This is Richard Herring's local shopping centre, the Westfield, with its crappy red logo, which opened today after ten years of planning and five years of disruptive construction. London's largest shopping "mall", a 265-store, glass-roofed cathedral to hollow consumerism, its opening marks the beginning of Britain's first recession in 17 years. It cost £1.7 billion to build, and, judging by the sheer lack of shopping being done by the curious multitude trudging doggedly around its airy concourses beneath the "undulating" roof, it must have made literally hundreds today.
As luck would have it, I found myself in Britain's two most important buildings this morning: BBC's famous Television Centre, where questions were being asked of senior management about some prank phonecall which wasn't actually a prank phonecall, and the Westfield, which is just over the road in White City. I half-expected TV Centre to be closed for business, perhaps boarded up, but business was going on as usual, with the usual women in headsets, parties of schoolchildren and nervous-looking commissioning editors with takeaway coffees and passes dangling. I was there for a meeting about a thing, which went well. On the way to Richard's for the podcast (see: below), I passed through the shopping centre. An orchestra were playing Prokofiev, which was hardly conducive to relaxed shopping. It seemed to me that it was mostly clothes shops, many of them high-end (ie. I'd never heard of them), many of them mid-end, if that's a recognised retail term. I felt as if I were part of a primitive race of people who were being allowed into their first ever shopping centre, willingly herded around by the sheer momentum of the crowd and the escalators and the high-visibility-jacketed stewards directing people in and out like human traffic. There seemed a lack of coffee shops (maybe the eating and drinking was colonised in a special food atrium or something, but I didn't see it), as if perhaps slowing down or stopping would bring the edifice crashing down as we opened our eyes and saw that it was just some glass and metal and tiles and logos and dresses across 1.6 million square feet.
I've read about the fabled 70-person concierge and valet staff, but again, I didn't see them. Perhaps there's a special secret air-conditioned tunnel from Kensington and Chelsea for people who can still afford Louis Vuitton suitcases but don't wish to use public transport or breathe the air of the poor.
Westfield is aiming for sales of £1 billion a year. That's a lot of dresses. Good luck.
In the 36th Collings & Herrin podcast, we are the first to comment on the Russell Brand/Jonathan Ross controversy, a subject thus far pretty much ignored by the rest of the media. There's just time for us to talk about the destruction of Brecht's "fourth wall" in relation to the James Bond adverts, the origins of the phrase "brave new world" in Shakespeare's The Tempest and whether rugby player Mike Tindall ever thinks about the fact that his girlfriend came out of a woman who came out of The Queen. We apologise for everything. Look how contrite we are in this picture.
... Here's me, Matt Hall and Mark Ellen recording the latest Word Podcast early this morning in the board room of their media eyrie in a sun-dabbled London's Islington. I'm afraid one of the burning issues we touch upon is the hairy comedian, his cigar-smoking mate and a 78-year-old actor, but there's other stuff on there too. I haven't been on the Word Podcast for months. There's a waiting list! But it's always worth it.
You put two grown men into a radio studio, at a radio station where both are revered as saviours of the that radio station, and sometimes this happens: they insult Andrew Sachs, four times, relentlessly, under the guise of self-effacement, on his voicemail. (I initially believed the incident had been live when I first heard it, but it turns out it was pre-recorded, and given the nod for broadcast.) Let's assume that, even though it's a late night show, neither Russell Brand, presenter, nor Jonathan Ross, guest, were actually drunk or insensible, and yet the effervescence of "the moment" caused them to behave as if they were. If you listen, you'll hear the grown-up equivalent of two 12-year-old boys calling up people in the phone book with a "funny" name, and putting the phone down.
I'm sure both regret it in the cold light of morning - the BBC certainly does - but such men live to fight another day. Lucky them. Unlucky Andrew Sachs, 78. I find it especially revealing when Jonathan Ross says, after the event, "I don't know what came over me." It's quite clear what came over him. The same thing that comes over him every time he swears on a Friday night. It's called power.
A whole new world has opened up to me. I have joined the British Library. I am typing in the first floor Humanities Reading Room right now. You don't join, as such, you apply for a Reader's Pass, which old fuddy-duddies complain are now being handed out like sweets to any old body. Well, that's not strictly true; you have to prove who you are and that the research you wish to do is not research that could be done elsewhere. I am researching two projects, both very different, neither of which I wish to talk about, since it would bring bad juju upon them. I am going to research them in this room.
I will say, having been here for about ten minutes, it's a fabulous place. You may not bring in food, drink, chewing gum, pens, coats, umbrellas, cameras or sharp things (these must be stowed in a locker), but you may bring in a laptop, plug it in, and make use of the free wi-fi, which is incredibly useful if, say, you write and read for a living. I'm quite thirsty already, being a serial drinker of water, and when I need to go and look at a book, I suspect I'll feel more comfortable if I carry my laptop with me (although the man opposite me has just left his stuff, so maybe I'm bringing my urban paranoia into a place where it is not required), but these are small crosses to bear.
I have joined my local library too, which is something I've been meaning to do for a while. Libraries really did give me power. Most of the books I read as a boy were from the library in Northampton. One of the first books that changed my life, What Went Wrong? by Jeremy Seabrook (1978), was borrowed from that very building in the mid-80s. Out of print, I recently sought it out online and purchased a second-hand copy. But I suspect it's on one of those shelves. I must go and look.
Then I think I'll have a drink. (Actually, the free wi-fi connection has just gone down. I'll post this later.)
These are just some of the brands that are currently tied into the release of Bond movie Quantum of Solace: Ford, Heineken ("Enter the world of Bond"), Smirnoff, Coke Zero, Omega watches, the National Lottery, Barclaycard, Virgin Atlantic, Sony Ericsson and Avon, who do a nice smell called Bond Girl 007. It's a victory for marketing if not filmmaking. The Olympics are actually jealous of the sheer bulk of synergistic promotional tie-ins. Hey, I know how the world works; I'm a grown-up, but I'm personally already sick of seeing adverts for other products with Daniel Craig in them. Occasionally there's one for the actual film. Some of them are specially shot, like the Sony HD TV one where he gets all bashed up by some HD explosions. (How can James Bond, a fictional character, star in an advert? It breaks the fourth wall, like those EastEnders adverts where Dot Cotton talks to camera.) The Sun are currently giving away a "Quantum Of Solace MP3 player", which is an MP3 player with The Sun and Quantum Of Solace written on it.
According to Variety, Ford will "roll out" a "redesigned version of the Ka" in European dealerships around the release of the film: "a special-edition Solace-themed Ka that features metallic gold paint and exterior graphics." While Sony Ericsson have a limited edition Titanium Silver C902 Cyber-shot phone - seen in the film, naturally, as is a stack of Coke Zero bottles at a posh reception. Quite why they didn't just have two Zeroes and one Seven-Up is beyond me. Idiots.
James Bond will be saving the world after these messages.
And don't forget to pick up your Quantum Of Solace scratchcard - top prize: £70,007 (true).
Sophie Hollender, student, made me jealous last night, taking the Mitford Sisters as her specialist subject on Mastermind. I tried to play along, but because she answered faster than me, it's difficult to know what my score would have been in the same circumstances. I'll provide the answers at the bottom, in small print, for the large majority of you who will want to join in the fun. There were 19 questions; the formidable Sophie got 16 correct answers, two passes, and one wrong - which, coincidentally, I got right. I think, if I'm brutal with myself, I got 11 correct answers, but two further are debatable [see: answers]. I might normally use the excuse, well, if you were going on Mastermind, you'd cram beforehand, but since I am reading three books about the Mitfords concurrently, that doesn't hold much water for me. I should have done better. In the final analysis, Sophie Hollender is better than me, but I did OK. She was joint first after the specialist subject round with the man who knew all about Ty Cobb, but was beaten into third place in the general knowledge. The man who knew about Ty Cobb won. He was very good.
1. What was the name of family house built by Lord Redesdale in 1926? 2. In whose Berlin apartment were Diana and Oswald Mosley secretly married in October 1936? 3. What is the title of the second of Nancy's Radlett novels, published in 1949? 4. When Oliver Watney proposed to Pamela, he gave her a ring that was a replica of which jewel found in the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford? 5. In which city did Jessica and her husband Esmond open a cocktail bar as part of an Italian restaurant called the Roma, during the period of the Phoney War? 6. What word, meaning pig, that he'd picked up in Ceylon, did Lord Redesdale use for the young men who paid attention to his daughters but a ventured an opinion with which he disagreed? 7. According to the family, Deborah had received an invite to join the British junior team for which winter sport at which she excelled? 8. In 1979, Diana was approached by Lord Longford to write a biography of whom? 9. Which establishment, essentially a finishing school, did Nancy attend as a boarder from the age of 16? 10. Jessica tried unsuccessfully to donate her share of which Hebridean island, owned jointly by the sisters, to the Communist party? 11. What was the title of Deborah's first book, part autobiography, part history, published in 1982? 12. Pamela, whom John Betjeman described as the most rural Mitford, was an acknowledged expert in what subject? 13. According to the biography by Mary Lovell, which hymn was sung at all the Mitford funerals? 14. Diana and Mosley were interned in 1940 on suspicion of being Nazi sympathisers – they were held separately at first, but in 1941 given joint quarters at which prison? 15. According to a revised preface, what was Jessica's original preferred title for Hons & Rebels? 16. What nickname did Deborah give to the Queen Mother, after having observed her enthusiasm for this item at a wedding? 17. Who was Nancy's long term lover and de Gaulle's right-hand man in exile in London? 18. What middle name was given to Unity at the suggestion of her grandfather Redesdale? 19. Which newspaper did Deborah successfully sue after it wrongly alleged that she had eloped rather than Jessica?
Answers: 1. Swinbrook (I foolishly said Asthall Manor, which was the house they lived in while Lord Redesdale was building Swinbrook - bad start!) 2. The Goebbels' (correct) 3. Love In A Cold Climate (correct) 4. King Alfred's Jewel (didn't know this) 5. Miami (Sophie said San Francisco - this is the only one she got wrong and I got right) 6. Sewer (too slow to get this - I knew it but couldn't call it up) 7. Ice skating (correct) 8. The Duchess of Windsor (didn't know this) 9. Hatherop Castle (Sophie's first pass - I passed too) 10. Inch Kenneth (correct) 11. The House (couldn't remember the title quick enough) 12. Poultry (I said animal husbandry - I wonder if I would have been given the point?) 13. Holy, Holy, Holy (didn't know this) 14. Holloway (correct) 15. Red Sheep (Sophie's second pass - me too) 16. Cake (correct) 17. Gaston Palewski (I said "The Colonel", which was his nickname - again, debatable whether Humphrys would have given me the point - if I'd had time, I would have got his actual name, but Sophie beat me to it) 18. Valkyrie (correct) 19. Daily Express (correct)
A new dawn. In the 35th Collings & Herrin Podcast Richard turns over a new leaf and promises not to swear or be crude or call me an idiot or talk about having sex with the hole in the bottom of a tortoise during an operation. Within this radical rubric, we cover the George Osbourne/Oleg Deripaska/Peter Mandelson/Nat Rothschild scandal, the historic visit by 14-year-old failed Olympic diver Tom Daley to Sea World in Florida (see: walrus reconstruction above), the thorny issue of sex education for five year olds, the cost of heating a George Foreman grill for 48 hours and the dangers of staying in a hotel designed by Hanna-Barbera.
Everybody else has reviewed Quantum Of Solace, even though it's not out until next Friday, so I don't know why I'm being so bloody coy. It seems the film company decided it would aid the pre-release hype to let journalists do the work for them; a risky policy when the film is categorically not as good as Casino Royale, as many critics have already been forced to point out. Me? I like Daniel Craig in the part; he carries Solace through many of its less interesting passages, of which there are a few, mainly the ones with disappointing new Bond villain Dominc Greene (Mathieu Amalric). I really wish they hadn't started this one directly after the last film had finished, thus giving Bond a lovesick revenge subplot - surely with 007 you wipe the slate clean, give him a new baddy and a new bird and a new gadget, stick a pin in the Atlas, and let him get on with it? (This one's mainly set in Bolivia.)
That said, Solace follows Royale's lead and dispenses altogether with helpful hardware: it's mainly Bond checking into hotels and checking out again, interspersed with fights and chases. The fights and chases are briliantly done, if edited too fast, as per all action films of today. There's a show-stopper in a church, all hanging around on ropes: expertly choreographed and very exciting. This is not an unexciting film. It's got the licks. But there's too much motivation! Even the main Bond girl, played by the pouty Olga Kurylenko, is out for revenge. They've loaded too much into the script, including post-oil topicality, but at the same time made it incomprehesible, with way too many fruity foreign accents that are frankly hard to follow.
Good to see Rory Kinnear, son of Roy, as a civil servant, but Jeffrey Wright (so good as Colin Powell in the George Bush film, W, of which more next week) is wasted as Leiter. I was looking forward to the six-fingered Gemma Arterton (star of BBC's terrific Tess Of The D'Urbervilles), but she has nothing to do beyond a clipped English accent. It's great that the Bond franchise has been humble enough to acknowledge the brilliance and success of the Bourne franchise, but they've paid a little too much attention, if you ask me. Bond even jumps through a window from a roof in exactly the same way Bourne did in Ultimatum. Cheeky! If it were up to me, and it's not, my reaction to a post-Bourne world would be a return to old Bond values: sex and travel and ink pens that spew out poison gas.
If you like Bond, you have to see Q Of S, clearly, and the feem toon is cracking, but be prepared for an awful lot of banging and clattering, and frowning, and no jokes. (And one really unecessary nod to Goldfinger. Don't remind us what the old Bond films were like!)
That got your attention. I shall be appearing on the latest august and varied bill of Robin Ince's famed comedy-and-talking night, The School For Gifted Children, at the Albany pub, 240 Great Portland Street, London W1W 5QU, next Wednesday, 29 October. Having spoken at past evenings about serial killers and The Poseidon Adventure, I plan to debut my illustrated** talk Why I Love The Mitford Sisters (Even Though Two Of Them Were Nazis). Come along. Robin's nights are always splendid, and, as evinced by this listing, from Chortle, there are some actual comedians on as well. I'm a "biographer".
* This picture sadly only depicts five of the Mitford Sisters. I really like it though. ** Illustrated with some things stuck on bits of card.
More instant "deja view" on BBC2 last night. I watched the third part of British Style Genius, an excellent history of British fashion from BBC Bristol, who can really do this stuff; followed by the third part of The Story Of The Guitar, with its uncharacteristically humorous, post-Q Alan Yentob voiceover. The former - subtitled Breaking The Rules: Fashion Rebel Look - looked at the work of Vivienne Westwood, John Galliano and Alexander McQueen, all of whom have made amazing but stupid-looking clothes that found their way onto the high street in various bastardised forms; the latter - subtitled This Time It's Personal - looked at the way rock music and the penile twiddlage inherent in rock music transformed the guitar, from Hendrix to Muse, via heavy metal and punk.
Both covered that moment in 1976 when some people in London started to pogo and gob at Sex Pistols gigs and wear homemade t-shirts with safety pins because they couldn't afford to shop in Sex. And ... both films used that exact same bit of gig footage you always see whenever a social or cultural documentary wants to illustrate that particular flashpoint: man in full-face leather "rapist" mask, three girls in rubber dresses possibly made from bin liners, young men in jumpers bouncing on each other's shoulders and gurning at the camera, shot of Sue Catwoman who looks disdainfully at the camera, and another young man shaking his hair, which has an orange streak in it, possibly achieved by a can of car paint. It's like an old friend.
I'm not complaining. I did, after all, choose to watch two BBC documentaries in one evening covering much the same period. And there is clearly only one piece of footage to illustrate that period. But it does show how creative documentary-makers must be not to churn out that same old programme. (Incidentally, Malcolm McLaren agreed to be interviewed for both programmes. He's really hard to get, isn't he?)
Well, I think we all know what we think about Burn After Reading, the latest from the Coen Brothers, don't we? We've read the reviews, and the reviews sing out in unison: it's a disappointing, thinly-conceived piece of comedic fluff seemingly made as a balm after the heavyweight majesty of last year's Oscar-winning No Country For Old Men. Right? Wrong.
I saw it yesterday - there were quite a few people in the cinema, too, considering this was an afternoon showing - and it's an entertaining, fast-moving, funny Hitchcock parody, full of great performances and killer lines, most of them involving the word "fuck", and it does its job in a swift 96 minutes, then gets out. I laughed out loud a number of times. They've made some substandard stuff in the name of "screwball", most notably Intolerable Cruelty, starring my boyfriend George Clooney, but the Coens are so prolific, you can never write them off, not even after the disgrace that was their remake of The Ladykillers (yeah, that was really crying out to be transposed to Mississippi in the modern day).
Burn After Reading is a fairly plain, Washington DC-set, post-Cold War intelligence thriller in which innocent and not-so-innocent people get sucked into a whirling, escalating blackmail plot that leads to murder and connects everything and everybody to everything and everybody else. Clooney plays a bit of a dork; so does Brad Pitt - neither is reason enough to instantly like the film (handsome actors will play the clown for the Coens: of course they will) - the revelation is John Malkovitch, whose character Osbourne Cox, a fired and cuckolded CIA analyst writing his memoirs while drunk, is so brilliantly drawn, he defies dismissal of the film as fluff. And Frances McDormand is as real as she was in Fargo, if less obviously likeable than Marge, playing a lovesick but shallow surgery-hungry middle-aged singleton from Hardbodies gym. Add to that already fine cast Richard Jenkins as her sad suitor, and - the film's secret weapons - JK Simmons and David Rasche as clueless CIA high-ups, and you've got an unmissable film. (Only Tilda Swinton disappointed me - too pantomime.)
Anyway, seeing it left me wondering why the critics turned on it, as one. Is it just the Auto-Backlash Response? ("Hmmm, we used up all our praise on No Country, let's show those Coens we're not so easily bought off!") If so, take all the ho-hum reviews, burn after reading, and see the film. Unless you're not a fan of Hitchcock. Or the Coens.
At 7pm on BBC2 last night we had part two of Simon Schama's bold, ambitious, eloquent new series, The American Future, in which we follow him across the United States. In the second part, American War, the programme began at Arlington Cemetary in Virginia for Veterans Day. We saw Schama in the crowd, looking grave.
Then, at 9pm on BBC1 we had Stephen Fry In America, the comedian's bold, ambitious, eloquent new series, in which we follow him across the United States.
In the second part, Deep South, the programme began at Arlington Cemetary in Virginia for Veterans Day. We saw Fry in the crowd, looking grave.
It was, you must admit, an amazing but less than fortuitous coincidence. Two major BBC series about the same thing, at the same event, covered from different angles (Schama: all serious; Fry: all whimsical; both: in awe of the awesome power of America), using the same camera angles, broadcast on the same night. We have to assume both crews were at the same Veterans Day event, last year, Monday November 12, filming the same proud veterans in those little military McDonald's hats, against the background of the American flags. Both programmes featured the inevitable footage of the endless white headstones in the cemetary directly afterwards. Although Schama hung around for the longest, finding the grave of the son of a neighbour in New York State (where he lives), killed in Afghanistan and also a way in to his historical treatise about war in America, while Fry hopped into his cab and found somewhere a lot cheerier within about a minute and a half. I wonder if the two production companies - or indeed the august, learned presenters themselves - bumped into each other that day?
"You're filming a landmark series about America?" "Sure am!" (Both men of course, now infected with the American accent because they love the place so much) "Who for?" "The BBC, of course." "Ditto!" "And which episode is this bit for?" "The second one." "Snap!" "When's yours on?" "We don't have a TX date yet, but sometime next year." "Autumn schedules?" "Possibly, it is a landmark series with an august, learned person standing in front of it." "Ah well, best of luck, I'm sure the BBC wouldn't be mad enough to run the two programmes simultaneously!" "God bless America!" "God bless America's tiny little cotton socks!"
Of the two august presenters, I'd say Schama loves America the most, as he's lived there since abouit 1980, while Fry is very much a tourist, loving it in a way only a tourist can. For the record, I'm enjoying both series. Schama has the intellectual edge, but it's on BBC2. Fry's job is to keep up warm on these cold nights.
I saw the new Bond movie last night, Quantum Of Solace, its first ever showing anywhere in the world, at the Odeon Leicester Square in London's currently less busy West End. I'm not going to tell you what it's like, as I would be killed by Sony Pictures International and Eon. You can find out what it's like when it's released on 31 October.*
Security was as tight as for any screening I've been to: queues of freeloaders snaking round Leicester Square due to bag and body searches, with all mobile phones and BlackBerries and recording devices and indeed any devices, recording or not, handed in at the door and bagged up to be collected afterwards in another dehumanising scrum. This is now standard industry practice for big screenings. The fear of piracy, escalated by the ease of digital technology, hangs in the air. While the film is showing, security guards scan the auditorium using night-vision binoculars. It's very Bond. They should make the next Bond movie about movie piracy. It would be very exciting. Anyway, the reason I even mention my attendance of a screening I can't talk about is to say this: why can't grown-up adults make it through an entire film without going to the toilet any more?
It's not the longest film in the world - 1 hour, 46 minutes (I'm assuming the running time isn't embargoed) - and yet, before it had finished, umpteen people got up and missed a bit, possibly a car chase or a chase across a roof, while they had a wee. This happens all the time now. I understand that kids get excited and have to be ushered to the toilets, but not adults - unless they have a urinary condition or stress incontinence, in which case, they're off the hook. Maybe it's just me, but I always take care to go before the film starts because I don't want to miss any of it.
This was the new James Bond film for fuck's sake! Why would you want to miss any of it? I can count on one hand** the times in my life when I've missed a bit of a film at the cinema: I had to leave Christine at the Northampton ABC in 1984 to be sick (but I paid to go and see it again so that I could see the bit I had missed while vomiting - the sick was nothing to do with the scary film, by the way); I consciously walked out of a screening of Showgirls in London because it was so shit; I also had to leave before the very end of a showing of Flashbacks Of A Fool in Shepherd's Bush earlier this year (also starring Daniel Craig), because I had to be at 5 Live in order to be on the radio to review it and some other films; and I've had to venture out a couple of times at various Odeons in order to be the one who tells the staff that the picture is out of focus, or out of alignment (one example I can remember: The Dreamers); and the print I saw of Thank You For Smoking broke and we all had to leave; and that, I think, is it. I am not a hero. I just don't like missing bits of films.
I blame those stupidly big buckets of diluted Coke which, again, grown adults seem to buy for themselves even though they are aimed at children. The young man next to me last night was slurping one of those through a quiet bit. I killed him.
* Or, you can read Peter Bradshaw's full and frank review in today's Guardian. Maybe I'm deluded. Maybe there isn't an embargo. Or maybe the Guardian don't give a fuck.*** ** That's one hand if, like new Bond girl Gemma Arterton, you were born with six fingers on each hand.
*** Actually, all the dailies seem to have reviewed the film, or previewed it. Maybe none of them give a fuck. Many of the reviews, including the Mirror's, give away the death of one key character, which is downright ungentlemanly. Idiots. Are we allowed no surprises any more in this media-saturated scrum? My advice is to ignore the reviews. I won't write mine until the day before it's released, I promise. And when I do, I won't tell you that a key character dies, or how they die.
The 34th Collings & Herrin Podcast is done, and - a record I think - we take a full 40 minutes before getting to the day's news in the newspapers. That's a preamble. Finally, eventually, we cover the following hot news topics: the way the credit crunch is affecting Prince William, the new indecent exposure laws soon to rock the world of indecent exposure, the cream-and-seasonal-vegetable-based divorce of Madonna and Guy Ritchie, the election-losing teddy bear eyes of John McCain, bum-on-bum action in the Madrid derby (whatever that is), the world of "amateur tits" and a sneak preview of our survey results. Enjoy the award-winning photo of the autmnal colours outside Richard's window.
Warning: the podcast, which is quite long but not long enough to accompany the full 75-minute workout of one survey respondent currently training to be Iron Man, just stops in the middle of what was a very funny sentence. We carried on, but the computer didn't. It seems that after one hour and six minutes, GarageBand decided we'd said enough about Ben Miller.
Thanks for filling in our survey. We've already had, at last count, 237 respondents. This is really encouraging, and illuminating. The more the merrier. As a further inducement, here's a sneak preview of a pie chart made of you. If you want to be in a pie like this, get involved. (Robster, in the post below, felt bad about being "negative" in his answers, but we're not fishing for praise, merely taking the temperature of people who already download the podcast. We sort of think we know what you think, but "assume" makes an "ass" out of "u" and "me", as twats say.) Mmmm, pies.
*Research. Because Richard and I are doing a presentation in November at a conference organised by the Radio Academy about podcasting (which we will, of course, record as a podcast), we thought we'd do a survey, to find out a bit more about those who download the podcast. The survey is here. There is no inducement to get involved, beyond the remote possibility that we might read out one of your comments on the podcast. But it will be fun, and informative, and we don't need your bank account details nor date of birth nor mother's maiden name. We will not sell your answers on to anybody, because they wouldn't want them. We do, though.
On Friday, I filmed my first ever humorous TV panel game - What The Dickens for Sky Arts. I was very excited to be asked, for self-evident reasons, but even more so when I found out how important the "quiz" side of it was. It's Arts-based, and although "mucking about" is positively encouraged, it's not one of those panel games where you know all the answers beforehand so you can make better, pre-written gags about them. (Indeed, they only showed us one thing beforehand, and that was a photo. And I couldn't think of any good funny things to say about it anyway.) It's much more about being on your wits, and the competitive element took over very quickly, as my team, captained by Chris Addison, started to lag behind the other team, led by Sue Perkins and also featuring misunderstood stand-up Russell Kane. (Russell was on his second ever humorous TV panel game, having filmed his first three days before: Celebrity Juice for ITV2, hosted by the fictional character Keith Lemon. This one, he said, was very different, and allowed him to be clever.) Anyway, I shall tell you no more, just in case you get Sky Arts. I actually don't.
The reason I bring it up is because I had my makeup sprayed on. I've been made up by professional makeup ladies many times, from Telly Addicts to News 24 (although hardly ever for talking head shows, as I think it would be impractical, and too costly for what is "cheap fucking telly"). You get used to it. Sometimes you remember to take it off afterwards, other times you go home on the train the colour of peach-flavoured Angel Delight. Anyway, it goes on with a sponge or puff. I know this. I am a TV professional.
But not any more. Now, it seems, they spray it on, with an airbrush. You close your eyes, hold your breath, and on it goes, evenly, all over your face. You come out of the makeup room looking like you've been painted in afterwards. It certainly gives an all-over colour - quite alarming when you first venture back into the green room and catch yourself in a mirror. I have no idea what's in makeup, but I'm guessing it's a chemical compound of some kind. Surely if airbrush makeup is to become the industry norm (and I'm told it's more common since HD television reared its ugly head), makeup ladies should wear protective masks. They could become the new coal miners if they're not careful. All those tiny particles of peach flying around.
Actually, I watched the other edition of What The Dickens being filmed back-to-back with ours on an HDTV feed, and you could see tiny particles of dust or dandruff on the dark jacket of a fellow panellist, something you'd never see on low-definition. I have seen the future, and I don't think I like it.
Nice. Somebody filmed part of Collings & Herrin Podcast number 31 - live at the Cross Kings in Kings Cross, London. Just look at what you missed by not being there: two men sitting down on a stage, being light-hearted about sweat shops while helping to raise money to stop sweat shops. For some reason, this clip comes part way through me explaining that the most interesting thing that had happened to me that week was emailing the company who make the cat food my cat no longer likes.
Ha ha. It says "Herrin Knob", and it's in the Blue Ridge Mountains of North Carolina. (Thanks to Paul Kerensa, stand-up comedian and writer on the hit BBC1 sitcom Not Going Out, for passing on this snap from his month-long trek "with chums" across America. Watch out for falling bankers, Paul.)
Some story about billions in British investments being lost in the Icelandic banking crisis and the Dow Jones plummeting are the main stories on the cover of today's Guardian, but all is not lost in the global downturn just yet. Above the title, thus far more importantly, you will see: Be A Style Goddess - Kate Moss's 10 Golden Rules Of Fashion.
To save you the trouble of turning to page 18 in G2, here are those "golden rules", which I have helpfully annotated.
In Collings & Herrin Podcast Number 33, we cut a languid, mid-afternoon swathe through Alistair Darling's £500bn TV-screen bailout, the nude "twit" on the wall of the Japanese emperor's palace [pictured], Polly the tortoise in Bristol Zoo with the "stretchy bandage" [also pictured], Lily Cole's alien face and translucent alien skin, Johnny Rotten's butter-based betrayal of everything we fought for, and Google's lunch policy. Richard was all tired.
Hey, clever computer people! Of late, I have been inundated with this kind of spam: ie. Undeliverable Mail emails, which are clearly triggered by spam that elicits automatic replies from my computer. (I have no knowledge of anything I've switched on that sends out an automatic reply, by the way.) I am, as Mac users will have spotted from the grab, using Mac Mail. The email address they're coming to is this one, the wherediditallgoright.com one, which is why I have to trawl through the Junk inbox, for actual emails from actual people using this site to get in touch, which happens a lot. How do I stop the bad spam from happening? I had bloody hundreds of these yesterday, and I'm getting bored of ploughing through them. However, I am a little man, technically, and some of you, I know from experience, are giants. (Don't advise me to stop using a Mac. I love them and will never change.) Thank you in advance.
I am, as you may know, a big fan of Jamie Oliver. When public opinion veered back in his direction after Jamie's Kitchen, the series about setting up his Fifteen restaurant and training urchins, I was already onside. But even the most hardened hater of his barrow-boy persona and now-curtailed use of the word "pukka" (oh, and by the way, he's not a "mockney", he was born and raised in Essex, where the people talk in a sort of extreme version of the East End accent - "mockney" is a fun word, but it never applied to Jamie Oliver) must admit he's trying to do some good with his millions and his reputation. School Dinners was a noble attempt to change public opinion and flick the nose of intransigent government. And Ministry Of Food is another game effort to make a difference, this time on a cash-strapped generation who can't cook.
But there's a fucking problem, and fuck me, it's his fucking swearing. From the first fucking line of the first fucking show, he was fucking swearing ("This is fucking Great Britain"), and the fucking swearing hasn't fucking stopped. He's up there in fucking Rotherham, trying to fucking get ordinary fucking people on poor fucking wages and fucking benefits to fucking knock up a fucking stir-fucking-fry, and it's no fucking picnic. Fucking hell, he's really fucking up against fucking it. I personally don't give a fuck whether he fucking swears or not, but a lot of other fucking people do, and it's a fucking complaint that fucking comes up again and a-fucking-gain. Why does he fucking swear so much? Firstly, because, I imagine, he fucking swears in real life, and this is fucking supposed to be a fucking documentary. Secondly, because he's a fucking duck out of fucking water up there in the fucking north, I fucking think he's fucking trying to ease into fucking working class life by showing that he's not a fucking ponce from the south, even though he fucking is - if anyone was unlucky enough to see the new, Lancashire-set Steve Coogan vehicle Sunshine last night, there was a scene in the pub where a TV weather forecast announced rain in London and a cheer went up. (He is a fucking millionaire, and one fucking woman has already fucking accused him of fucking "living in a bubble", but oddly fucking enough, she didn't say "fucking", as I guess she's fucking comfortable in her skin and might even fucking have the fucking decency to mind her language when the cameras are rolling.)
Anyway, it's not spoiling my enjoyment of the show, but it's putting a lot of other people off, and it's certainly not ideal for kids, who might get something out of it too. Hey, it's fucking in the can, it's not going to fucking change, but fuck me, it might be a bit of a fucking own goal. I still love him.*
*It's not unconditional love though. If the big supermarkets, like the one he works for and helps to greater profits, didn't secretly want people to buy "value-added" foods, ie. processed, because there's a greater return on things that have been industrially produced, maybe people would buy less crap and more whole ingredients. You know, the ones that supermarkets put at the front of the shop to show off about, but are only there to lure you into the more profitable aisles of things in boxes and cans and jars and sachets. The day Jamie Oliver stops taking the fucking Sainsbury's shilling will be a happy day indeed. Sorry, did I just swear?
Here's me banging on about social networking on the website of research company (I don't really know what they do) Tamar. Thanks to Henry for asking the questions and putting me up there; he's the non-stalker who set up my FaceBook "fan page", which I can't access and have no interest in accessing.
I'm not sure how long it's been since I was allowed to write a cover story. But thanks to Word, I am a journalist again! What a tremendous day I spent in Manchester with Elbow a couple of weeks ago, and how cheering to see Guy Garvey's face on the front of a magazine in a world of chiselled youngsters.
Here's a great line I caught on Sky News this morning: "Peter Mandelson is expected to make an unexpected return to government." I love 24-hour rolling news.
Without warning, we did Collings & Herrin Podcast 32 last night. But not in a pub in Kings Cross, nor to members of the Socialist Worker party. It should be up this morning. In our 32nd, unedited podcast, back in the teetotal, audience-free safety of Richard's attic (except with darkness falling), we solve the credit crunch, dream of a Utopian future where there is no racism, berate Sharon Stone, deify Bruce Parry, mock a three-year-old boy for having a permanent tattoo of Bart Simpson and alight, once again, upon Richard's Jigsaw fantasy (see: hard evidence of story in the accompanying pic). We have both been working very hard this week, on various separate projects it would be inappropriate to detail at this stage, and it was nice, as ever, to break away and do some voluntary work.
This is Richard Herring's local shopping centre, the Westfield, with its crappy red logo, which opened today after ten years of planning and five years of disruptive construction. London's largest shopping "mall", a 265-store, glass-roofed cathedral to hollow consumerism, its opening marks the beginning of Britain's first recession in 17 years. It cost £1.7 billion to build, and, judging by the sheer lack of shopping being done by the curious multitude trudging doggedly around its airy concourses beneath the "undulating" roof, it must have made literally hundreds today.
