becoming complacent about this band's brilliance? Although fervour and beer met the old songs, it didn't look half as mad and dangerous in the mosh pit tonight. We've been in the thick of the maeslstrom at the Sheffield Octagon and Brixton, and nothing like that seemed to be generated at the Astoria. Perhaps the real hardcore fans have moved away? Perhaps, due to the lottery system for ticket application, many of the hardcore simply didn't get tickets. Either way, it's a slightly diluted hysteria. Again, perhaps knowledge of the new songs will change all that once the album's out. I'm really glad we went to pay our respects, and there's little doubting the strength and variety of these dynamic new songs - nor the copper-bottomed classic status of the old ones. Arctic Monkeys really are an uncommonly gifted band, technically and creatively. If not yet in terms of showmanship. They began bang on time at 9pm - no showbiz fucking around for these young men - and with a plain backdrop, basic lighting and little in the way of repartee, they banged through 60 minutes of tight, singalong rock music, interrupted only by a green t-shirt thrown onto the stage, which landed over Alex's mic. Not a night of surprises, but one free of bullshit. All hail.

Here's my review of Favourite Worst Nightmare.

Kurt Vonnegut 1922-2007
I love his books. I have read nearly all of them, and there's not many authors I can say that about. Stephen King, Martin Amis, Stuart Maconie ... and that's about it. It seems dull to say it, but Slaughterhouse Five, by far Vonnegut's most famous novel, is the one to start with. I envy you, if you haven't read it. I love Galapagos, too. I've actually re-read these books and I never do that. Also, Cat's Cradle, Jailbird, oh my God he's good. What a magnificent body of funny, thought-provoking, imaginative, philosophical, mischievous, epic, mindbending, humanist work he left behind. We are very lucky to have had him.

The Apprentice: it's cutting off the block!
Who writes this programme? William Burroughs? What on earth was Jadine on about when she spoke of cutting off the block? I can't even recall the context! And what's a "footfall", Naomi? (I hope you all pronounced that "Ny-omi" in line with Siralan.) I can just about handle the testosterone-soaked exclamations ("Face painting: bring it on!" barked Sophie the quantum physisist, unecessarily), but the continual deconstruction of the English language is killing me. If you're going to talk in idioms and cliches, at least practice them. This week was bound to be a letdown after last week's bloodbath. And it was. The simplicity of Siralan just peeling off two hundred nicker for each team was admirable, but the outcome, over one sad day in the second wealthiest borough in the country, was quite dull. It was pleasing to see Stealth take so long to actually elect a project manager, true to gender form (frankly, nobody wanted to do it - how very different from Eclipse, who were a sea of eager male hands). It was also good to see the traditional schisms developing around lunchtime, as the various factions on footfall and in-car bellowed into the Star Trek communication devices. Jadine got up posh team leader Naomi's nose by saying something "thirty thousand times" apparently. "I do not speak the most. I do not speak the most," was Jadine's persuasive response. Naomi loves the weatherbeaten Kristina. She loves her. She keeps saying, "I've worked with her before." Yes, the others were with you at the time. Meanwhile, Katie, transplanted to the boys' team, loves Paul. Paul loves her. She clearly doesn't require a chin in a man.

So, while Stealth decided to clean up by painting the faces of ten children during termtime, Eclipse became gardeners, imagining that they could a) mow lawns in the rain, and b) do a garden in Richmond in 30 minutes flat. Clearly none of them ever helped their dad in the garden when they were growing up - perhaps they were all too busy standing in from of the mirror saying things like, "I've got nothing left to learn." (Thanks, Tre. If only you were as useful as your wooden namesake.) It was a hoot seeing Tre wield a rented chainsaw, and Paul mistaking a weed for a rose bush. The woman who let these clowns loose on her garden was hilarious: "{to camera) He's wrapping the weed round the tree, isn't he? Yes. (to Paul) That's the weed you've wrapped round the tree!" Paul's defence? "There's a very thin line between weeds and wildflowers." Yes, and there's a very thin line between a gardener and a twat who doesn't know how to garden. Still, at least they were failing to get this lot done during the hours of daylight. I wonder why they had no takers for sweeping leaves off people's drives in the dark? In less wealthy boroughs, they'd be lucky if anyone answered their front door at night.

The girls were reduced to selling kisses and hugs for a quid in some pubs in the evening. Now that's how the venture capitalists all do it. I could barely watch. Jadine, for the record, was not comfortable being either a prostitute or a pimp. Good for her. Ghazal couldn't wait to put her superfly hat on. Natalie and Kristina did the kissing. (Kristina's a single mum - how proud her son or daughter will be.) Surely they could have got more money by flashing their tits? I'm sorry, but if they're going to reduce themselves to selling their bodies, there's more cash to be made in this area. One old bloke touched Natalie's bottom, but I don't think they charged him extra. The boys just sang for money. It was appalling, and proves how generous drunks will be if there's a TV crew around. I would have liked to have seen both teams simply begging on the pavement. Some of the tramps in London are on 300 quid a day according to the Evening Standard.

I was looking forward to seeing Paul DJ-ing in a wine bar using nothing more than a wheelbarrow and a clogged-up lawnmower, but alas, nobody seemed to want him to. Still, he got to dance with his beloved Katie at a club in Soho where George Clooney apparently goes, as the boys won. The girls made 65 quid profit, the boys almost doubled their money. The girls blamed "location" for their failure to find that elusive eleventh child's face to paint as a tiger, which meant the finger pointed at Gerri, who's been here before. (Actually, she's so shit at locations, I'm surprised she found Siralan's office from the reception area. I could see her still driving around in the 4x4 looking for it.)

Gerri got the boot, and was driven to a much more suitable location: where she'd come from. She shook Naomi's hand. She gave Jadine a hug. But no money changed hands, I don't know why.

I'm a bit worried about Adam's skin. It seems to flare up when he's under pressure. He's a "sapper" according to Katie. Maybe all the bullshit he saps from those around him erupts out of his forehead. What fascinating creatures they all are. And who is Lohit?

So, Life On Mars ended after two series - and by ended, I mean it was left wide open for a third series, even though the creators have assured us that there won't be one. If you haven't seen the final episode, read no further. Matthew Graham, co-creator with Tony Jordan and Ashley Pharoah, and a thoroughly nice chap, took the reins and pretty much tied everything up. What I've enjoyed most about the second series has been the boldness to do "issues" (racism, heroin, the IRA, wife-swapping), and this aspect had to be set aside, as Sam's niggling fate necessarily took centre stage. The plot about the wages heist, in which the bloke who plays Maguire on Shameless had so little to actually do, you wonder if his part was cut down to accomodate the double-twist, was a distraction. The crux of the episode saw Sam - and us - almost convinced that 1973 was reality and he'd dreamed 2006. This looked to be the "solution" the writers had chosen, which threw up immediate nagging doubts (how would Sam have been able to quote Robocop if he'd been dreaming the future?), and you wonder if we were really supposed to buy it in the first place.

In the end, they reverted back to the original premise, that Sam was in a coma and Frank Morgan (Wizard Of Oz reference) was his surgeon. Making Gene Hunt his tumour was a nice spin, although this didn't work either if you followed it to the very end, when, bored with modern poice work (as illustrated by a load of men and women in suits and modest shirt collars sitting round a boardroom table), Sam jumped off the roof in order to get back into his coma. This was a risky move - what if he'd just, like, broken his neck, or died? Anyway, if Graham had left it there, with Sam jumping in to space, I would have switched off satisfied. It's the last episode - it could have ended there. Dramatic. Surprising. Uncertain.

But no, they're crowd-pleasers at the end of the day, this is primetime BBC1 and we're in a best-selling show, so it all ended in 1973 with Sam kissing PC Cartwright and DCI Hunt calling him a "fairy" as they barrelled off in the Ford Cortina down that one cobbled alleyway. What message this sends out, I don't know. That things were better when the lawman was beating up the wrong guy and all Irishmen were Paddies? It's not such a bold conclusion, when millions have so enjoyed being in this era over the last two years. The nation has fallen in love with a racist, homophobic, bigoted, sexist bastard who's "having hoops". Because he's not "real", does that mean Hunt has been cauterised by irony? There's no denying his appeal (thanks, in the most part, to Philip Gleinister, although I'm hardly going to leave the writers of his salty dialogue out of the praise), but would we have loved him if John Simm hadn't been there as his conscience? Probably not. As long as there's a Guardian reading fairy around to tell him off, Hunt is a dinosaur who's allowed to walk the earth.

Now, let's hope they keep their promise and don't come back for a Christmas special. Life On Mars has been an astonishing triumph: funny and dramatic, realistic and totally unrealistic. Certainly, it mucked about with our loyalty in the final episode, teased us for caring, but given the overturned lorryload of red herrings and MacGuffins that needed sweeping up, and the amount of logic holes that will no doubt be filled in by people on message boards, it was a valiant effort. And Hyde was the name of the ward. See? See?

The Apprentice: it's psychotic
Un-fucking-believable. Only show two and we've already hit a new nadir - and a new, through-the-fingers entertainment peak. We are all going to hell. If these 15 people are among the finest business brains in the country (and I'm already starting to suspect that they are not), we may as well just let the Chinese in now and put our hands up. If ever there were 15 people who proved that everything went wrong in this country in the 80s, it is this shower. Charged with a simple enough sounding task, albeit one with a built-in trap - design something for thirty quid for dog owners, run up a prototype and pitch it to superchain Pets At Home, Harrods and boutique-for-cunts Pets In The City - Eclipse and Stealth proceeded to go to pieces before our eyes, in both cases split down the middle and grasping for either leadership or inspiration.

Katie led the ladies, filling the bullshit vacuum left by Andy by starting the first session off with the word "ideation". Let's just pause for a few seconds and take that word in. Savour it, like a fine wine. Ideation. I'm guessing this is something about throwing ideas around. Isn't it time to start rounding these people up and shipping them off to the salt mines? We could start with anyone who has ever said the word "ideation". Pertinently, the team's ideas were useless, ranging from a dog nappy to a dog-operated fan. (By the way, I suspect that not one of these 15 people owns a dog. They all seemed to have zero empathy for dog owners, and a deep, stereotypical antipathy towards them, which came out most clearly when Eclipse were pitching to the daft dog boutique and Kristina who did the pitch actually patronised posh ladies who have chiuahahas at the posh lady with a chiuahaha who ran the company.) "I'm going to ask you to drop the nappy," said a decisive Katie to Natalie, before plumping for the Doggy Closet, for all your tiny wardrobe needs. They sold none to Harrod's or the chiuahaha lady, but an astounding 2,000 "units" to Pets At Home. This won them the task, despite Katie having the gall to describes some of her team as "door-openers" in front of Siralan (who had set up the three contacts for them - ie. actually opened the doors - unless she actually meant they were in charge of opening doors), and Ghazal doing the now-traditional mid-pitch freeze - or, as she excused it, a pitch that was much shorter in length than the one she had planned. Again, what is someone like this doing on this programme? (They weren't chosen for how good they were, were they? They were chosen for comedy value, weren't they?)

Talking of which, Eclipse - whose name Jadine is clearly obsessed with, last week sprinkling it on unsold coffees, this week painfully trying to work in clips to the reviled Pooch Pouch in order to create a marketing and branding opportunity: Eclipse Clips, geddit? - were saddled with Rory as team leader, a man I am convinced is mentally ill and needs professional help. (No chance of anything professional from this team, I'm afraid.) One of two chinless wonders on the team, the other being Warrant Officer Paul, Rory proved that being a double-bankrupt does not make you a loser. Except it does. I repeat his opening salvo in full, as this was the point at which I began to worry that he might actually have a breakdown on camera. In the film, he'd be played by Rufus Sewell, and the critics would accuse him of overacting:

"Discipline is something I go fucking crazy for. If you're over-talking, saying 'Just this', 'Can I just that?', the rest of it, I will send you out. OK? I won't have it. OK? It really pisses me off. Can we please try and stop swearing. OK? It's just horrible to listen to. OK? And another thing, if you're going to do brainstorming, all that kind of stuff, take your jackets off. Please. Take your jackets off. Jackets off. And if you can do it without getting into troubles, can you take off your ties as well."

As a professional scriptwriter, may I say: you couldn't write this stuff.

Tre, who is possibly the only male candidate with a personality, took against Rory from the off. Had he been the one who'd come up with breakaway product the Hair Collecting Blanket, there would have been a fist fight. As it was, while Simon's focus group team spent two and a half hours collecting feedback from some doggy dancers (does anyone actually love their dog?) and delivering the decisive research too late (Pooch Pouch: no takers; Blanket: resounding support), Rory was back at the flipchart rejecting all ideation but his own - what Siralan described as a "Rambo belt". And trying to make Tre go and sit in the corner, like a bad dog, naughty dog, which, being an adult male, he gently refused to do. Couplet of the series so far:

Rory: "I am your boss."
Tre: "You're nothing to me."

Eclipse were the masters of no-fucking-ideation. Rory, as the camera operator spotted, wears Moet Et Chandon cufflinks. I hope they're worth something, as he will go bankrupt again, if he doesn't run amok in the City with an automatic rifle in the meantime. (I suspect his parents might lend him a fiver, actually.) And as if this power struggle wasn't gripping enough, there was Ifti, the oldest of the bunch at 36, a Tae Kwon Do champion and former policeman from Egham, Surrey. What a fascinating backstory. Alas, we will never learn any more about Ifti, who by the way has a son, as he seemed to give up before the task had begun. He has a degree in product design, in common with most policemen, and yet chose not to tell his team, as he didn't "feel up to it." Jadine kept commendably calm back at the house, with her hair in a towel, and said, "You've got a degree in product design and I think that's really key when we're designing a product." You couldn't argue with that. Ifti just sighed, a broken reed, a self-firing man. He was missing his son. After all, he was all the way back in Surrey and they were in London. Siralan genuinely appreciate his honesty in the boardroom, and fired him for his own good, like putting down a puppy. And off he went with his black shirt and white tie and eyebrow injury. He's played by Joe Pesci in the film.

Because Eclipse sold a couple of pouches (which, to quote a line from Bauhaus, "no man would want to wear") to Harrod's and Chiuahaha Hats R Us, they felt triumphant, but Pets At Home, who have 120 barns across the country, took none, and Rory was back where he belonged: in the boardroom with Ifti and his nemesis Tre (who was like working with roadworks, apparently). A fool to the left of him, a joker to the right, and his cheeks reddening - where's a dog-operated fan when you need one? The close-to-breakdown Rory had spoken earlier of "killing" two of his teammates in order to survive Siralan. Nice. Which is why he took Ifti in, as a sacrficial idiot. This seemed to work. Then Siralan played his first trump card and fired Rory as well. A double sacking. Maths students had already worked this one out, of course, as 16 contestants into 12 programmes don't go.

As with the sacking of the chinless wonder who'd had cancer in the last series, this was a mercy killing. Rory and Ifit had to go, for different reasons. It was triumphant television, albeit I aged two years while watching it, and now look like Nick.

Still. Happy ending: in the cab, Ifti confirmed that he would be a billionaire by the time he was 50. I hope Mrs Thatcher is proud.

The telly: mid-season update
It struck me the other day that, since Sky+, I have, like many others with this or similar digital recording device, opted out of television. We simply programme in that "series link" and watch its booty at our leisure. "Real time" has no meaning. Not working in an office, there is no water cooler around which to discuss "last night's TV" anyway, so what does it matter if I watch Life On Mars on Tuesday night or not? (In point of fact, Life On Mars' series link is set for the BBC4 repeat, so we're a week out with it anyway.) I have The Yellow House recorded - John Simm as Van Gogh - but may not watch it until September. It's there if I should get the urge. I realise this is just a futuristic extension of what used to be called "videoing things", but the ability to record two things at once, while watching a third recorded item back is what truly emancipates the viewer. (Unless, of course, having that many hours' worth of backed-up telly is a tyranny of its own. It's certainly less messy than piles of unlabelled tapes. And the threat of "going over something" - how quaint that sounds now - is removed. I don't wish this to sound like an advert for the recording service I use - others are available.) Anyway, to the point: we're midway through three currently unmissable US imports, and although you may be ahead or behind, this is where we are at (ie. spoilers alert):


The Wire 7/13
Season Four proving as strong as the others, and managing to skilfully balance the corners and the cops with the school. McNulty is pretty much AWOL, due to him settling down and everything. We miss him. But the way they've pushed the likes of Prez and Herc forward, putting Greggs into midfield, while allowing Freamon and Daniels to slip into the back four takes guts that no other long-running show can claim. Omar is doing a deal with Bunk, Namond is mainly just saying "Fuck you" to his teachers. Poor, fucked-looking Bubs is being robbed by his own kind and failed by his protege Sherrod, who has swapped his big white tee for a flak jacket and has turned into that rare thing, a corner boy who takes drugs. And Carcetti is almost-mayor. It's the most ambitious of all the seasons in its scope, and some of the characters have been sacrificed for it, but you can't take your eyes off it. Outstanding.


Heroes 8/23
Mohinder, back in an India that looks a bit like California, is having dreams about his dad. In fact, there are a lot of dreams, including one in which Peter tells Richard Roundtree that he loves him, which was sweet. Isaac is being put back on the smack in order to save the cheerleader with his illustrative skills. Hiro and Ando, improving their English all the time, almost met Syla in a diner. Mika tried to call his mom but got Jessica instead, who's now very much "in the room". Matt, who reminds me of Johnny Dee, and Audrey the FBI woman who was in Blair Witch Project II, almost get burned by a hero who's on his way to Guantanamo Bay. This is a thoroughly engaging series, albeit still somewhat caught between two tonal stools, one of those that would be difficult to slap a certificate on if it were a film. It's sci-fi fun, with darkness on the edge of town.


Nip/Tuck 11/16
Thought Season Four was ending the other week, not having kept up with the numbers, but the one in which Conor had his surgery, which felt like a closer, was not. And now another false ending, with Sean's family finally hightailing it after one of those "novelty" eps, set in the future, with all the characters aged. It was a treat, that only a show as camp as this could pull off. Since the very beginning of this captivating, if glossy, show, I've been waiting for the writers to run out of plastic surgery plotlines. And they never do. Just when you think they've wrung everything out of the characters, they raise the heat another notch. (I expected Christian's gay doubts to go further, but no. Having said that, no supporting character or minor storyline ever actually goes away, so never say never.) It's been great having Peter Dinklage in this series as Marlo (that's two US series with a Marlo), and the stunt casting has been exceptionally strong, with Brooke Shields, Larry Hagman, Rosie O'Donnell, Jacqueline Bisset, even Melissa Gilbert as a patient with a loving relationship with her dog. You need Nip/Tuck as an antidote to The Wire.

I fully expect now to bombarded with pleas to watch House or Shark or 24. Fire away, but bear in mind, that's as much telly as a household can take at the moment. It is, like the Sky+, pretty much full.

What the fuck is Arctic Monkeys' second album like?
Since the decline and fall of the weekly British music press and the reduction of rock monthlies to glossy shopping lists, the discerning must look elsewhere for a broader pop narrative. I'm grateful for the eloquent Sasha Frere-Jones in the New Yorker, who, describing Artic Monkeys' debut album Whatever People Say I Am, That's What I'm Etc. as "delightful, fleet and rackety", managed to write an introductory capsule piece on "England's Next Big Thing" that actually got its facts straight about the band's viral beginnings. (More than many British writers can manage.) Meanwhile, a very good essay by David Smyth in the New Statesman branded them one of saleable indie's "firework bands", along with Bloc Party, Editors, Maximo Park, Hard-Fi; all, he noted, have been forced to produce second albums in short order to satisfy a market where fan loyalty is now as fickle as in pop. Early chart success = fireworks. And we all know what happens once they've gone off.

Arctic Monkeys exploded much closer to the sun than those other herberts - Whatever People Say I Am remains the fastest-selling British debut of all time, and their press file must weigh the same as a fifth band member - and we've already seen their popularity plateau off, with Leave Before The Lights Come On failing to reach number one last August and make it a hat-trick. Anyone who saw them rattling around in an arena on the last tour will understand why they actually prefer to put a ceiling on their expansion. (They have, however, sold out Lancashire County Cricket Ground this July - a nod, at least, to demand, although hardly enough to match the numbers who recently joined the lottery for tickets.)

They've always been prolific. Fans from the file-sharing days will have a bootleg's worth of older songs that never even made it onto the first album (Saying Goodbye To The Train Or The Bus, Choo Choo, Knock A Door Run - ah, what might have been). Thus, as difficult second albums go, Favourite Worst Nightmare isn't. At first listen (and I've been living with it now for a month, thanks to being asked to review it for Word, which is out in a week), it sounds faster and punkier, but that's not the whole story. It's actually more sophisticated. I won't go into too much detail about the songs (it's all in my review), but the fact that the album was largely written on tour doesn't mean the Alex has forgotten all about the taxi to High Green via Hillborough, please.

Teddy Picker is named after one of those fairground machines, and cheekily echoes the first album with a Duran Duran quote. It also acknowledges the prickly subject of fame: "the kids all dream of making it, whatever that means," and "who'd want to be men of the people when there's people like you?" Casual swearing still abounds ("Perhaps fuck off might be too kind"), as does the unreconstructed Yorkshire pronunciation ("tek" for "take", "alreyt" for "alright", "fick" for "thick" etc.). Right now, Fluorescent Adolescent, the next single surely, is my favourite. It's about a naughty girl gone domestic ("her bloody Mary's lacking in Tabasco"), and is run on Smiths-style guitar. Turner's quest for romance is ongoing ("I hope you're holding hands by New Year's Eve"). The guitars do everything from grumble and bounce and flex to weep like the undersea sonar of a whale and conjure the theme tune to Knight Rider. No, really.

Favourite Worst Nightmare is fleet, rackety and delightful. I registered for tour tickets, but was unsuccessful. I was really hoping not to have to tap up the record company - we've always bought our own tickets in the past, and it feels good to do so. But did I mention: Arctic Monkeys are bigger than they really want to be? Read Tom Doyle's cover story in the new Mojo - best piece I've ever read about them, actually, due to Tom's innate skills at assimilating himself into a band's confidence with his easy Scottish manner. Perhaps the British music press isn't quite dead yet.

The last show in pictures!
Obviously, the Chart Show was technically my last show, but the Chart is the Chart - it's not about me, and it's not about interaction (that dialogue I keep going on about). Thus the final two-hour Saturday show was always going to be the Big One. In the event, it was uneventful, but entirely pleasant, with Richard Herrings in for the duration and nothing specific or structured to talk about. The emails and texts poured in, way too many to read out (and if we had done it would have been a mawkfest), but love was in the room. I threw the playlist out of the window and used an iPod shuffle to dictate the music (I did this during the week and built the running order from a genuine random outpouring from 6,609 songs, from Hey Ya, a "strong opener" which really was the first song that came up, to Only Shallow by My Bloody Valentine, via Amazing Grace, Under The Moon Of Love, Pretty Park by Kevin Coyne and Integration, a spoken-word track by Ice Cube about racial intergration). The two hours flew by, but then they always have done. I've missed that third hour. Richard didn't swear, although he did say the actual name of a nature reserve in Zimbabwe (called Wankie Park) and I'm afraid I encouraged him to do so, like a digital Bill Grundy in a stripy, rave-style hooded top. It was a blast. I managed, I think, to thank everybody who's worked with me over five years, and even though I know in my bones that my voice will one day again be heard on 6 Music, it was the end of an era, and I spent it among friends. You know who you are. And here is a visual souvenir of my last show with Andrew Collins in the title, presented in the most apposite way: all the pictures taken by the two studio webcams: blurry, bleached out and fuzzy, but pure reportage. You could print them, cut them out and make them into a really short, sedentary flicker book.









I like the ones where the door obscures the view of history being made. And here's that final show again, but from the other webcam.







Jude, by the way, is the one with the ginger hair tied up, still on Nashville time, and Catherine is the one with red hair, dreaming of her horse. Note when Richard Herring the actor puts on his shades. It was to cover up for the fact that he was crying. (Unless he was acting. He has had lessons from Robert Dawes.)

Oh yes, almost forgot. Last chance to see . . .





By the way, I am sitting in for the new presenter of what's no longer called the Dream Ticket for a week from April 9. Bit of an anticlimax really, isn't it? See there, if you stay up late!