Yes, it's a live photo of a beautiful pied wagtail, one of my all-time favourite birds, grabbed just seconds ago from one of the Springwatch live webcams. Go there now. My friend Dave has just recommended that I do so, and I fear I may do no more work for the rest of the day. (There are six webcams, five of them functioning, with a variety of nesting birds, including a swallow, greenfinch and owl. It's like an ambient soundtrack for the eyes.) If there's an empty chair on News 24 at around 5.30 this afternoon and my name doesn't appear on the credits to the third series of Not Going Out, you'll know why.
Here is another Steve Brown masterpiece, mainly of Richard, who had a letter printed in the Guardian today. As it happens, we did not record a new podcast today, as previously promised, for mundane domestic reasons, so we are recording number 15 on Monday morning. Please be patient, and imagine how much better it will be with three whole days' more news to talk about. Incidentally, I very much enjoyed pretending to be a comedian on the bill of Robin Ince's School For Gifted Children night at a packed Albany, and it was especially good to see a low-key performance by Stewart Lee, who, if he is jealous about me stealing his ex-comedy partner, managed to disguise it well under bonhomie and righteous anger about other injustices. (Thank you to anybody in the audience who laughed at my ten-minute routine about serial killers. Don't worry, it won't make me want to be a comedian full-time.) Ben Goldacre was also on the eclectic bill, but I'm afraid I had to leave before his set, as I've not been feeling 100% this week, due to overwork I suspect.
There are two types of candidate left on The Apprentice as it nears the bloody climax: super-salespeople (by which of course I mean salespeople) and people of indeterminate job title but who aren't salespeople. Lucinda confirmed herself to be in the latter sub-set by using the phrase, "I did a sale." Lee McQueen's a sales manager; Alex, his boyfriend (check out the come-to-bed, I'm-wearing-a-casual-scarf-indoors, legs-apart pose on the sofa at the end), is also a sales manager; Michael is a telesales executive (and I mean, he literally is one again, right now, if they took him back). Meanwhile, despite her sales acumen, Clur is a buyer - literally the mathematical opposite of a seller. Lucinda is a Bonnie & Clyde lookalike. And Helene is nothing. She's nothing. She's old and nothingy and, according to Sir Alan's dim view of her, she's wasting her bladdy time bein' here.
Anyway, it was a salesperson's task: literally pimping rides in a selection of cars I've never heard of: a Zyclone, a Ronda, a Stryper and a Zenda. One of them was red and easier to distinguish; it was also the one that Michael, 23-year-old leader of team Renophocles, kept trying to hide behind dustbin lorries, other parked cars and a German Food van down sidestreets, for fear of selling any of it. (Sir Alan said he had offered "glimmers". Where were these glimmers, and why did we not get to see any of them?) Lee McQueen took the reins of team Leenaissance and buddied up with Alex in his commandant's greatcoat so that Lucinda could be reduced to perforating raffle tickets, which is a bit like the sort of task you give patients in mental hospitals in films. We were invited to feel sorry for Lucinda by the evil manipulators who edit the show together, and we did. She told them she didn't know anything about cars and that she didn't want to be left on her own, so Lee McQueen packed her off, on her own, to sell a car. Meanwhile, dressed as waiters, he and Alex tossed each other off (with their eyes) in the City, hoping one day to work there, rather than in Princes Risborough and Bolton, which is where they previously toiled at the coalface of sales. (What a shame that the job with Sir Alan involves being in Brentwood.) Alex refrained at least from doing that motor show thing and draping himself across the bonnet of their Zingo.
Meanwhile, to "prove himself", a droopy-lidded, dog-tired Michael (not as tired as we are of seeing him come back every week) went off by himself for a spot of self-reflection down a quiet sidestreet in Knightsbridge, unmolested by passers-by. With his "London knowledge", he decided to then go to Notting Hill and park up in a market. Luckily, he was able to stalk a man in a suit on his way to a meeting; not actually sell him an hour with the red car or anything ("I didn't sell it to him but I was extremely close to doing so.") You had to admire his commitment to all the same telesales techniques he used on the wedding cakes: saying "Bloody hell!", begging, threatening potential customers that they'd "regret it", more begging, whimpering, whining, sticking out his bottom lip, and then blaming them for being not wealthy enough, even though it was his idea to drive the red car there.
It was at this point in the programme that I was prepared to never watch it again if this arrogant little offcut of a man slimed through the boardroom process once again with his stick-on rabbi sideburns. Meanwhile, over in the City, because of Clur's innate South African brilliance at selling rides in her Zydeco at an hour a time and Helene's ability to look corporate, we were invited to start worrying about Lee and Alex McQueen, who had picked the biggest, most expensive of all the very low-down, growly cars, the Zammo, and couldn't sell five minutes of it. (Alex had to admit that even though he was a "high calibre" salesperson, he wasn't a "high calibre" salesperson. Lee McQueen just kept saying "no worries", even though he claimed to Lucinda that, using his special pay-dar, he could "see welf.")
In what we were led to believe was just "60 seconds" before the end of the task, Alee and Lex McQueens ran down Canary Wharf and found a man who wanted to hire a bit of their Zanzibar. It was clearly not "60 seconds", but hey, bit of melodrama, no worries. Either way, it clinched it for team Leenaissance, who had made something like 11 grand, while Renophocles had collectively made less than the price of one day in the Zebedee. Luckily, Lucinda had painted a big target on her ovaries saying "Kick me!" and given Sir Alan the chance to tell her to "shat up." How much she can have wanted to go out wine-spitting with the McQueens?
We're now into such small numbers, there's no need for the losing team to go away and come back in and go out and come back in again, so, farcically, Michael, Clur and Corporate Cosy Carpets Helene had to do the dance on their own. Clur - or "She", as he calls her - is now Teflon-plated in Sir Alan's rheumy eyes and was only there to make up the numbers. It was down to the hard-faced 32- year-old versus the puppy-faced 23-year-old. Which way would Sir Alan jump? Would his hatred of women (or maybe it's just a hatred of these women) override his admission that Micheal, the son he never had, is a "disaster zone"? Because the edit of the task itself had come up short, we had to suffer ten full minutes of umm-ing and ah-ing and Sir Alan explaining, again and again, that he "straggling." "I'm straggling!" he said, before selling us a dummy and - mercifully - firing the dum-dum. The worst thing is that Michael seems to have gone away with an extra bit of arrogance, believing that Sir Alan "saw something in me." Fuck knows how he ever sold double glazing back in Edgware. ("Good God! Bloody hell! If you don't buy it, you'll so regret it, maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow, but soon, and for the rest of your life! Pleeeeeeeeeease. Pleeeeeeeeeeease! Please! You're killing me here! You're sticking a knife through my heart! Can I come to your meeting with you? Pleeeeeeeeease!!!!!")
It seems almost impossible now that Alex and Clur won't be the final two. I fancied some of that German Food, though, didn't you?
Perhaps the finest work thus far by photographic alchemist Mr Steve Brown (and Mr Steve Newman, on lettering). So many men, working for free, for the love of their art.
Well, by accident rather than design I seem to be doing an awful lot of talking this week. Tomorrow evening, I am on the bill of Robin Ince's latest School For Gifted Children night at the Albany in London. I shall, for ten minutes be talking about serial killers again. I am excited to be on the same bill as Stewart Lee, but trepidatious about sharing it with Ben Goldacre and Simon Singh, who, independently, seek to destroy complementary medicine! Then, on Thursday morning, Richard and I are recording the latest Collings & Herrin Podcast a day early. That very evening, I am a late booking on the Radio 4 discussion show Heresy, now presented by Victoria Coren. I am greatly looking forward to that. It's at the Drill Hall, although I suspect tickets will be hard to come by. And, as if I won't be all talked out by then, I am being Mark Kermode on Friday, which means I'm on Simon Mayo's show on Five Live, then on News 24. The weird part is, this is an intensive Not Going Out-writing week too, so I'm spending every other spare second of the time in total, contemplative, hardworking silence. Ssshhhh.
... if you will, a Guardian reader who doesn't give a fuck about what's happening at the Hay Festival. (Equally, any newspaper reader who doesn't give a fuck about what's happening at the Cannes Film Festival, or the Glastonbury Festival, or the Edinburgh Festival, or whatever other festival the newspaper has done a cross-media promotion deal with, or else they're covering it because all the other newspapers are covering it, and it's easy copy.) I bet it's smashing if you're there, but what if you're among the 99.9% of Guardian readers who are, let's say, at work?
Why do they never invite me? Why-oh-why-oh-hay-on-wye?
The latest work of photographic genius from Steve Brown (who claims the C&H project is taking longer than he expected because of some "paid work" he had to do first, the venal mercenary that he is). Does this mean we'll have to make our podcasts as professional and impressive as the photos from now on? I hope not. Steve Newman (we only work with Steves) did the excellent lettering.
No, this isn't Shane McGowan and Pete Doherty, as seen backstage at the Kentish Town Forum in this week's NME, it's me and Rich paying tribute to them in order to mark the decaffeinated recording of our fourteenth Collings & Herrin Podcast (that's not my name, that's not my ... name). We finally met Mark, boss of the British Comedy Guide today, who kindly hosts our pre-nervous breakdown ramblings about zoophilia, Crewe and Nantwich, the British Heart Foundation adverts, Ronaldo's Faustian eye pact and Blade Runner-style moving adverts. This podcast is dedicated to him, assuming it's up yet on his website, what with him gallivanting about, drinking orange. (Visit the website, but get it on iTunes as well, just to help us beat the French Maids to the top of the charts.)
Scene 1. Int. The House. 30 minutes before the candidates need to be somewhere CLAIRE GETS TO THE PHONE LOOKING LIKE SHE WILL NEED AT LEAST 31 MINUTES TO GET READY FRANCES [ON PHONE]: The cars are picking you up in 30 minutes! CLAIRE RUNS OFF SQUEALING, AS IF IT'S SOMEHOW A SURPRISE THAT SOME CARS ARE COMING FOR THEM TODAY
Scene 2. Ext. The House. 30 minutes later (yeah, right) CLAIRE, LUCINDA, HELENE, RAEF, ALEX, MICHAEL AND LEE McQUEEN TROOP FROM HOUSE WITH SUITCASES-ON-WHEELS, SHOT FROM BELOW FOR DRAMATIC EFFECT, AND GET INTO PEOPLE CARRIERS VOICEOVER: The candidates are meeting Sir Alan at London's Famous National Theatre Of London, the most famous theatre called that in the whole of the land, possibly Europe, possibly the world. Fuck me, it's famous. And the candidates are going there!
Scene 3. Int. London's Famous National Theatre, disguised as a concrete monstrosity, London. Day A GERMAN EXPRESSIONIST SHADOW APPROACHES DOWN ONE CONCRETE WALL. IT IS SIR ALAN. HE LOOKS LIKE HE MEANS BUSINESS. BECAUSE HE DOES. BUSINESS IS IN FACT ALL HE MEANS. HE CASTS A LONG SHADOW FOR A SMALL GNOME SIR ALAN [GRUMPILY - AFTER ALL, HE IS IN A BLADDY THEATRE] Good morning. CANDIDATES: Morning, Sir Alan. SIR ALAN: This is a theatre. It's where they put on plays or something. You could say it's where they tell stories. It isn't, but you could say that, which will segue nicely into me saying that this week's task involves telling a story, except it doesnt, it involves making a 30-second commercial for a box of tissue. MILES AWAY, IN ALDERSHOT, WHILE PEELING POTATOES IN THE BARRACKS, SIMON SAYS, "YESSS!" TO HIMSELF, AS HE IS AN EXPERT IN TISSUES AND KNOWS SOMEBODY WITH A TISSUE. UNFORTUNATELY, HE WAS FIRED A FEW WEEKS AGO AND HIS UNIQUE SKILL SET WILL NOT BE REQUIRED SIR ALAN: Right, first I'm gonna mess with your heads a bit. Alex, you join Alpha, Helene you swap with Lucinda and then swap back again. Raef, you are now Claire. Michael, I know I said you could be project leader but I am a bastard and I was lying, so Alex, you're team leader, but only after you swap back to Renaissance and then back to Alpha, which is now called Alphex, and Renaissance is called Renaefance. Three second runaround - NOW!
Scene 4. Int. Ogilvy, London's Biggest Advertising Agency Called Ogilvy, If Not The World's. Day RENAEFANCE - RAEF, MICHAEL, CLAIRE AND HELENE - ARE BRAINSTORMING IE. TRYING TO FIND OUT IF THEY HAVE A BRAIN CLAIRE: Why don't we call them I Love Tissues? SILENCE. NOBODY ELSE HAS A SINGLE IDEA CLAIRE: Brillierrrnt! Let's action that then. IN A ROOM NEXT DOOR, ALPHEX - ALEX, LUCINDA AND LEE McQUEEN - ARE ALSO TRYING TO THINK UP A NAME FOR SOME TISSUES, BUT HAVE THE INSPIRED IDEA OF THINKING UP MORE THAN ONE LEE McQUEEN [ON FIRE, MAN]: Snot. Bogeys. Catarrh. Blow. Sniff. Snort. Excavate. Pick. Wank. Spunk. If you don't put these ideas out there, man, they'll just be, like, in here, and that's not what I'm talkin' about, right? Cosynose. Nosicose. Coninone. Noseycone. Coneyisland. Novocaine. Snosycoze. Cooziwooze. Snooziwooze. How do you, like, write the sound you make when you sneeze?
Scene 5. Int. Another office at Ogilvy International Ideas Corp. Day CLAIRE AND HELENE ARE TELLING A MAN HOW TO DESIGN THE 'I LOVE TISSUES' BOX. IT LOOKS VERY GOOD. THIS IS A BAD OMEN CLAIRE: Cheryl Cole would buy these tissuerrrs! CHERYL COLE [WATCHING ASHLEY COLE GET CRAMP IN MOSCOW ON ITV1, AND CRYING AT WHAT MIGHT HAVE BEEN]: No, I fucking wouldn't.
Scene 6. Int. An identical room at Ogilvy Advertising Solutions. Day ALEX AND LEE McQUEEN HAVE SENT LUCINDA OFF TO SCOUT LOCATIONS BECAUSE THEY DON'T LIKE HER BECAUSE SHE HAS MADE THE BASIC ERROR OF NOT BEING A BLOKE. THEY ARE TELLING ANOTHER MAN HOW TO DESIGN THE 'ATISHU' BOX. IT LOOKS SHIT BEYOND BELIEF, BEING A COLLAGE OF STOCK IMAGES OF PEOPLE AND KITTENS WRAPPED IN BLANKETS LEE: That's what I'm tellin' stories about! HE CLICKS HIS FINGERS AND MOONWALKS TO EXPRESS HIS PLEASURE AT THE RESULT
Scene 7. Ext. Posh School, Surrey. Day RAEF AND MICHAEL, DRESSED, RESPECTIVELY AS SKY MASTERSON FROM GUYS AND DOLLS AND FAGIN FROM OLIVER!, ARE SCARING SOME SCHOOLCHILDREN AND THEIR TEACHER, MAKING FRAMES WITH THEIR FINGERS AND THUMBS AND LOOKING AT EVERYTHING THROUGH THE IMAGINARY VIEWFINDER RAEF: I love you, Michael. MICHAEL: I love you too, Raef. Glad we got rid of those stupid girls. RAEF: You could be the next Fellini. MICHAEL: Who's Fellini? RAEF: No idea. Anyway, we could never marry because of religious differences. You're fully Jewish and I'm Sky Masterson. SCHOOLGIRL: Miss! I'm frightened! Call the News Of The World!
Scene 8. Int. Another unidentified room, probably a studio supplied by Talkback. Day ALEX AND LEE McQUEEN ARE PRETENDING TO BE CASTING DIRECTORS, CASTING AN ADVERT WITH NO CONCEPT, NO SCRIPT AND NO STORY. LUCINDA, HOW PROMOTED FROM WASTE OF FUCKING SPACE TO RECEPTIONIST, SHOWS THROUGH A MAN AND A WOMAN AND A GIRL ALEX: Could you just 'freestyle' a bit for us? WOMAN [TO GIRL, UNCONVINCINGLY]: Have you got a cold? GIRL [TO WOMAN, UNCONVINCINGLY]: Yes. MAN [TO GIRL, UNCONVINCINGLY]: Oh dear. ALEX'S MOUTH EXITS, STAGE LEFT. THEY ARE GOING TO LOSE. THEY ARE GOING TO LOSE SOOOOO BADLY LUCINDA [TO CAMERA]: The box is crap. The design is crap. The tissues are crap. Alex is crap. Lee is crap. And I am about to invent a phrase: bog-average. [WORKING UP A HEAD OF STEAM] I am a woman, I know all about tissues. I wear this stupid beret because it is good for keeping tissues in! Don't they understand? We're going to lose. We're going to lose! Oh my God! I miss my horse.
Scene 9. Int. Posh School in Surrey. Day SIAN LLOYD THE WEATHERGIRL AND EX-GIRLFRIEND OF LEMBIT OPIK MP ARRIVES. MICHAEL AND RAEF ARE AS EXCITED AS SCHOOLGIRLS. THEY ADJUST THEIR CRAVATS SIAN: Hello! Where's the weather map, then? RAEF: Er no, it's not weather-themed. We chose you because you're mumsy. SIAN: But I am not a mum. I am childless. RAEF: What I mean is, we've heard of you. SIAN: Are you a couple? BOTH: Yes. SIAN: Shame, I'm looking for a boyfriend. Do you know anyone single with a wonky mouth?
Scene 10. Ext. Posh School, driveway. Day SOMEBODY HAS SET UP THE CAMERAS AND LIGHTS AND EVERYTHING FOR FELLINI 1 AND FELLINI 2. ALL THEY HAVE TO DO IS SHOUT 'ACTION' AND LEAVE IT TO TOP ACTRESS AND MUM SIAN LLOYD TO FILL IN THE BLANKS FELLINI 1: Action! FELLINI 2: Well done. SIAN [UNABLE TO DISGUISE HATRED OF KIDS]: You've got yogurt on your nose, you little twat, come here! SIAN WIPES YOGURT ROUGHLY FROM SCHOOLBOY'S NOSE. FELLINI 2 NOW HAS A SEMI. SIAN THROWS THE BOX OF 'I LOVE TISSUES' AT THE CAMERA WHILE CALLING HER AGENT ON HER MOBILE: THE PACK SHOT!
Scene 11. Int. A house, personally scouted by Lucinda. Day ALEX AND LEE McQUEEN DIRECT THE MAN, THE WOMAN AND THE GIRL IN A FRONT ROOM. LUCINDA SWEEPS UP IN ANOTHER ROOM WOMAN [TO GIRL, UNCONVINCINGLY]: Have you got a cold? GIRL [TO WOMAN, UNCONVINCINGLY]: Yes. MAN [TO GIRL, UNCONVINCINGLY]: Oh dear. Good thing these antibacterial tissues are antibacterial and have antibacterial properties. ALEX [THINKS]: Fuck me, we've lost. Better start working up an eel-like strategy for slithering out of being fired again, even though it's all my fault. Maybe I can blame it on Lucinda's beret. Or her careless lack of male sexual organs.
Scene 12. Int. Edit suite. Night RAEF AND MICHAEL HAVE BEEN HARD AT IT FOR FOUR HOURS. CLAIRE AND HELENE, WHO HAVE GOT A MAN TO MAKE THEM A PRINT AD, ENTER GINGERLY CLAIRE: Have you fineeeershed? RAEF: Yup. We've just got a few more 'cuts' to make in order to get it down to 30 seconds. RAEF WINKS AT MICHAEL AS IF TO SAY, HA HA, I'VE USED A TECHNICAL EDITING TERM, THE STUPID GIRLS WON'T UNDERSTAND, BUT YOU DO; MICHAEL WINKS BACK CLAIRE: How long is uuuuuuurrt? MICHAEL: Four hours and 32 minutes. But we're just about to lose the pack shot. CLAIRE [TO CAMERA]: I wouldn't show this film to my familuuuuuy, let alone one of the most powerful corporations in the whole wide wuuuurld. I wouldn't show it to my dog, and I don't even have a dog, as I'm too driven. HELENE ROLLS HER EYES. IT'S WHAT SHE NOW DOES
Scene 13. Anonymous room at Ogilvy. Next Day LEE McQUEEN IS PRACTISING HIS PITCH, WITH JUST SECONDS TO GO, WHILE ALEX AND LUCINDA SHOUT INTO HIS EAR LEE McQUEEN: This is not what I'm talkin' about! What I fink we need to do is regroup, repurpose, go forward and draw a line under this fing, or else we won't be able to move forward on it.
Scene 14. Anonymous room at Ogilvy. Day 500 PEOPLE FROM OGILVY CORPS ARE ASSEMBLED, ALONG WITH NICK AND MARGARET AND SIR ALAN FOR THE PITCH. RENAEFANCE LINE UP CLAIRE: We were looking to place our tissues in a unique gap in the tissue market: the one that was crying out, demographically, for a box of tissues for people who love their tissues, specifically. That's why we did this and this and this. THEY POINT AT THEIR PRINT AD, IN WHICH TWO SCHOOLCHILDREN ARE GETTING OFF WITH EACH OTHER ON A BENCH, ACCOMPANIED BY A TINY PHOTO OF THE 'I LOVE MY TISSUES' BOX AND THE STRAPLINE: 'IT'S NOT ABOUT TISSUES.' THEY SHOW THEIR AD, WHICH HAS NOW BEEN CUT DOWN TO 157 MINUTES, WHICH IS ONE MINUTE SHORTER THAN THERE WILL BE BLOOD. DURING THE FILM, OGILVY TOP BRASS THROW THEMSELVES OUT OF THE WINDOW. MICHAEL AND RAEF ARE SO PRIAPIC ABOUT THEIR EPIC TALENTS THEY HAVE TO HOLD CLIPBOARDS OVER THEIR LAPS
Scene 15. Int. Same anonymous room at Ogilvy (how do the people who work there actually know if they're in the right room at any time?). Day ALPHEX LINE UP FOR THEIR PITCH. LEE McQUEEN SHUFFLES ENDLESS SHEETS OF A4, COUGHING, TOUCHING FACE AND BLOWING NOSE LEE McQUEEN: Fank you for coming. Unaccustomed as I am to public speaking, or just speaking in English, I'd just like to congratulate the bride and groom ... no, wrong speech ... [SHUFFLES MORE PAPER] ... Atishu is a tissue ... ur, hurrgh hurrgh ... that targets the female genre, because the female genre is a unique genre in the world of genres and ... [SHUFFLES LAST SHEET OF PAPER TO TOP] Fank you very much for watchin' and listenin', ladies and gentlemen. THEY FILE OUT WITHOUT SHOWING THEIR PRINT AD OR FILM. THEY ARE PELTED WITH FRUIT AND BOTTLES OF URINE AS THEY RUN FROM THE BUILDING. A HUGE OMEN-STYLE BLACK STREAK NOW ACCOMPANIES EACH OF THE THREE TEAM-MEMBERS, WHO ARE GOING TO LOSE, THEY JUST KNOW IT, AND SO DO WE
Scene 16. Int. TV studio dressed to look like Frances' office. Day THE PRODUCERS HAVE PINNED A SIGN SAYING 'LOSERS' TO ALEX, LUCINDA AND LEE McQUEEN. RAEF, MICHAEL, CLAIRE AND HELENE ARE BATHED IN THE GLOW OF SUCCESS. MICHAEL HAS PUT HIS FAGIN COSTUME BACK ON TO SCORE EXTRA ETHNIC POINTS WITH SIR ALAN, WHO WAS A PICKPOCKET HIMSELF 40 YEARS AGO ACTRESS: Sir Alan will see you now. RENAEFANCE MARCH THROUGH THE DOOR INTO THE BOARDROOM. ALPHEX CRAWL IN ON ALL FOURS
Scene 17. Int. TV studio dressed to look like a boardroom. Day RENAEFANCE OPEN A BOTTLE OF CHAMPAGNE AND HAND IT AROUND. ALPHEX HIDE UNDER THE DESK WITH JUST THE TOPS OF THEIR HEADS POKING ABOVE IT, AS SIR ALAN ENTERS SIR ALAN: Right! You lot [POINT TO RENAEFANCE] were bladdy brilliant. Claire, you did a brilliant pitch, without notes. Your film is already nominated for an Oscar. You shower [POINTS UNDER DESK TO ALPHEX] were shit. You made a horrible ad for a horrible product. But you put a pack shock in and you've won. ENTIRE 7.2 MILLION-STRONG BBC1 VIEWING AUDIENCE GASPS AS ONE. PENALTY SHOOT-OUT IN MOSCOW HALTED AS MAN IN CROWD WHO'S BEEN TEXTED PASSES THE NEWS ON AND IT REACHES CHELSEA CAPTAIN JOHN TERRY. HE'S SO SHOCKED THAT ALPHEX HAVE WON HE MUFFS HIS SHOT, GIVING THE CHAMPIONSHIP TO MAN UNITED, WHO REALLY WEREN'T THE BETTER TEAM ALEX: Can I just say in my defence, Sir Alan, that Lucinda was a woman and I promise to give you 111% if you give me one last chance to prove myself to you, Sir Alan, that I am the man for the job, and did I mention that I'm working class, and that Lucinda rides a horse? SIR ALAN: You've bladdy won. Now go off and buy some clothes. You lot [POINTS TO RENAEFANCE, UNABLE TO SPEAK], you'd better go and sit in that downmarket cafe round the corner from the studios and start the recriminations. THEIR CHAMPAGNE ACTUALLY GOES FLAT BEFORE OUR VERY EYES
Scene 18. Int. TV studio dressed to look like a boardroom. Day SIR ALAN MUTTERS WITH NICK AND MARGARET SIR ALAN: Blah blah ... bladdy Cheeky Girls ... blah blah ... NICK: Blah blah ... Who loves tissues? Not me, and I'm a Catholic ... blah blah ... MARGARET: I've got a slightly shorter skirt on this week, did you notice? Blah blah ... RECTOR OF EDINBURGH UNIVERSITY: Fucking cow.
Scene 19. Int. Downmarket cafe (ie. doesn't serve soya milk). Day THEY SHARE A SKINNY, DISCONSOLATE LATTE WITHOUT SOYA MILK RAEF: When we get back in there, I'm proud to say, in advance, that there will be no back-stabbing and no power play and no divide and rule. We're unified. We're a team. We lost this as a team, and if we stay team-like, we can emerge from this with dignity and smoking jackets. All for one, and one for all. HE HOLDS HIS HAND UP FOR A HIGH FIVE. CLAIRE AND HELENE JUST LOOK AT HIM. MICHAEL LOOKS AT THE FLOOR, HIS FACE REMINISCENT OF MICHAEL CORLEONE'S WHEN HE KNOWS HE MUST HAVE HIS BROTHER FREDO KILLED IN THE ROWING BOAT
Scene 20. TV studio dressed to look like a boardroom. Day SIR ALAN POINTS AT RENAEFANCE SIR ALAN: So, you were bladdy brilliant. Who's fault was it? MICHAEL: I can honestly say, with my hand on my Jewish heart, that everything that was brilliant about what we did when we lost was down to me, 100%. RAEF: You bounder! You cad! MICHAEL: I'm not putting down what you did, I'm just saying I won the task, on my own, single-handedly, even though we lost. RAEF: I can't believe I'm hearing this. Sir, I challenge you to a duel. Pistols or swords? SIR ALAN: Raef- who are you gonna bring back in with you? RAEF: My ex-boyfriend and Claire, because you have hinted that you don't approve of a woman who talks too much and I'm looking to save my own perfect skin here. SIR ALAN: Get out, and get back in. RAEF, MICHAEL AND CLAIRE GET UP, TURN AROUND, AND SIT BACK DOWN. HELENE LEAVES, ALMOST TRIPPING OVER ALEX'S MOUTH, WHICH HE LEFT THERE EARLIER CLAIRE: Can I just say, in my defurrrnce ... SIR ALAN [LOSING RAG]: Shaddap, you bladdy back-fence fishwife foghorn - you talk too much. You're like this, giving it all that, giving it all the other, a right motorouth, air raid siren, yack, yack, yackity-yack, endless talk, rabbit, rabbit, rabbit-rabbit-rabbit-rabbit-bunny-rabbit, I need bladdy earplugs to drown out your incessant jabbering! CLAIRE SITS IN SILENCE, CONTEMPLATING HER MOLES SIR ALAN: Leave it out, will you, Claire? I'm getting some right old earache here! [TO MICHAEL, NOW DRESSED A RABBI] What have you got to say for yourself, my boy? MICHAEL: If it was good, I did it, if it was bad, one of those two did it. Happy Hanukkah. SIR ALAN: Michael, I should have fired you last week but I can see some of myself in you, for I too was a twat 40 years ago. Claire, if only to shut you up I'm going to offer you a reprive. CLAIRE GOES TO OPEN MOUTH SIR ALAN: Shat up, for one blessed minute, will you! [TO RAEF'S BUTLER, WHO HAS STEPPED IN TO TAKE THE PUNISHMENT FOR HIS MASTER] For no good reason, y'fired. RAEF'S BUTLER FALLS ON HIS CEREMONIAL SWORD. RAEF HAS ALREADY BEEN HELICOPTERED BACK TO HIS ESTATE
It's no big news that Woody Allen has lost his mojo. I say this with all due respect. I pretty much adore every film he made between 1969 and 1994 (I even have time for Another Woman, September and Shadows and Fog). But after Bullets Over Broadway, even the most ardent fan of his New York stories had to admit things started to slide, with a little ray of hope that all might not be lost in Sweet and Lowdown. The fact that Allen, admirably, makes a film a year only serves to map the graph of his decline more vividly. Now we're at a stage where some of his films can't even find a distributor in this country. (His last film, Scoop, didn't even come out here, despite the fact that it was his second set in London - mind you, his first was the abominable Match Point, so I was glad not to see it.) Anyway, the third of his Woody Went on Holiday to London and All We Got Were These Three Lousy Films trilogy, Cassandra's Dream, is released on Friday, and I'm afraid I have seen it.
It has been memorably preceded by the Guardian's Simon Hattenstone actually telling co-star Ewan McGregor in an interview that he didn't like it. (This kind of interview is so rare in the asphyxiatingly over-choreographed world of film PR, I believe it actually caused quite a ripple in Wardour Street.) Then the same newspaper, as if on a mission, ran a Cannes piece by Joe Queenan blaming Europe for continuing to fund Allen's films when his own country stopped doing so years ago. (It's a funny read, if a little over-the-top to order.) So, here we go again: a nation does the opposite of wait with bated breath for the release of Cassandra's Dream, which is as flat and dull as its title is grand and portentous. Hattenstone doesn't blame McGregor, who has a crack at a 1960s Cockney accent that's almost passable in an utterly fictional sort of way - it's the script that's at fault: ploddy, arrhythmic, awkward, totally unlike the sound that comes out of English mouths. That and Allen's fabled preference for one or two takes per scene: very exhilerating for the actors who come to worship at the bespectacled shrine of Woody, but less edifying for the rest of us when characters stumble over dialogue in a way that's entirely different to the verite of improvised, naturalistic delivery. (In one scene, The Bill's John Benfield, a very decent actor, physically stumbles as he walks down the step into what is supposed to be his kitchen, in his family house. A more careful director would have retaken the scene, but not Woody Allen, who's busy thinking about his next film.) Incidentally, Colin Farrell - whom I was starting to like again after In Bruges - plays McGregor's mechanic brother with an Australian accent. (Did the director spot this and put him in for some extra voice coaching? He did not.)
It's not a comedy, I don't think. It's hard to tell. I think it's supposed to be a dark psychodrama asking how far you'd go to protect your family, with a bit of Greek tragedy shovelled on top, but it's so stagey and stilted, it's impossible to get inside a single character's mind. Even Sally Hawkins, who brings a rare energy to the part of Farrell's girlfriend, is stuck with dialogue like, "I'm worried about Terry. It's his mental health." I'm afraid I scribbled down some other offending snatches of dialogue, which for full, skull-cracking effect you'll have to imagine coming out of English mouths - or in McGregor and Farrell's case, Scottish and Irish playing English:
McGregor [to actress he's just been to a fringe theatre to see]: "I'm not an experienced playgoer." Farrell [in reference to his status as a gambler]: "I'm just a two-bit player!" HayleyAtwell [as the actress]: "Beyond your cool exterior I sense you're bluffing." McGregor: "It's been a day of shattered hopes."
Who speaks like this? The dialogue in Allen's best films, although clever and sometimes "written", always seemed to flow so naturally from his characters' mouths. Why wasn't anyone brave enough to inform Woody that ordinary "working class" Londoners don't say "apartment", "movie industry" or "studio heads." (I know these characters were "working class" because they lived in houses with dull, 1970s wallpaper and bad, dowdy furniture, just like real "working class" people.) We'll forgive him the shot with Tower Bridge in the background, as David Cronenberg did the same in Eastern Promises, but a couple don't get up in a London pub and slow-dance to what's on the jukebox during the day. They don't smoke at the table in Claridge's and the Connaught either, not while people at the table are actually eating. I know the film was shot before the smoking ban, but surely it must have felt wrong when they were doing it.
It may seem as if I am taking pleasure in tearing this film apart. I'm not. I think it's desperately sad.
At the request of Oldnathan in the thread below, I am drawing your attention to Edwyn Collins: Home Again, the unmissable documentary made by BBC Scotland about the ongoing recovery of the Scottish genius after his double brain haemorrhage and MRSA complications in 2005. I saw it on BBC4 but it was repeated on BBC2 last night and is thus - for those of you with access - up on the iPlayer for the next six days. It's really worth seeing. I'm tempted to reprint Oldnathan's review in full:
"I'm not prone to over-sentimentality. In fact I'm a rather cynical old bugger who has to resist the temptation to tear up those make shift flower shrines to lost loved ones, left by people who can only grieve in public. But I spent most of the programme trying to stop myself from blubbing like a baby. I knew he'd been ill. Very, very ill it turns out. The sight of the once fey, cocky, beautiful young thing shuffling around with the aid of his wife, unable to speak properly, unable to read and worst of all unable to play guitar was heartbreaking. Thankfully we were shown definite signs of his recovery by the end of the programme. To the point where he even managed to play a live concert. But even after that, the sight of him struggling to get down the multitude of craggy steps to his favourite beach back in Scotland, and then him just sat there with his incredibly supportive wife and son, were almost unbearable. I loved the fact that his wife wasn’t interested in being portrayed as a saint and you knew when they said they rowed every day they really meant it but what a wonderfully un-showy woman she is. Truly moving."
I second this emotion. I've been lucky enough to meet Edwyn on many occasions, professionally, down the years. I first bumped int him in 1990 in Hamburg, when he turned up to guest onstage with his pal Roddy Frame around the time of Good Morning, Britain*. (Mick Jones turned up, too, but he wasn't half as friendly.) We had an uproarious night, with he and Roddy doing an improv comedy routine back at the hotel that was pure Vic and Bob. I wish I'd kept the tape. (You never do keep the tapes.) I interviewed him at length for Q when Gorgeous George came out, in 1994, meeting him in a Hampstead cafe. And he was kind enough - as was Roddy - to appear as a musical guest on the Radio 2 series of Lloyd Cole Knew My Father, where Stuart and I basically pulled favours. And this was after he'd had the big hit and the shampoo ad and was enjoying his commercial renaissance. He appeared on 6 Music often, and had been on Roundtable when I used to host it, two days before his first haemorrhage: on fine form, naturally, but complaining of nausea he'd experienced in the week, which he put down to food poisoning. Little did any of us know.
This film shows what a battler he is. But it's not sentimental, because neither are he and his wife Grace.
*I have photographic evidence of this night somewhere. Bear with me.
I've just had an email passed on to me from a Radio Times reader about a short piece I wrote on homosexuality in Hollywood for the magazine the other week. Radio Times readers do tend to write, and often in pen on actual notepaper, sometimes from The Vicarage, and it's nice to engage. Anyway, looking up my original piece, I realised that all my writings for RT appear automatically as a blog on the magazine's website. They've even knocked me up a fancy celluloid-based logo! Scrolling down, it's clear that either nobody has a single comment to add to anything I've written (which is entirely conceivable - these are not controversial writings), or that nobody actually reads them (equally conceivable). Anyway, for the record, they're all here.
This isn't one of them (it's an image I grabbed from YouTube), but yesterday in the garden I was thrilled to see three baby goldfinches being taught the ways of the bird feeder by their dad. They were little more than balls of fluff, but the yellow and black markings on their stubby little wings were unmistakable. I wonder if perhaps it was their first trip out as a family? (I have never really been able to take a decent picture of any of the birds that have visited my feeders down the years. I expect you need to have a camera set up, ready, and bags of patience. Or just be incredibly lucky. But taking photos through glass never works, and you can hardly open a window or patio door and expect your feathered brethren to hang around to pose. Anyway, as ever with birds, it was a privilege enough just to see them.) If you want to see the YouTube film of a lady hand-feeding and stroking this baby goldfinch, presumably in America, it's here.
I may not be able to blog quite so much for the next couple of weeks as I am writing an episode of Not Going Out, for series three, which is in itself pretty exciting. Bear with me.
We considered not calling it Podcast Number 13 as thirteen is unlucky, but we are not slaves to superstition. Whether it is actually unlucky or not is open to discussion. It's certainly the longest, and unique in that I had two sips of caffeine-based coffee while recording it and became unpredictable. (Richard is holding a bottle of wine in the photograph to hint that I may have been drunk on-air, but the eagle-eyed will spot that the bottle is unopened.) Maybe it's the humid weather. Anyway, unless the gods of superstition make it disappear, the podcast will be available to download from iTunes and the usual place. And then you can find out all about Lion Man.
I know it's, like, old news already, but did anyone else see Madonna at Radio One's Big Weekend at the weekend? (It was shown on BBC3 and is on the iPlayer for two more days.) She closed the first night of the festival in Mote Park in Kent, doing a gig in what has been described as the biggest tent in the world. (Actually it wasn't a Madonna gig, it was a carefully choreographed leg of her 40-minute, six-song Hard Candy Promo Tour, organised by her new sponsors, Live Nation, which rolled out across the world thus: New York, Paris, Maidstone. I expect the two "fucks" she said were scripted too.) Did anybody else find the whole thing a bit tragic? A bit creepy? A bit knackered?
The deal seemed to be: sing live for the verse and then allow the backing tapes to take over for the chorus. Call me an old purist, but does this not seem a bit cynical? Especially the Promo Tour aspect. The thousands gathered in the tent - most of them well over Radio 1's target age-group and, hmmm, mostly male - didn't seem to care. But isn't it time to slow down, get some dignity and stop doing the desperate porn poses (see: Hard Candy album sleeve below)? What's wrong with being 50? Why fight it? And stop doing that with the electric guitar. What must your kids think?
In case you clicked onto the main podcast page on iTunes and noticed this big ad for the Collings & Herrin Podcasts, coming up as bold as you like in the left hand panel just after Iain Lee Irreverent Chat and just before Unsigned Bands With Tom Ravenscroft In Association With Paul Smith Suits, we haven't sold out. This is something iTunes do off their own bat. It's really nice that someone has done it for us, but we don't know why, or whom. What I do know is that it clearly gave us a little leg-up today, as we've been languishing at the bottom of the Top 30 in the main charts of late (thanks, Danny Wallace and Ann Summers), and we rose back up into the more visible Top 25 this morning - and back up nearer the Top 10 in comedy, where we belong. It's a good job we're not obsessed by it.
I wanted Michael to go soooooo much this week, and I truly believed, with the wedding task, I would have my wish. He seemed to have been set up in the editing suite for a fall and yet, and yet, this is The Apprentice, and it ain't over until it's over. Good Lord, the weasely, sad-eyed little prick actually said, in all seriousness (because every little thing he does is in all seriousness) that Central London is closer to North London than South London. I'm sure he meant something entirely logical and helpful, but it sounded to me like the inner workings of an imbecile with doe eyes. Off the two teams went to the wedding exhibition in deepest Birmingham, where the locals are said to be friendly but stupid, but at least there's less confusion over their religious beliefs. ("These people are dum-dums," concluded Michael, after a hard day's not-selling-any-cake. "They don't know what they're doing." Yes they do, Michael, they're walking smartly away from whatever it is you're trying to sell to them.) Did anyone else feel a bit strange when it became apparent in St Bartholomew's Church just how few of the candidates are left, all of a sudden? Two neat teams of four, and that's it. They all get a chair in the boardroom! The end is too bladdy nigh for me.
So, let me try and get this right: Lucinda led the team we're calling Lucalpha, which was her, Raef, Lee McQueen and Claire; and Helene led the team we're calling Helaissance, which was her, Michael, Sara and Alex. I'm not saying Helaissance were useless, but Alex shone from their ranks. In other words, I am saying they were useless. (He'd had a haircut, too, which surely isn't in the rules, is it?) Each team had to pick one wedding dress and one other "wedding service" (no, not that kind of service) to flog at the NEC to dum-dums. We learned a lot about gender, as this was seen as a girls' task, hence the girls declaring, "I'm a girl," at every opportunity. Helene, whose leadership qualities mainly comprise her being the team-member you'd have most trouble knocking over with a jeep, made a fatal mistake early on, despite being "a girl", which was to split up her already compact team into smaller teams and allow each mini-team, or sub-team, to see half of the wedding dresses; thus, the decision was made by batphone and with no rhyme or reason. They chose the mid-price dresses which came in Jordan and Jodie Marsh, and some stupidly expensive cake from Putney (they can afford expensive cake in Putney). So much for being "girls". Lucalpha, led by a confident Lucinda, nabbed the two-and-a-half-grand Ian Stuart creations - a designer with no surname - which served the essential dramatic purpose of not selling all day and then only selling minutes before the takings were taken away in little cash tins by Nick and Margaret. Phew! Meanwhile, Lee McQueen set about selling be-sloganned knickers and flip-flops to giggling ladies. He also tried to sell them something called a "fong" by pretending they weren't as fat as he knew they were. (Let's be honest, he was brilliant. Although he clawed back some comedy points during his team's reward: three edits in a "top" health spa called Energy Factory or something, during which he indulged in some weird Eastern rituals in the "Fire Zone" - that's what he's chantin' about!)
Alex correctly noted that telesales is not the same as selling face-to-face, hence Michael's utter telefailure at it. "I'm just worried you're going to regret this if you don't do it," he said to a bride-to-be who sensibly asked her groom-to-be if she should buy a "high end" perspex tray of cup cakes instead of what's known as a "wedding cake" for her "wedding", and her groom-to-be specified the latter. "You're going to pay two hundred quid more for a traditional cake and it's going to look dull," he said. "I mean, this is your bloody wedding! God above!" he continued, a good half-Jewish boy you'll recall from his fictional CV - then he went for the kill: "GO ON!" (This sort of technique goes like a bomb on the phone, apparently.) Sara, who it turns out is a barrister - unless they meant she works in a coffee shop as a barista, although I doubt she has the personality for that - was less irritating than Michael but just as shit at selling cake. All she could do was bang on about the "taste". Still, at least it wasn't Raef who was selling - he'd shown his true colours early on: "I think we need to remember that those people in a Size 16-32 dress (he meant between a size 16 and a size 32, but he obviously gets his butler to buy dresses for his girlfriends), are a size 16-and-32 (ditto) for a reason - they love cake." He was clearly cast as the light relief this week: first, he was seen running at the beginning as if in a 1940s public information film - that's not a 19-40 public information film - and then he had to don the statutory bear suit. (Wasn't someone in an animal suit at a zoo last year?) He's going to make it into the final three, isn't he? Along with Claire, who was as good as carried aloft at shoulder-height by Margaret and Sir Alan and paraded through the streets under a stream of ticker tape. And Lee McQueen. Alex, although he made three-quarters of his team's sales and went a bit red when Sir Alan sent him away, will go out next week, I predict. That will wipe the smile off his face that he's been desperately trying to wipe off himself, from the inside.
Sir Alan eventually fired Sara - fair enough, she was using up valuable oxygen. ("The taste is not an issue, is it? The taste? You like the taste, don't you? Of course you do - it's the taste!") He theatrically almost fired Michael as well, sick of his Bambi-eyed admissions of guilt and culpability, but Michael had one last teletrick up his telesleeve: crawling on his belly and begging, proving himself devoid of self-respect or dignity. He was like the man on the Titanic who wrapped a shawl around him and stepped into the lifeboat with the women and children. Worse than that. (GO ON!) In the end, though, it was a taxi for Sara, who had her head pushed in the metaphorical bladdy cake for being an "air-raid siren" apparently, although I doubt many people would take to their Anderson shelters if Sara's voice rang out through the PA system of wartorn London during the Blitz. "Taaaaa-aaaa-aaaaaa-a-aaa-aaaste!"
Let us leave Lucalpha at the spa in their comedy robes, sipping tea which, Claire concluded, "tastes like leaves."
I have started buying the Big Issue every week. Although I have supported it from a safe distance for years, approving of the idea but rarely getting involved in an actual street transaction, I have been buying it on a weekly basis since I moved in to my new office in a new area of London, and because the vendor whom I now pass every morning is so happy. He is a registered vendor, thus homeless, and yet he finds sufficient optimism and generosity of spirit to smile and offer a merry greeting to everyone who passes him. And most do pass him. (I hope at least they smile as they pass him.) I have been feeling a bit grumpy of late and yet I have a house to live in, and an office to work in, and I have yet to sell my work on the pavement. (My grandparents, bless them, always used to say when I first moved down to London that I could always set up an easel and draw caricatures of the tourists in the West End. I told them that when that day came, my career would be over and I'd be on the next train back to Northampton - not realising of course that selling your caricatures via a design agency to corporate clients was no more high-minded than sitting down and doing them for tourists in Leicester Square. In fact, I was once very close to being commissioned by Orangina to draw caricatures to order of pub landlords who agreed to stock the then-new orange drink in their pubs. How ironic that would have been.)
I don't think I am a great and noble philanthropist for giving two quid to a homeless man once a week, by the way, I mention it because I am in awe of my vendor's seemingly unbreakable joie de vivre. He shook my hand yesterday when I bought the new Issue, and he made me do a high-five today even though I wasn't buying one. He recognises me, which shows great attention to customer service, and is great as it means he offers a greeting rather than trying to sell me a copy of the magazine which I already own. We have a workable relationship. (In fact, he says, "Hello, Boss!", which is confusing, as we are both self-employed and the boss only of ourselves.) I hope this doesn't sound too dismissive, but the magazine itself is not important. It is a token - by which I do not belittle the work put into producing it every week. It is a very important token. A few weeks ago the Big Issue had a very interesting article about the perils of super-strength lager, which isn't something you'd read in other magazines and I was grateful to read it; otherwise I'm content to flick through the bulk of it, which is, understandably, filled with the usual arts-based, PR-campaign content that you can get anywhere else. I like the concept of the Big Issue. It costs 70p per copy for the vendors, who sell it for £1.50 and keep the change (I always give my new friend £2, as it seems petty to ask him for change, and the difference between 80p profit and £1.30 is marked when you're dealing in those sorts of margins).
This is not an advert for the Big Issue. You may ignore it, as I did for years, or you can give money to individual homeless people, but at least with accredited vendors you know they're actually homeless and not secretly living in a castle with a moat and servants, while they take their heroin. We live in a cruel world. There's an argument that says we shouldn't have to have a nice magazine put between us and the homelessness problem, and another argument (look at me being a goody-two-shoes and weighing up all the arguments!) that says why produce a magazine that nobody needs and waste all that energy and paper. But hey, people chuck free newspapers on the floor every day, but if you've paid for a thing, you are more likely to dispose of it carefully.
Even though, scandalously, I am not listed anywhere, I am the secret guest on Phil Hammond's The Music Group on Radio 4 this lunchtime, 1.30pm - recorded on Friday in Brighton. (This is what happens when you're a late booking. I'm not proud. In fact, I'm still enormously flattered to be asked onto this type of show.) Just in case you're by a radio, I can say that it was a very jolly programme to be on with Polly Toynbee and Zoe Ball, and to play The Cure's One Hundred Years to a theatreful of Radio 4 listeners was a serious milestone for my broadcasting career. (You can always Listen Again.) As you were.
The people have spoken. While the groundswell of antipathy towards 6 Music mid-morning host George Lamb seems to grow by the day, support grows exponentially. Last night he won a new Sony Award for "Rising Star", beating Kelly Osborne (Radio 1), Rob Ellis (Galaxy), Hywel and Jamie (Rock FM) and Amy Jones (Kerrang). This was a "people's choice" award, voted for online - unlike the major awards, which are voted for by committee - so there's no way round it: more people registered a vote for Larry Lamb's boy than the other candidates. What does it all mean? That the most vocal opponents of his noisy, matey, laddish presenting style are actually a minority? That, actually, he's popular among those who don't theatrically re-tune their DAB when he's broadcasting between 10am and 1pm every weekday? Critic and author Lynsey Hanley has written about her distaste for him in both the New Statesman (where she was briefly radio critic) and now Word. By law, every article about 6 Music in the press mentions the howl of protest Lamb's very existence engenders. Webpages like this one have been set up to pillory him. If you were an alien picking up signals from outer space you'd be forgiven for thinking that George Lamb was as hated as Robert Mugabe or Josef Fritzl or Tony Blair - the 6 Music message boards, and others, are still awash with what seems like self-pollinating but deeply entrenched protest, there's a Facebook page, so I understand, and this oft-linked-to online petition (2,979 signatures thus far). And just because he keeps shouting "Shabba!"
Having proudly served on 6 Music for five years, I can certainly vouch for the passion of its listeners, and especially those that lurk around its message boards. Many have been listening since day one and feel an ownership of the station; others are newer but feel the same proprietorial sense of entitlement: 6 Music is their station, and if they don't like a decision relating to its direction, they'll say so. (For BBC-style balance, I should point out that there is a counter online petition urging controller Lesley Douglas to keep Lamb on air - current tally: 2,144 signatures.) Other national BBC radio stations were allowed to grow an audience, find their feet and make mistakes before the advent of email and message boards. Not so, 6 Music, which from the start has offered interactivity as a selling point and thus, can never complain when the listeners use these very channels to have a pop. (I had instances of instant email abuse while on-air, which is most disconcerting, although I have to say, 97% of the immediate feedback was polite and positive.) The fact is, Lamb's style has rubbed up a lot of people the wrong way, and when your listening figures are in the hundreds of thousands rather than the millions, this matters. What matters more, however, is publicity - I mean all publicity - and he's easily the most talked-about DJ on the network. A Sony win for 6 Music will be sweet music indeed, as the station has been ill-served over the six years of its existence by the juries: it's never won Best Digital Station, and only Marc Riley, Steve Lamacq and the Freak Zone have won a Silver (ie. placed second out of five). Having had to go public and defend Lamb, Lesley Douglas will feel vindicated this morning.
There's a serious point here - it's not just bashing the new kid. Those that reject Lamb say he doesn't care enough about the music he plays, and that his taking over from Gideon Coe (much-loved founding father and renowned music lover) was endemic of a broader move away from "male" attitudes to music appreciation and towards "female" attitudes. I use those speechmarks advisedly, as this assumption rubbed plenty of female listeners up the wrong way. It's dangerous ground to generalise, demographically, about gender. You might as well say women don't like comedy, or that only men like football. I was personally repelled by the gait of the George Lamb TV ad, in which he told someone not to put pineapple on a pizza, but I think we can blame this on the people who wrote the ad, rather than on George himself. They picked up on certain elements on a presenter's on-air personality and ran with them. (We could even blame it on me - I don't think he's aimed at me.)
I know Mike, who produces George's show (he's guitarist and singer in the 6 Music band, and has worked at 6 since the beginning - he also produced me when I deputised for George in the old night-time slot), and I'm pleased for him. It can't be easy producing a show that "everybody" hates (ie. 2,979 people who don't listen to it), but this award will make it easier. Will it shut everybody up who keeps banging on about George Lamb? No, it will inflame them even further. Although I'm no longer contracted by 6 Music - and still slightly aggrieved by the way my tenure there ended - I am on the subs' bench, so don't expect me to weigh in to this debate. In any case, I can't: I have only listened to George Lamb in the mid-morning slot twice, once on his first day, and for five minutes of his understandably priapic post-Sony show this morning. Then the iPlayer packed up. It's too noisy for me, that's all I'll say. He's clearly more suited to Radio 1, and I expect that's where he's headed, if not Radio 2, where most accredited 6 Music presenters end up. I don't feel that any radio station is aimed at me. I find the bulk of indie guitar music that fills the airwaves today sludgy and uninspiring, which is why I listen to Smooth FM.
I'm happy to host a debate on the subject of George Lamb here though.
Caught up with the first blockbuster of the season yesterday, Iron Man. All the trailers beforehand were for forthcoming blockbusters - Indiana Jones, Dark Knight, Prince Caspian, etc. - and for whatever reason, it brought out the counter-snob in me. It's too easy to sneer at popcorn movies, these expensive, index-linked, machine-tooled, noisy, high-concept, low-subtlety machines for entertaining. Nobody would wish, Morgan Spurlock style, to exist exclusively on a diet of superheroes, natural disasters and CGI, but they serve a purpose. For all their modern posturing - the ironic dialogue, the offbeat casting choices, the nod, the wink, the innuendo - these are old fashioned pictures; pure escapism. And they do not ignore the outside world, either.
Iron Man, another Marvel comics adaptation (this time produced exclusively by Marvel), could easily be written off as a run-of-the-mill, by-numbers 3D paint job. In the first act, we meet playboy inventor-cum-weapons-manufacturer Tony Stark (Robert Downey Jr., either relishing the role, or simply relishing still being a working actor in Hollywood), kidnapped by non-specific desert fighters in Afghanistan and forced to build them a rocket in a cave. He tricks them and builds a big old Iron Man suit instead and blasts his way out of there. In act two, he sees the light, changes his ways, becomes one of the good guys, builds a much better Iron Man suit in his underground "shop" and falls foul of the stockholders while attempting to win the war on terror. The geopolitical upgrade is successful enough - the original 1960s strip saw Stark kidnapped by the Viet Cong - and the casting of Downey Jr is a masterstroke. Unlike, say, Ben Affleck in Daredevil, he does not seem in any way embarrassed by the superhero suit. Though his persona is based on flippancy and smirking, this suits Tony Stark, and when he's locked inside the armour, you need someone with the spare personality of Downey Jr to break through the gold-titanium alloy. This, in conversation with his personal computer Jarvis, deftly voiced by an uncredited Paul Bettany, he does well. Jeff Bridges bulges out of his role as boardroom nemesis Obadiah in the same way that his fat neck bulges out of his suit: another key casting decision. Even Gwyneth Paltrow makes something out of her role as the dowdy PA, bringing a lot of meaningful looks to bear. (Apparently director Jon Favreau - yes, the bloke from Swingers - encouraged improvisation among his actors. If so, I think it shows, and such touches of humanity are just what you need around this much CGI and pomp.)
It's not one of the greatest films ever made - the climactic battle is not the best sequence in the film, which can't be right, surely (see also: Spider-Man 3), and yes, there's a scene in a military operations room where everybody cheers and high-fives (ugh!) - but it does its job for two hours and I'm glad I went to see it. Films can't all be 88-minute indie psychodramas about incest and divorce starring Laura Linney. Iron Man cost around $186 million to make. It took about $100 million in its opening weekend in the States, which will please the accountants. But such economics should not necessarily blind us to the armrest pleasure of the blockbuster. It's easy to read bloodless, corporate cynicism into the need of such huge films to turn a profit, but as long as some creativity has gone in at the other end, and the film does its job, why let snobbery stand in the way of enjoyment?
God bless the person simply calling himself "Blogger" on the entry below. (He's actually called Paul.) His instructions were clear and concise and they worked! Whilst travelling back from Brighton to London I followed them and was able to rescue Collings & Herrin Podcast Number 12 from nowhere! It is available as of now. (I just refreshed my iTunes subscription and there it was.) Having acclimatised ourselves to never hearing our discussion of the Bullingdon Club, Ant & Dec, Hitler and what we both did on May 5, 1982, aged 17 and 15, it's something like a miracle!
In order to recover from the devastation of recording a podcast and losing it this afternoon (see: below), I have come to the delightful town of Brighton for the evening, on my own, to appear on a recording of Radio 4's Music Group, presented by Dr Phil Hammond. It is at the Pavillion Theatre and I'm really looking forward to it. If you read this and it's still before 7.30 on Friday evening, and you're in Brighton, you could come along. It's being held here as part of the Brighton Festival. The other guests are Polly Toynbee and Zoe Ball, and we've all chosen a piece of music to play and talk about. Mine is One Hundred Years by The Cure, one of my favourite songs of all time. The very idea of this gothic, nihilistic dirge about sex and death being played on Radio 4 excites me no end. It is a gorgeous early evening by the sea - not very Cure at all. I took these pictures of myself at a beachside bar to prove I was here, although you can't really see the beach behind me due to the glinting, hazy sun. I don't normally blog out and about around the country but - gasp! - I have given in and signed up for brain cancer ie. wireless broadband. If I wasn't surrounded by thrillseekers and holidaymakers I could record a podcast right here and post it up. I'm not going to. I'm going to relax with this weak beer and put my laptop away. (The Brighton edition of The Music Group will go out on Wednesday on Radio 4 at 1.30pm. It is a very entertaining and ear-opening programme if the guests are good, as they were when Mark Ellen, Sue Perkins and Alexei Sayle were on two weeks ago, but not so when Nick Clegg was on last week pretending he liked Johnny Cash.)
Richard and I recorded our podcast today and my laptop crashed and welost it. This would have been the picture to accompany it because we compared our 1982 diaries. This is beyond disappointing. We will try again next week. We have pencilled in Tuesday, as well as next Friday, as we part of the "freeconomics" revolution! (An hour and a half has now passed since the disaster and although I felt very down when I left Richard's there's no saving what we said, so it's best to move on. I am on a train to Brighton, literally moving on.)
Think of today's 54-minute conversation in an attic as just that. For the record, and to exercise your imagination, this is what the blurb was going to say, before we crashed:
In our twelfth podcast, we defend Ant and Dec, defend Hitler, share our memories of being in the Bullingdon club and find out what we were both doing on May 5, 1982 by using our diaries. Don't turn off when we start talking about the bouncy castle as it get unexpectedly much better after it.
Not exactly in the "dead of night", but whilst sitting out in the back garden for the last two nights at around 7pm, we witnessed an unusually large number of blackbirds, up to 45-50, in a loose flock, all flying in the same direction (roughly southeast, I'd say). They're obviously not migrating anywhere - they live here, and should be busy nesting right now - but they were certainly all heading to the same place, wherever that was. It was a strange sight, and I'm guessing it has something to do with the sudden change of weather. (If it were a science fiction film, this would prefigure the arrival of an alien spaceship or giant dinosaur.) Any ideas, birders?
Also watched some beautiful swifts, high in the cloudless sky, but that's not weird. Pic courtesy of the RSPB, naturally.
I have a new blog about portrayals of "the Troubles" on TV on the Guardian website today (ha ha, they won't let me write for the newspaper, but there I am at the tradesmen's entrance, sniffing the rarefied air inside), and I'm on Richard Bacon's Five Live show between 11pm and 12.30 tonight. As you were. (This should be on The Corner, which is where I said I'd post news items, but I bet you never check it.)
Kosher, Halal, Roman Catholic, Protestant, Greek Orthodox, Muslim, Jewish, half-Jewish, mosque, synagogue, Arab, Israeli, Hamas, Hezbollah, Mujihideen, Gaza Strip, Occupied Territories, Allah, God, Jahweh, "good Jewish boy", "good half-Jewish boy", what's the fuckin' difference? As long as you use the internationally recognised noises for "alarm clock" (Lee fuckin' McQueen) and "chicken" (Michael Sophocles-Cohen), you can trade anywhere in this globalised world - that's what I'm fuckin' talkin' about!
This week's Apprentice was, to quote Michael, the Chicken Fiasco. (Jenny described the chicken as "the chicken article" proving that a noun is not descriptive enough in the world of high finance.) Honestly, it was like The Keystone Cops In Africa. I thought I'd seen these posturing, vacuum-headed twats at their worst, but I hadn't seen them on cultural safari in Morocco, where haggling was the order of the day and Marrakesh was a place where the locals would eat you up, spit you out, pick their teeth with your bones, dance on your grave and pray for your soul without even blinking, or something. Sir Alan appeared on a screen, flanked by Margaret and Nick in suitably colonial attire, while our headless chickens flailed about in the souk in jumpers and rolled-up jeans (nice one, Alex, whose claim to be "full of beans" in the final reckoning was almost right). This was surely one of the highlights of the series so far, with Alphalpha led by Lee McQueen, whose swearing reached fever pitch as he explained what he was talkin' about to baffled traders, but he had a secret weapon, and it was ... Sara, who was the only candidate to know that Morocco is a Muslim country with a Jewish quarter. This geographical/religious nicety was unknown to the other nine, one of whom, Jenny, is 36 (happy birthday you meretricious, scheming, coffin-faced bastard), and another of whom, Michael, claimed to be Jewish when he was only half-Jewish - unfortunately the half that didn't know what Kosher meant and gaily ordered his chicken to be killed by a Muslim priest. And they wonder why the situation in the Middle East is so intractable? It's because Michael Sophocles and Jenny Celeriac aren't government envoys. Renalpha were led by Jennifer, who was in danger of melting into a little pool of Dublin liquid under the Moroccan sun. Neither team looked too clever, despite Raef's excitement at what he saw as "grassroots negotiation", which is "as dirty as it gets." (Was he referring to the natives? Let's hope not.)
This is what they had to "source", while scoring points for how disgracefully they could patronise the locals ("In England it is very less"):
A mosque shaped alarm clock in green (that's fuckin' greeeeeen!) A cream Berber bedspread with silver sequins Grey slippers Santos orange juicer A blue cactus (specified height) Large cowhide with tail attached, ideally purchased at flyblown tannery Kosher chicken Dye 3 red Akal branded tagines 2 tennis racquets, medium strung
It was a race against time. Could they find all ten things, buy them for about three-quarters of what they were worth by talking slowly at the shopkeepers and making chicken noises, and get back to Brentwood in time for prayers? (Oh, and some of them would be praying hard come the endgame.) As usual, it was difficult to follow which idiot was in which team, as Sir Alan shook them up again at the start of play, and they split up into sub-teams. It felt very much as if Jenny and Michael were against rather than with Jennifer, Alex and Claire, doing high-fives and trying to pay off the "dirty" locals in a sports shop not to string the other team's raquet. (They were the dirty ones, and Nick took notes.) They certainly got the marbles out of their mouths (thanks, Jennifer) with the French language, mastering "hello", "how much?" and "good luck" within hours. The rest was just shouting. We didn't see much of the grey slippers or the dye, but the Santos orange juicer provided many a laugh and tear.
Anyway, never mind the travelogue, the real high adventure occurred back in the boardroom, where Sir Alan went all predictably unpredictable on us and fired two people with the same name. Leenaissance showed what he was fuckin' talkin' about and won a glamorous balloon trip in Leeds, while Jenalpha ran out of hot air, with the Bullying Ray turned on Claire, who deflected it with her big Rottweiler's face and streaked hair. (I don't know about you, but I found her "role-playing" with Alex utterly convincing. Assuming they were playing a couple who despised each other. Imagine being Alex's girlfriend and having to literally chase his lips as they scuttled around his face!) Was it too much to ask, the nation asked, to see Jenny and Jenny-fir jettisoned in one sitting? No it wasn't! Jenny went first, having tied her air hostess's neckerchief up in knots trying to remember whether she knew was Kosher was or not, and whether Michael told her what it was because of his "Jewish roots", which she'd always known about, but not necessarily in that order. ("How could you sit there like that and lie?" he asked, not understanding the rules.)
Sir Alan suggested that Michael could pull his trousers down so they could check to see if he was circumcised or not, but I don't think he got the joke, as he didn't know that Jewish boys were circumcised. But he earned a reprieve for reminding the dewy-eyed Sir Alan of being 23 again. And off Jenny went ("No good. No good. Same old story"). Followed in her uncomfortable looking yellow silk blouse by the best salesperson in Europe, Jenny-fir, who actually said, "Fire me now." And he did.
Some early, and quite alarming, "tough guy" photos from the genius Steve Brown. Who knew two pansies could look so hard in real life? This is just Phase One in Steve's dastardly visual plan. More to come.
This afternoon, Richard and I found ourselves in Holloway in North London (see how non-Londoncentric I am, explaining where Holloway is), having our photograph taken by a professional photographer. "Steve Brown" had lured us into a deserted church having claimed to be the same man who took really brilliant photographs of Torchwood and Doctor Who and My Chemical Romance. We believed him and innocently turned up, with various changes of clothing, which he asked us to bring. While we stood outside the church, we contemplated the possibility that "Steve Brown" wasn't actually Steve Brown at all, but a stalker-style fan of the podcasts who had sent us a link to Steve Brown's website making us think it was his work. In fact, he planned to lock us up in a cellar beneath the church with only Richard's laptop and some newspapers to entertain us (he'd asked us to bring these items as props), and with only a suit each and a selection of shirts and t-shirts to wear for the next 18 years. Luckily, he turned out to be Steve Brown the photographer. He even showed us the pictures after he'd taken them, and he had one of those big umbrellas and a roll of green paper. If it was a charade and we never hear from him again, it was an elborate one. Anyway, I decided to mark the occasion of proper photography by taking a couple using the in-built PhotoBooth programme on a Mac laptop. Here are two more (in which Rich is being ordered to look moody, and does indeed look like a moody university lecturer - I wouldn't cross him and hand my essay in late):
When the photos are finished, we'll show you them. Apparently we are going to look like we are in an action film like Bad Boys.
... for this photograph. It seemed like a clever idea for Collings & Herrin Podcast number 11 because we cover the Miley Cyrus controvery, but already I'm a little self-conscious about it and I'm all chaste in a blanket! (This is why we're having some professional photographs taken next week, hopefully, by a nice man called Steve.) The podcast is go. I think you'll like the bit where we phone 118 118. We are Fonejacker.
Somebody has posted this uninteresting video of me and Richard on YouTube. Who would look at two photographs of two men for six minutes? (It's worth reading the comments, just for the one from a Jon Gaunt fan. To save you doing so, he/she says, "i think these two men on this clip are being immature and childish. I dont agree with everything Jon Gaunt says but i do admire his honesty and integrity ... two things these two twats on radio will never have.")
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