In the 61st Reggie & Perrin Podcast (available when it's been processed by Orange Mark), from the very bottom of the iTunes charts, suffering from the hangover of fame, we present a balanced view of the swine flu pandemic-in-waiting [pigtured], wonder if the world population couldn't in fact do with a little "thinning out", celebrate some newly-discovered British Library cottaging graffiti, "Get Britain Laughing" along with The Sun, ponder the fate of Michael MacIntyre and other equally successful comedians who seem to be enjoying success just to make us feel unsuccessful, and enjoy some "lunchtime fun" by reminiscing about 1970s sweets that have been ruined by killjoys and health and safety fears.

Hmmm. Anybody clever got any clever ideas why the fan on my Apple MacBook might have suddenly gone mad? It seems to come on at the drop of a hat, like it's at the gym or something. I'm not running that many applications - as I type, the usual triumverate of Word, MacMail and Firefox - and it's whirring away right now. Whirrrrrrr-rrrrrrrrrrrr-rrrrrrrrrr-rrrrrr-rrrr. Quite disturbing in a library environment - I feel bad for the lady sitting next to me. If the free British Library wi-fi connection is slow or down or I need to send emails which it won't let me do, I pop in my dongle and use my Vodafone mobile broadband connection, and that often seems to get the fan going. I know the fan cools down the laptop, which is very kind of it, but it seems to be getting hot much more readily these days. I've tried propping it up on books to "air" its underside - does that actually do any good, or am I wasting my time? And is there some other way of reducing fan noise/activity? Does switching from mains to battery make any difference? It's a brave new world.

Sorry to be a burden, as usual, but I know many of you love responding to blogs like this.

As mentioned below, here is Sleeping With The NME, the B-side of the NME-sponsored, charity Manic Street Preachers single, Theme From M*A*S*H. The single, recorded as part of the paper's 40th birthday celebrations for the Ruby Trax album, reached number 7 in the charts in 1992 and spent three weeks in the Top 10. (Proceeds went to The Spastics Society, now Scope.)

The second b-side, chosen by the Manics, was an eight-minute extract from an hour-long documentary, Sleeping With The NME, made for Radio 5 - in its early, pre-Five Live days, when it was a "sport, children's and educational" station and had a "youth" element. The documentary, produced by John Yorke, now C0ntroller of BBC Drama Production, involved he and presenter Mark Thomas spending a week at the NME's office in 1992. Their chosen week just happened to be the one in which Richey Edwards carved "4 REAL" into his arm while talking to Steve Lamacq and Ed Sirrs photographed it, creating what is now one of the most iconic rock photos of all time, I'd say. Have a listen to the extract.

You'll hear James Brown, Danny Kelly, production editor Brendan Fitzgerald, Steve Lamacq, Ed Sirrs, art editor Pru Watkins, deputy art editor Marc Pechart, PA Karen Walter, news editor Iestyn George, assistant news editor Mary Anne Hobbs, and, sadly, me. (During the week, myself and Stuart Maconie had made ourselves totally available to Mark and John, and had become their point men, while some of the staff maintained a slightly snooty air about the BBC spies in our midst and kept their distance. This was, funnily enough, the start of our radio partnership - although Stuart was not present for the Richey discussion.)

Hey, it's a slice of NME office life in the early 90s, and very funny, and you'll hear what I used to sound like, aged 27, when I still had Northampton in my voice and had not yet learned how to speak on the radio - not having been on it before.

Some late news just in. I just happened to find this photo from the 2005 TCM Classic Shorts award ceremony. (If you must know, I wasn't looking for myself, rather, the name of one of the young actors in Reggie Perrin, whom I knew to have appeared in the runner-up short film entry in 2005.) I hosted the awards, at the NFT, and Helen Mirren said a few words. It was tremendous to meet her - she'd just been on Channel 4 in Elizabeth I and I was able to enthuse about the excellent lighting and photography on that programme, a subject she much preferred over talking about her own marvellous work in it (she also voiced the anxiety that a TV programme just goes out and is forgotten, while a movie has a longer life, something I had never considered before) - and while introducing her from the stage, she heckled me, and I told her to "shut up", which was a nice moment. Anyway, I had no idea photographic evidence existed. I'm glad it does. If Twitter had been invented, I might have Twittered it. I'm glad it didn't.

Don't know who took the picture. (If it was you, let me know.) The man on the right is Alan Musa, vice president of TCM, who took me for lunch at the Ivy earlier this year to compensate for the fact that, after three years of having me host the awards, in 2008 they got Ben Miller in. It was a good run while it lasted.

OK, let's have this one out. (This could be a long one, but I need to get it off my chest in more than 140 characters, if you see what I mean.) For me, as a viewer and comedy lover, here is what's wrong with Reggie Perrin, BBC1's not-really-a-remake of The Fall And Rise Of Reginald Perrin. It's not the acting or the writing or the directing or the lighting or the scheduling or the credits sequence; it's the idea. Not the original idea; the idea of not-really-remaking it. The very reason for its existence: that's what's wrong with it. Hollywood remakes - or reboots, or "reimagines" - old movies as a matter of course, but this is generally done to drag them into a new technological era. JJ Abrams said he wanted to remake Star Trek so that it could be done properly ie. with 21st century digital effects not previously available to the franchise. This makes sense. It might enrage purists ie. those old enough to remember the originals and hold them dear, but there is a commercial logic to it. What we must question with the new Reggie Perrin is the logic of doing it at all.

David Nobbs's original idea, which he unveiled in the first novel, The Death Of Reginal Perrin, in 1975, was that a man undergoing a mid-life crisis might actually fake his own death to escape the increasingly unbearable monotony and meaninglessness of white-collar, suburban life. (Nobbs came up with the idea before the Labour MP and former postmaster general, John Stonehouse, faked his own death and left a pile of clothes on a beach in 1974, but it proved a timely touchstone for audiences when the show first aired in 1976, by which time Stonehouse's scam had been rumbled and I think he was still in prison.) The very essence of the original Perrin was of its time; like so many great comedies of the 70s, it speaks of a time of flux and disappointment and political and industrial stalemate.

The "commuter belt" that had grown up around London during the 50s and 60s meant that, in that pre-enlightenment employment era, a large number of men travelled in on the same trains at the same time, wearing the same suits and carrying the same umbrellas and doing the same Times crossword, on increasingly unreliable British Rail trains. White-collar drudgery met infrastructural decline on a daily basis, and the idea of one of these semi-detached wage slaves from a pretty cul-de-sac with his dutiful wife and his own office and secretary "behaving oddly" was hugely attractive as a comedic device, and who better than skilled and temperamental stage actor Leonard Rossiter, then aged 50, to bring all the frustrations and anxieties of the modern menopausal commuter to life?

It was not the first time office workers had been portrayed as the new factory drones (Tony Hancock's The Rebel and Billy Wilder's The Apartment, both made at the beginning of the 60s, spring immediately to mind), but Reggie's extreme response was new. And howlingly funny, thanks to the combination of Nobbs's withering dialogue with its Beckett-like repetition and Rossiter's stuttering, edgy, genuinely perspiring, theatrical performance, equal to his other great sitcom creation, Rigsby, but thoroughly removed. Though giving the apperance of a standard, 30-minute BBC drawing-room sitcom, Perrin played with form in a way more suited to Python or Q, while remaining dramatically potent, using fantasy and filmed inserts to enhance the narrative. Its theme music was suitably melancholy. This was funny and sad.

Now, I saw The Fall And Rise Of Reginald Perrin, the first series, at an age (11) when the image of a hippopotamus appearing each time Reggie's mother-in-law was mentioned was perhaps the funniest thing in the world ever. I enjoyed the catchphrases and the physical comedy (the throwing of the briefcase, the safari park incident, the farting chairs) while the social satire went straight over my head. As I grew up and revisited it, the latter eclipsed the former and I realised that Perrin was a modern classic. I enjoyed the second series, the third less so, and hated the post-Rossiter revival, The Legacy Of Reginald Perrin, even though the skilled Nobbs was behind every one of them. Still, the first two series are untouchable.

As such, you might deduce that my animosity towards the not-really-a-remake is rooted in nostalgia for the original. It's not. I watched the first episode on Friday with an open mind (alright, as open a mind as possible having seen the awful clip they showed on Jonathan Ross, in which a gag about penis enlargement spam seemed to have been introduced into a 70s-like dim-secretary sketch to show that it was modern). Individual lines, which may have been Nobbs's, and may have been Simon Nye's, were fine ("Can it be done?" "No, it can't. Far too many blades"), and Martin Clunes did a fair job as Reggie, also driven to fantasy by his humdrum life. But there was something wrong about the whole thing. We could sit here all day and debate whether the use of the word "otter" is intrinsically funny or not (it's not), what I'm worried about is what the new Reggie is for.

By all means commission a new sitcom about a man who works for a shaving products firm and is having a mid-life crisis and goes off the rails, but don't call it Reggie Perrin. For a start, a 46-year-old man in 2009 is not called Reggie, is he? I'm sure there are 46-year-old Reggies out there in the real world, but it feels wrong. Reggie was a perfect name for a 46-year-old in 1975, a man born in the late 30s, when Reginald was a common male name. In 1963, when New Reggie was supposedly born, boys were called Andrew and Simon and Jonathan and Peter and Mark and Matthew as a rule. Or Martin, actually. In other words, why saddle a modern character with an old-fashioned name, other than to make explicit links with an exisiting brand. Why not give this new character a modern name? (I know why, but I ask the question anyway, just to be annoying.)

In the mid-70s, Reggie looked identical to all the other commuters. This drove his desire to break free and be different - and, ultimately, to adopt a new identity, to become a pig farmer, or a suave man back from South America. In 2009, Reggie looks completely different to every other single passenger on his commuter train. This reflects real life. But it robs him of the engine that drove Original Reggie. Sure, he's pissed off by them having earpieces in, and - look! - he's snipped the wires of the man opposite, but this makes New Reggie no different from anybody else who gets annoyed by iPods and laptops on trains. The modern commuter does not wear a suit and a tie and carry an umbrella. It is harder to identify social types by what they wear. This gives the writers of Reggie Perrin a big problem.

How to mark New Reggie out from the herd? It can't be done. The herd is too subtle and varied. It's a comedy about public transport rather than about commuting. We all travel further to get to work now. It's not just middle-managers doing the Times crossword. Commuters, including middle-aged ones, carry rucksacks and shoulder bags as well as brief cases. They hotdesk and flexitime. Reggie's company, for all its modern accoutrements (water cooler, PCs ... er, that's about it), is a workplace out of time. He doesn't even use flipcharts, let alone PowerPoint, for his presentation.

Which begs the question: if you're going to draw on the Perrin brand for reasons of instant heritage and a ready-made audience, and have Nobbs onboard in whatever practical capacity be it player-manager or simple talisman, why not:

• set the new series in the 1970s and make it a period piece, or
• cut all links with the old series, such as the pointless but aggravating moment when Clunes walks past the old Sunshine Desserts and enters the office building next door, as if to say: ha ha, got you! (Got who? Not those coming to the show for the first time, who won't know what the hell's going on. No: the devoted old fans who sat down to watch this for all the wrong reasons? Yeah! Give them a shoeing!)

In many ways, the original co-workers of Reggie were cyphers: catchphrases on legs, there to serve the central point about Reggie's madness being percolated through the repetition of modern working life. In the new Reggie, apart from the dim secretary - who's actually more insulting than Joan Greengross, who was at least efficient and knowing, but may well be a truer stereotype, I don't know - his co-workers are more subtle and verbose and "real", but also less clearly defined. When Reggie presents the pumice razor raft, I presume we are supposed to think of it as ridiculous, and laugh at the ridiculously positive reaction of the guileless idiots who work at Groomtech, but it's not that daft, and the stupidity of razor technology was much more efficiently done in a Mitchell and Webb sketch.

That which Nobbs originally satirised - business jargon, brainstorming, the monotonous mantras of market research - remain the bane of office life, more so now that desks and headsets have virtually replaced lathes and safety goggles in our national workplace, and yet office life has been subtly exposed by any number of other comedies since The Fall And Rise, not least, well, The Office. Going over old ground - people in work use stupid terminology and have meetings and refer to data - doesn't cut it, whether it's a remake or a reboot or a remimagining.

In the 1970s, Pauline Yates's Elizabeth Perrin was the perfect, loyal, dutiful housewife. Her elevation to business partner in series two echoed the independence being struck for by a lot of women at the time, although she was neither a doormat nor a dragon at home, which set her apart from a lot of sitcom wives. In 2009, Fay Ripley's wife Nicola sees Reggie off to his humdrum job, as per the original ("Have a good day at work" "I won't"), but is later given a "women's social action committe meeting" - at which Reggie is not welcome and he makes an inappropriate remark about periods - to mark out her sexual equality, although it looks a lot like a coffee morning. Later, she has a "playground committee meeting" and a Tae Kwondo class, which she cancels. I don't think she has a job. Another ill-defined character, dragged up to date - a bit - from her 70s origins, and thus becalmed.

In the original, Reggie is impotent with his wife, and turns to Miss Greengross for sexual reawakening. In this one, the one suggestion of impotence at home is in an assumption made by the 21st century Doc Morrissey - the simpering, ambient-music-playing "wellness person" - but this seems from his reaction not to be what Reggie is suffering from at all. But he fancies a new colleague anyway. It's hard to feel sorry for him. "It's not the food I want, it's you," he moans to Nicola, as she leaves the house. Are we to imply that her independence is irking him? She's been at home on every occasion he's come in the front door and clearly has time between meetings to do the cleaning and the washing and fold napkins.

Likewise, how terrible is his boss, Chris? He's the updated CJ, except he's a couple of years younger than Reggie rather than a couple of years older to reflect changing executive culture, but he's also officious and bullying, like an old boss, and recycles CJ's famous catchphrase, "I didn't get where I am today ..." Except that's updated too, with the suffix, "... by wearing a suit that makes me look like the bride at a lesbian wedding." Does this means Chris is sexually enlightened, or bigoted? Difficult to know. So his reference is modern ("lesbian wedding"), yet implicitly tired, like a remake of Dad's Army set in Helmand Province where a soldier says, "Those towelheads don't like it up 'em." Do Nye and Nobbs want recognition laughter, or something harder to come by? I wish they would make up their minds.

It's as if the New Reggie has actually been beamed in from the past, and finds it difficult to adjust to the new century, and yet that's not the premise. What, when all's said and done, does he actually have to deal with that most people don't also have to deal with? Laptops on trains. Sexual equality. Political correctness. Office charades. Why does Reggie go mad when most people put up with it? In the mid-70s, these were new anxieties, signifiers of a new and confusing world. In 2009, we have bigger problems: climate change, the economy, the chance of a terrorist bomb going off on a commuter train. Even trains being 27 minutes late had a certain potency in 1975, as more people used them. When trains are late now, people phone ahead on their mobiles.

Reggie's worries seem humdrum and commonplace, self-inflicted, even bourgeois as jobs become more scarce, and those with a boring office and desk and PA might actually be grateful in the current climate. Reggie Perrin in its current, confused form, pinging between two distinct briefs, has no bite. It has no purchase in the modern world - which is ironic when in the past both Nobbs and Nye (with Men Behaving Badly, especially) have demonstrated a real instinct for the zeitgeist. Some good lines ("Shall I sing?") and likeable performances from the talented likes of Clunes, Ripley, Neil Stuke, Justin Edwards and Jim Howick - familiar from Armstrong And Miller, he plays one of the young bucks in the next office - are at odds with the basic set-up. Memos from bosses read out by secretaries might be good for a laugh, but do bosses actually send messages via secretaries to be read out in the 21st century?

New Reggie says he has trouble "living in the moment." No wonder.




Oh, and here's the Mitchell and Webb sketch about brainstorming grooming products that's funnier than all the Groomtech scenes. (I think it's from 2006.)

Thanks to someone on the Word forums, I have discovered that Granada's Celebration: Madchester, The Sound Of The North, an ITV-aired documentary about the, yes, "Madchester" scene of the turn of the decade, is now on YouTube in full. It's an amazing, roomily-trousered, bangin' time capsule from that brief era when MC Tunes and Northside were considered worthy of adulation. But it also presents the first time ever that Stuart Maconie and myself appeared on television together. Well, I say "together" - he and James Brown of the NME parish were picked to front parts of the documentary, being "northern" and everything, and their bits at Afflecks Palace and the Dry bar are a joy unto themselves, especially the sight of Stuart's then-legendary fringe and neat tops tucked into his trousers.




In the section that starts at around five and a half minutes into this, the sixth part, you'll see Stuart "walking and talking" to camera, sweeping around the NME office, circa 1990, from the Thrills desk, past the pre-hotdesk I humbly shared with Fred Dellar (not pictured), pre-staff position. You can see me, briefly, in a religious looking Age Of Chance top, banging away unrealistically on an electric typewriter. And then he's gone, and my TV career is over. I'm so glad to have found this. It speaks of another time, another place.

Sometimes only a Japanese cat called Maru trying to jump into a big empty cardboard box will do. (Thanks to Keir for passing on the recommendation which originated on Twitter from Graham Linehan, who found it here.)

My big, fat Star Trek piece is published in today's Times. I haven't seen the paper version yet but it's online here. Always nice to have something substantial published in a national newspaper. Reading it back, it seems to have been exceptionally well edited (you'd expect nothing less of the Times of London, of course), with one exception, which isn't a subbing error, merely a casualty of reordering the copy and losing the source of a callback: in the last but one paragraph, it says, "It is, improbably, a good advert for us. Except for that theme song." This refers back to a large section that was cut about the Enterprise TV series, whose theme tune was a bone of contention with fans. Because that reference is gone, it sounds like I'm knocking the theme tune: the Alexander Courage classic from the 60s. I'm not. Other than that, I'm very pleased.





I don't expect anyone but Trek completists to read this, but the main chunks that got lost in the edit were:

Doctor Who, our only meaningful TV equivalent in terms of longevity and adaptability, survived into a new century by hibernating for 16 years. During Star Trek's ten years off, syndicated reruns of the extant 79 episodes kept the flame burning, its absence merely adding to the mythology. Star Trek seems to have been on our screens, large and small, for a lifetime, part of the fabric of popular culture, an archetype, and a template for so much subsequent fantasy fiction, from Star Wars, Alien, Sunshine and Firefly, to Blake's 7, Babylon 5, Hyperdrive and the recently revived Red Dwarf.

The simplicity of the set-up - colour-coded crew drop in on alien planet with miraculously breathable air and solve social ills before beaming back to ship and zooming off again - allows for endless permutations. Thanks to the post-Star Wars marketability of sci-fi, Star Trek enjoyed a spectacular renaissance in the 80s and 90s. With The Next Generation, Deep Space Nine and Voyager, a fully functioning universe across three centuries was created.

However, the fifth and most recent television incarnation, Star Trek: Enterprise, which ran from 2001 to 2006, was by fairly common consensus below par. After much promise - the first series to be filmed on digital video, the first to be shown in widescreen and HD - it was the first to be cancelled since the dark days of 1969. Why? It lacked charm; the Vulcans were borderline racist (science officer T'Pol uses a "nasal numbing agent" to repel the unpleasant smell of humans), and, after a black captain, Sisko, in Deep Space Nine, and a woman, Janeway, in Voyager, it seemed a retrograde step to return to a white North American male, Archer (played by Quantum Leap's Scott Bakula). According to Ina Rae Hark, Professor of English and Film Studies at the University of South Carolina, "Archer's mixture of resentment, arrogance and cluelessness could be read as mimicking George W Bush's desire to go it alone and reject the cautious multilateralism recommended by the Vulcan High Command (read: 'Old Europe')." Enterprise also lacked viewers, dropping to a trough of 2.5 million.

Plus, there was the theme song, the thudding, overwrought, Diane Warren-penned power ballad Faith Of The Heart. Light years away from Alexander Courage's unforgettable, wordless aria for flute and organ ("ah-ahhhh-ah-ah-ah-ah-ah!"), this new tune was originally commissioned for the soppy Robin Williams film Patch Adams, and sung by Russell Watson ("I can reach any star/I've got faith/Faith of the heart"). An online petition signed by 2,000 fans read, "We wish to express our unmitigated disgust with the theme song that has been selected for the new Enterprise series ... It is not fit to be scraped off the bottom of a Klingon's boot.'' This echoed the mass letter-writing campaign to NBC in 1968 that helped earn the original series a third season. The power ballad remained immune to such people power.

Enterprise seemed finally to deal the Vulcan neck pinch to the Star Trek project, cancelled by US network CBS after four seasons and 98 episodes. But the notoriously devout worldwide community of fans that has grown up around Trek over the decades - the "Trekkies" or "Trekkers" depending on your preference - have lived through enough exaggerated reports of the franchise's death to keep the faith. Any lapse in new product is instantly filled with back catalogue.

At least these cuts were logical.

For no reason other than Dave just sent me these, here are some supplementary pics from our birdwatching trip to Norfolk last Tuesday: that gorgeous male pochard in more detail; me eating a homemade Eccles cakes even though I am in Norfolk; me standing on the beach at Cley; and Dave and I failing to identify some kind of warbler. I can't lie, I've been enjoying the dialogue about birds far more than any of the other shit. (The last picture is real.)

Jim Bob's new album, his eighth solo work, Goffam, was "out" yesterday. Don't go looking in the shops, it's available to buy at his gigs or via the Carter USM website. I don't think I need to restate my history with Carter USM, but I have known Jim in a part-professional, part-unprofessional manner since I first met he and Fruitbat in 1989, around the time of Sheriff Fatman, which, in three minutes, convinced me I was in the presence of local geniuses for local people. Even though other writers at the NME could lay earlier claim to Carter appreciation (Steve Lamacq, most conspicuously), I bumped into them a lot over the next few years, travelled behind the Iron Curtain with them in the former Czechslovakia and was lucky enough to commission myself to go to New York with them, and EMF, for the Christmas cover story in 1991, a highpoint for any of us connected in some way to the band. Anyway, they split up in 1998, and went their separate but never that separate ways, and I was able to contrive to have both Jim and Les on 6 Music at various points during my time there. (I even smuggled him onto Radio 2 when - for one week only - I deputised for Mark Radcliffe in the old days when the controller of the station liked me.)

When they re-formed Carter two Christmases ago, I was thrilled to be almost "down the front" at Brixton Academy, singing along to every word. Which is why it gives me so much pleasure to report that Jim's latest album, another loosely conceptual piece forged on the pavements of South London and held together with the bile of an urban malcontent and father-for-justice at a funny age, is another belter. I've been hearing the great English songwriters in Jim's ever more accomplished solo work for a while now - Ian Dury, Ray Davies, Damon Albarn - and Goffam carries that baton forwards with its witty but serious protest songs about crime and the causes of crime. His words have always been sharp and funny, although the tortuous puns of old have given way to something more poetic, less forced. Try this poignant verse from the opener, The Golden Years Of Lonely Old Dears:

The coins I've saved
In an old coffee jar
Will light up one bar, one bar of gold
Enough to thaw my old bones out some more
I did not survive a war to die of cold

Goffam is played mostly live, or as-live, with Chris T-T and Johnny Lamb; it's not as conspicuously arranged as the last album, A Humpty Dumpty Thing (whose Cartoon Dad remains one of my all-time favourites from his solo canon), but the sparser production simply foregrounds Jim's songwriting confidence. Lonely Cop reminds me of Kevin Coyne, which is anything but faint praise coming from me, and I love the way he tackles one of the thornier issues of the day, knife crime, without sensation or sentimentality on Teenage Body County ("Oh what a world we've made for our children/A world to get killed in"). These are London songs, but that doesn't bar entry to anybody from outside the M25 - the hope and angst are universal. His songs always were 24 hours from Tulse Hill.

He tells me he's yet to even receive a single play on 6 Music. Can this be true? What has happened to that place?

OK, shall I be the last person to review Star Trek? I saw it last Thursday at the first UK press screening in Leicester Square, but assumed, dutifully and unquestioningly like I always do, that there was some kind of embargo. But if there is, nobody's taking any notice of it, and in fact, I rather surmise that the film company, Paramount, will be delighted to ratchet up some more advance publicity before the actual May 8 release of the new, JJ Abrams-produced-and-directed eleventh Trek motion picture. The Times of London, for whom I have written a big piece on the franchise (due this Saturday, a mere fortnight before the actual May 8 release date), was just one national newspaper to "go big" on the Star Trek premiere, which took place last night. In their case it was a huge photo of Zachary Quinto who plays Spock. On the front of Metro, it was a huge photo of Simon Pegg and his wife Maureen. The media have gone Star Trek crazy! And to be fair, they have reason to be.

Star Trek, with its big old lack of a subtitle and number, feels like JJ Abrams wiping the slate clean, like Chris Nolan did with Batman Begins. This is basically Star Trek Begins, and it's a very shrewd way of "rebooting" a 43-year-old franchise which is pretty battered after the almost universally disliked Enterprise. So, Abrams and his writers get to stamp themselves all over the original series without literally remaking it, and both clueless new generation and precious old generation have some stake in it. Although it's a state-of-the-art digital fireworks display, with much spectacle to gawp at, you'd have to say this is a blockbuster about relationships (Kirk and Spock, Kirk and Bones, even Spock and Uhura), and that's no mean feat in this brainless age. Abrams is not a Trekker/Trekkie but his screenwriters are, and it shows in all the in-jokes and nods to the heritage. They hold back Pegg's Scotty till about halfway through and they know exactly what they're doing. (He's as entertaining as you hoped he would be.) I was certainly among those who laughed gratefully when Karl Urban's well-judged McCoy said, "I'm a doctor, not a physicist." There's a lot of crowd-pleasing.

Oddly, since it was Star Wars that paved the way for The Motion Picture in 1979, it felt very post-Star Wars. I don't really want to say any more, as it's going to be a while before most people get to see it (and I want you to read my piece on Saturday, with exclusive interviews with Pegg and Jonathan Ross). Needless to say, Abrams has not fluffed it. And no, I wasn't able to write 2,800 words without using a variation of the phrase, "It's ____, Jim, but not as we know it." I'm only human.

In this spontaneous Collings & Herrin podcast, nominally number 60, we shamelessly celebrate reaching number 6 in the iTunes podcast charts and overtaking Stephen Fry for at least one blessed moment before - we assume - plummeting back down again when our new subscribers hear this very podcast. In it, we talk mainly about our own brief taste of success, but also a bit about Tesco's push for Lebensraum, fat people causing global warming and Susan Boyle, plus sophisticated film reviews of Star Wars with Simon Pegg, Fast And Furious and Crank: High Voltage. This podcast, which almost doesn't count, is accompanied by this picture of Richard as a Romulan and Andrew as a Vulcan. What a shame these two alien races are doomed never to unite.

I was excited enough when I saw this on Sunday.

Imagine my puerile glee when I saw this today:



This is the all-round, general, all-inclusive, non-denominational, non-specialist Tunes podcast chart. Not the comedy chart. Not the audio comedy chart - the one we usually refer to for evidence that we are not just talking to ourselves once a week. The actual iTunes podcast chart, featuring all the podcasts on iTunes in order of popularity ... and our podcast is NUMBER SIX in it. As continually mentioned, we have no idea how these charts are formulated, but it certainly has something to do with new subscribers. Richard Herring thinks his Twittering has won us this surge of new subscribers. I think it was my plug on the national BBC radio station 5 Live on Friday afternoon. Either way, I hope you will allow me to crow, briefly. Don't forget: we have been recording this podcast, for free, for something like 61 weeks, without a break. To make it so high is a moral victory. We are the only podcast in the chart that's not compiled and edited from an existing radio show, or a podcast built around the idea of a person being paid to record a podcast for a media company whose revenue is mostly based on advertising and sponsorship, or a podcast recorded by someone who's already rich enough to do one for the fun of it and actually runs a paid-for website. We are, I think, entitled to a certain patina of self-satisfaction for reaching this lofty peak.

For the record, in case we climb no higher: Eddie Izzard: Live From London is an interview he did with Simon Amstell for Apple, in the Apple Store, as an Apple promotion, split up into mini chunks, one of them being 36 seconds long; it is an iTunes podcast on iTunes, advertising iTunes. Friday Night Comedy is what it says on the tin, two weekly comedy shows from Radio 4: professionally written and recorded comedy for the BBC, released in podcast form. The Ricky Gervais Podcast, recorded by one of the most famous comedians in the world and his also very famous partner and their moderately less famous friend, is effectively a free advert for an audiobook, which you have to pay for, via iTunes, thus not a podcast in the pure sense, rather an advert. David Mitchell's Soapbox is a weekly, three-minute video of the very famous TV comedian, produced by a professional production company called Channel Flip (a "Video Channel For Switched On Men") and sponsored by a shower gel, I think. And Jonathan Ross is, clearly, a 44-minute, music-free compilation of the best links from his hugely popular Radio 2 programme, with big star guest interview. And then it's us. These are all very good podcasts - as of course, is Adam And Joe, one of our firm favourites, which is, unusually, six places below us on this crazy occasion.



Take that, The Man! Not only is ours the longest weekly podcast in the Top 10, it's more regular than Stephen Fry's, longer than David Mitchell's and less profitable than all of them! We are indie! We are unsponsored! We are our own men! We are shit! We are unstoppable! (I'm actually in quite a bad mood, but this glimmer of hope has lifted my spirits.) The only way is down.

Hooray, I finally delivered my epic piece on Star Trek to the Times, for publication this Saturday. It's been a labour of love, and I have been immersed in the world of the Enterprise since before Easter. (I had enough material to start my own lecture tour on the socio-political history of Starfleet and spent the last few days before deadline simply honing and honing until it was the correct length.) I saw the new film on Thursday but I'm not sure I'm allowed to talk about it yet, as it's not released until May 8. You can make your face into Spock and a Romulan and get him to say stupid things as if you were one of the telekinetic Ancient Greeks in the season three episode Plato's Stepchildren at this cheese cracker-sponsored website. (These pictures used to follow you around the room with their eyes and speak, but it became so annoying, and you can't switch the speech off, so I have replaced them with static grabs. But make one yourself.)

I was being Mark Kermode again today. (You can download the podcast if you like. It's currently one place ahead of the Collings & Herrin podcast - that's how popular it is.) I won't run through all the much better films I reviewed, but I will tell you that I paid to go and see Crank: High Voltage, the sequel to Crank, before the show. This is because the film company opted not to show the film to critics. I don't know what they were frightened off, since this is a franchise with a ready-made audience who are unlikely to be swayed by soppy old critics. Anyway, I felt I should see it to get a fuller picture of what's out at the multiplexes this week, and it was showing at midday at the Shepherd's Bush Vue, so plenty of time to fit it in at 96 minutes. However, I walked out after 26 minutes.

You might call this a dereliction of critical duty, but since I had paid to see it, I was a member of the public, not a critic, and as a member of the public, I could take no more of it. It's not that it's especially badly made - I like the way Jason Statham has become a marketable Hollywood action star, the high concept of his character having to keep restarting his artificial heart while he tracks down the triad men who have stolen his real one is good, and it's all done with a certain degree of frenetic, offbeat style - but I just wasn't prepared to sit through any more of a film that seemed to so despise women, especially foreign women, but in the absence of foreign women, American women would do.

During the first 26 minutes, Statham's character Chev Chelios beseiges a rundown brothel, throws lots of male clients out of the windows, and sends lots of scantily-clad Asian prostitutes running into the street, some of them - tee hee - not wearing their tops (you could see their breasts and one of them fell over and everything). One of them, a pretty thinly drawn stereotype, starts yelling at him and offering to have sex with him at the same time, and he keeps impatiently telling her to shut up and go away until it turns out she has information that will help him find the bad men. She sends him to a strip club, full of lap-dancing, gyrating ladies, again with no tops on, one of whom - story alert! - turns out to be Chev's girlfriend from the first film. She has black tape over her nipples and some revealing hot pants on.

Meanwhile, Dwight Yoakam, reviving his weird doctor character from the first film, is seen speaking on the phone while absent mindedly rubbing an ice cube around the buttocks of a black lady who is lying across his lap. She doesn't seem to mind, so maybe it's his wife or partner. Back at the club, Chev snogs his girlfriend, which suggests he likes her, but then the shouty Asian prostitute gets shoutily jealous and punches the taped-nipples girlfriend in the face. And then there is a big, noisy shoot-out, during which another lapdancing lady, caught in the crossfire, is shot in the artificial breasts. I think we were supposed to find it funny that a mixture of blood and sillicon was pouring out of the holes in them, while she wailed in obvious distress. I can only imagine that to a Nuts or Zoo reader, this worldview is not only realistic, but also aspirational. I could take no more and voted with my feet. I know there are men out there who dislike women, but I would rather not hang around with them.

I am not calling for Crank: High Voltage to be banned. (It does carry an 18 certificate, which legally means that no Nuts or Zoo reader can go and see it.) But I very rarely walk out of films, and I make no bones about the fact that I walked out of this one. I'm sure the film carried on being exciting and fast for the remaining 70 minutes, and some other women had no tops on, and I hope the four other men in the cinema enjoyed it.

In Collings & Herrin Podcast 59, we do something romantic that we've never done before and will never do again (you'll have to listen to find out exactly what). We also correct a heinous miscarriage of justice, consider the 39 complaints logged about ITV1's pornographic Saturday teatime talent show Britain's Got Tassles, support the campaign to moan about the red elastic bands left by postmen on your path, consider the almost self-defeating generosity of the British Legion raffle, and warn Margaret off The Apprentice not to pick up the soap when Nick is around, even though only one of us still watches The Apprentice, which is a stupid programme. And only one of us is going to see Star Trek.

This time last year, my friend Dave and I went on a birdwatching trip to the Norfolk Coast. We had a memorable day on the marshes among reed beds and on the wind-battered beaches and dunes. We decided to return, and we did, on Tuesday. Guess what? We had another fantastic day. You can read about last year's trip here. We make no apologies for returning to the same birding spots, visiting the same excellent reserves, staying at the same pub B&B in the village of Dersingham and eating the same local sheep's cheese bought from the same local shop as we tramped the walkways at Titchwell and Cley. Dave was wearing a different waterproof, and we ate the cheese with homemade ginger biscuits this time, which made the trip entirely distinct. Here we are on a bench at Titchwell, pretending to look at birds for the camera. We are not looking at birds.

As I believe I established last year, Dave is a far more seasoned birder than I. He's been doing it since the cradle and has advanced spotting skills and behavioural knowledge; he knows Latin names and can spot a skylark by its song. He is, in this respect, my hero and my spirit guide. There's no better chap to go birding with. At the reserves and in the hides (both in excellently designed abundance at Titchwell and Cley), you will see a much more professional birder than either Dave or I, weighed down with telescopes and tripods and cameras, and almost always bearded. Birders of this type are friendly - nods and hellos are usually exchanged on the paths - assuming you don't break birder etiquette in the quiet of the hides, such as shouting out, "Look! There's a pigeon!" or keeping your mobile phone on. We respect these rules, but observe birdlife with a little less stricture and a more relaxed attitude, never scared to get out our bird guides and consult them - a perfectly sensible act, but one perhaps frowned upon by those who have it all up here. (I love bird books, and carry the Larousse, which is a bit big, but has exquisite drawings, and I don't care.)

It was a gorgeous day, Tuesday: dry, bright, not as dramatically windy as last year, and a little misty later on, which certainly made identification through binoculars of a wading purple sandpiper a little tricky - although we managed it through a long process of elimination and further, patient inspection. This was one of two "lifers" for me ie. species I had previously never spotted - the other being the surprise pair of little egrets we saw at Cley in full view. Once again, we were captivated by the swooping and hovering of the Marsh Harrier, and sat and watched a pair of them for ages. This is better than watching television.

Enjoying a small cup of instant coffee at the Titchwell "feeding station" and the last of the sheep's cheese, we followed the antics of the two pheasants that seem to live there. I am intending to enter the photograph above of the male in the Wildlife Photographer Of The Year competition.

Last year, over the entirety of the trip, including birds we saw from the car on the drive into and out of Norfolk, we spotted 49 species of bird. This year, I am happy to say, we notched up 50. In no particular order (as I got my notes mixed up):

• Shelduck
• Teal
• Avocet
• Shoveler
• Canada Goose
• Greylag
• Redshank
• Herring Gull
• Curlew
• Brent Goose
• Wigeon
• Oystercatcher
• Lesser Black-Backed Gull
• Wren
• Blackbird
• Crow
• Gadwall
• Cormorant
• Moorhen
• Chiffchaff
• Chaffinch
• Siskin
• Robin
• House Sparrow
• Blue Tit
• Great Tit
• Dunnock
• Pheasant
• Kestrel
• Reed Warbler
• Greenfinch
• Mute Swan
• Tufted Duck
• Black-Headed Gull
• Pink-Footed Goose
• Swallow
• Mallard
• Egyptian Geese
• Marsh Harrier
• Coot
• Black-Tailed Godwit
• Lapwing
• Purple Sandpiper
• Pochard
• Little Egret
• Starling
• Jay
• Magpie
• Meadow Pipit
• Rook
  

For the record, we heard skylarks but didn't see them, so they don't really qualify as a spot. Nor do the two hens I saw from the car on the road to Wisbech. I only have a very basic digital camera with a very low-powered zoom, so I don't really bother to try and photograph the birds. However, amid the mist, you might just be able to pick out two passing pochards and a nesting greylag. For a wildfowl enthusiast like me, Norfolk presents rich pickings. And my new favourite duck is the male gadwall with its steel-grey body. Magnificent. There's a good drawing of one on the RSPB site.



In addition to revisiting last year's sites to ensure that they were still marshy and reedy, we stopped off in Sandringham on the drive back yesterday morning and enjoyed the stillness of some prime woodland, where we saw a common jay and a white-haired old lady with some dogs who turned out not to be The Queen.

Before returning to the grim reality of urban misery, a quick mention for The Feathers, the hotel next door in Dersingham to the pub we stayed in, where we went for our well-earned dinner after many hours birding. A charming, family-run, carrstone building "steeped in royal history", formerly a coaching inn, the Saddle Bar had wood panels, a stone fireplace and framed photographs of the Kaiser visiting Sandringham before the First World War. It also turned out to have a new chef, and a very good one, who cooked us steak and hunter's pie respectively, which we washed down with draft Bulmers pear cider, with ice. We felt we had earned this inexpensive feast.

But what made our evening in the Feathers especially memorable was the British Legion function being held in the room next door. Before our food arrived, a young man came through to the bar selling raffle tickets in aid of the Legion, and all the diners in there bought a strip each. A while later, the same man came back through and called out the winning number. A lady nearby leapt up - she had won. She followed the man through to the function room and came back clutching a bottle of wine. How nice.

Then, unexpectedly, the man came back and called out another number. It was one of mine! Because I was by then tucking into my venison, he brought my prize out to me: a bottle of liebfraumilch, the very existence of which made Dave and I chuckle into our seasonal vegetables, although not wishing to appear ungrateful. (I love 1983, as you know, but my nostalgia for this year does not stretch to drinking German wine.) Then, the man came back in and read out a third number. It was one of Dave's! Third prize turned out to be a fairly nondescript kitchen storage jar. But the winning was not over yet.

A fourth number was read out, and a young couple on the next table claimed fourth prize - which was "a bowl for putting peanuts in". Mercifully, the prizes stopped flowing at this point. Dave and I left our liebfraumilch and storage jar on the table when we left, in the hope that our prizes can be reused by the British Legion for their next raffle.

Thank you, Dersingham, for making us so welcome. We'll be back to make it 51. And Dave may well have a new waterproof.

Up soon, Collings & Herrin Podcast 58 finds us celebrating the good fortune of the man sitting next to the Guinness heiress on the plane [dramatic reconstruction pictured], ask why the Great British bobby is wearing a balaclava, discuss the entire 43-year history of Star Trek, laud the courageous Sir Michael Parkinson for being in a wilderness, promote Old Jamaica Ginger Beer in the vain hope of being sponsored by them, and, as usual, act like "a bit of a fanny" and "a doormat" in need of "a hug", not that we would ever allow a single customer review on iTunes to get to us.

It's Easter. Mark Kermode has done the decent thing and gone on holiday, so I'll be playing his part on Simon Mayo's show this Friday and next Friday on BBC Radio 5 Live, except Colin Murray's in for Simon, not that you'd know it from the at-a-glance 5 Live listings. For the record, I have not been asked to fill in for Mark on Film 24 on BBC News this time. I don't know why, after two years, but that's showbiz. This Friday, on 5 Live, I shall be reviewing 17 Again, Fast And Furious and 50 Dead Men Walking.

I'm Spartacus, the comedy film-based panel comedy film game pilot I recorded for Radio 2 the other Friday is on this Thursday, at 10.30pm, and thereafter for a week on iPlayer. I haven't heard the edit, but we did two hours of live comedy in front of an appreciative audience in the BBC Radio Theatre, with Adam Buxton as host, and myself, Will Smith, Jon Holmes and bestselling author Emma Kennedy as panelists and the famous Redd Pepper, Tube driver turned voiceover king, sitting next to Adam and saying things in his voice. Much less detail than that here.

Nothing to do with me, but a petition has been started - by an enterprising idealist called Vicki, actually - demanding the reinstatement of the award-winning sitcom Not Going Out. It's nice to be the subject of a petition, so I am merely passing on the link. Just bear in mind that it will have no effect whatsoever.

I really don't want to make a song and dance about it, but since I know for a fact that a surge of new people seem to visit the blog on Apprentice day while it's on TV, I have to announce that I am not going to be watching the rest of this series. Which means, self-evidently, I'm no longer going to be writing reviews of it each week. I appreciate your kind comments but if I'm not tuning in, I'll have nothing to review. I apologise for any inconvenience caused by this rash decision.

It's not that the programme has become predictable - its predictability was what I used to love about it - but I feel its time has passed. All the talk this week of "city slickers" and "high flyers" rang a hollow note for me. And yet, again, the producers have recruited a bunch of twats, and I think I've just had enough of watching twats. Perhaps this time next year, when the recession has really bedded in, twats like these will become harder to find. Perhaps not.

I think the very fact that Portobello Lofts seems to be sitting virtually empty, like so many other luxury penthouse newbuilds thrown up during the insane boom of the last decade and snapped up by "buy-to-let" landlords bent on a quick buck exposes The Apprentice and all it once stood for as a giant, empty sham. I don't have the time for it. Plus, you can read detailed dissections of last night's Apprentice on a hundred other blogs and in every daily newspaper, all mocking the idiocy of the candidates, just like I've done for three full series. I'm not doing this to generate ego-massaging calls for me to carry on. I'll leave it to the industrious and diplomacy-free Watch With Mothers and the witty and devoted Anna Pickard at the Guardian blogs.

I interviewed the genial Theo Paphitis last month - like Sir Alan, a multimillionare businessman turned TV star who also once ran a football club - and he said that the recession offered someone like him bags of opportunities. That's because he's the boss, having worked his way to the top by putting in 100-hour weeks and never coming home from the office, something he still does. Then again, he sold two profitable high street lingerie chains at their peak to private equity firms and has the money, in "cash", squirreled away in "clearing banks", whatever they are. His story is pretty typical. So much money was made during the boom by buying and selling and borrowing and investing and moving money around. (Sir Alan's portfolio is mostly property, not electonics; he sold Amstrad in 2007, again, when it was worth something.) Stuff was not manufactured in this country. Skills were not learned. Trades were not valued. We became a nation of shopkeepers and landlords, playing the markets, spinning the wheel, leaping through loopholes. And look where it got us. The candidates on The Apprentice - children of this money-for-money's-sake revolution, with their 110%, Porsche-driven fantasies and balls of steel, going forward - actually make me feel a little bit sick in my stomach today, whereas once they were fair game for sport.

I'm out.

The Apprentice: Week Two

Scene 1. Int. The Penthouse. Precisely 30 minutes before Sir Alan's first "swoop"
MOMMA PICKS UP THE PHONE
VOICE OF ACTRESS PLAYING FRANCES, DUBBED ON LATER [ON PHONE]:
Sir Alan wants to try and catch you in your underwear and t-shirts with no bras underneath: he'll be there in precisely 30 minutes, not a minute more, not a minute less.
MOMMA RUNS OFF WAVING WHAT SHE NOW KNOWS IS A FEATHER DUSTER, SHOUTING "HE'S COMING, HE'S COMING! IN 30 MINUTES! THAT'S, LIKE HALF AN HOUR! LET'S ACTION THAT GOING FORWARD!"

CUT TO: NOT A MINUTE MORE THAN 30 MINUTES LATER - AFTER ALL FRANCES SPECIFIED 30 MINUTES, SO HOW COULD IT BE ANYTHING OTHER THAN 30 MINUTES? - THE CANDIDATES ARE NOW ALL GELLED AND PAINTED IN AND DRESSED IN IDENTICAL DARK JACKETS AND INDUSTRIALLY FAT TIES, EXCEPT FOR CREAMPUFF WHO'S IN RED, TO HELP AL-QAEDA SPOT HER IN A CROWD. THEY LINE UP LIKE THE HITLER YOUTH THEY SECRETLY ARE, AS SIR ALAN MARCHES INTO THE LIVING ROOM TO BE FLANKED BY HIS TRUSTED GENERALS, NICK AND MARGARET, ALREADY PRACTISING THEIR GURNING, UNDER THE DIRECTORIAL GAZE OF LENI RIEFENSTAHL
SIR ALAN: Morning, bongo drums.
HITLER YOUTH: Guten morgen, Sir Alan. [CLICK HEELS]
SIR ALAN: Right! More menial work, more bowing and scraping at "city slickers" and "high flyers" who "work in the City", waving their wads of money in the faces of cleaners and shoe-shine boys and sandwich makers and making deregulated hay while the upturn shines. Well, at least they are when we're filming this - when the programme goes out in a year's time, the City will be a tumbleweed-strewn wasteland. Anyway, enough bladdy scripted toot. Your task, if you wanna work for me which I know you sincerely do, is to try and flog these exotic "city slickers" some wraps - of cocaine! Ha ha, only joking. Although that is an economy which I expect is still thriving, even in the land of the empty Gherkin.
URCHIN BOY ROCKY, AGED 4, REDDENS AND GRINS TO HIMSELF: THIS IS MY TASK! I RUN 150 SANDWICH SHOPS FROM MY NURSERY SCHOOL, AND EMPLOY 5,000 PEOPLE - SANDWICHES ARE MY LIFE! I'VE FORGOTTEN MORE ABOUT PUTTING SOMETHING BETWEEN TWO BITS OF BREAD THAT THE REST OF THESE ANCIENT MUMS AND DADS HAVE FORGOTTEN ABOUT OTHER THINGS! VICTORY WILL BE MINE!

Scene 2. Ext. The City, 2008, teeming with Gordon Gekko-style traders and cockney barrow boys barking into massive mobile phones ("Buy! Buy! Sell! Sell!"), using £50 notes to wipe dogshit off their Louis Vuitton shoes in the shadow of the Gherkin. Look at these cunts! They'll pay top dollar for pretty much anything between two bits of supermarket bread and probably tip you £100 rather than wait around to get change! Let's fleece them! Let's take the stripey shirts off their backs! They all go to work in a giant Gherkin! They actually work in a thing you get in sandwiches!
VOICEOVER:
First, the candidates have to elect a project manager.

Scene 3. Int. Room. Day
TEAM EMPIRE SIT AROUND A TABLE AND TRY TO REMEMBER EACH OTHERS' NAMES - JAMES, JOE, JOHN, GEOFF? WHO CARES! - WHILE URCHIN BOY ROCKY SIEZES THE DAY
URCHIN BOY ROCKY [ALREADY FLUSHED WITH FUTURE SUCCESS AND TRYING TO MAKE A SANDWICH BY PUTTING A MARKER PEN BETWEEN TWO SHEETS OF THE FLIP CHART]:
Because this is a task about making sandwiches, and I make sandwiches for a job, and I also did a sandwich course at college, and once wrote an essay about Lord Sandwich, and my favourite kind of music is wrap music, and my favourite band is Bread, and my favourite kind of business exercise is roll-play, and my favourite film is A Matter Of Loaf And Death, and my dad's name is Phil Ing, and my favourite meal is a whole meal, and my favourite euphemism for women's breasts which I am too young to regard in a sexual way is baps, and my favourite kind of bet in a betting shop is a spread bet, I nominate myself as project leader.
TEAM EMPIRE:
What exactly are sandwiches? We have heard of such things, but have no idea what is actually in them.
URCHIN BOY ROCKY:
Leave the sandwich part to me. You [POINTS TO MACKEM, UPSIDE-DOWN-HEAD AND HAPLESS] go and rustle up some business, and you [POINTS TO THE OTHER ONES WHO HAVE NOT YET GOT NAMES] think up some ways of making us look like fools in front of city slickers!

Scene 4. Int. Other room. Day
TEAM IGNITE ARE SITTING AROUND ANOTHER TABLE, PAINTING THEIR NAILS, PRESSING FLOWERS AND ADJUSTING THEIR MASSIVE BALLS UNDER THEIR SKIRTS. PASHMINA HAS ALREADY MADE HERSELF A BIG TOP HAT WITH "PROJECT MANAGER" WRITTEN ON IT IN NEON LIGHTS. FOR SOME REASON, SHE HAS HER ARMS AROUND BRUNETTE WOMAN AND REDHEAD WOMAN, ALBEIT IN A RATHER AGGRESSIVE WAY
PASHMINA:
I am a restaurateur. I am an award-winning restaurateur, in fact. And look, I'm already wearing a project manager hat, so it would seem counterproductive for one of you, my sisters, to question my authority.
THE OTHERS ARE TOO FRIGHTENED OF PASHMINA'S STERN FACE TO RAISE ANY OBJECTIONS
Right, you [POINTS TO BLONDE WOMAN AND TWO OTHER WOMEN], you're the subteam in charge of selling my award-winning Mediterranean-style canopies to city slickers. And you [POINTS TO EVERYBODY ELSE], you're in charge of coming to Lidl with me for the finest ingredients available to humanity.
A PALL OF FEAR FALLS ACROSS THE ROOM

INSET: PASHMINA
PASHMINA: [TO CAMERA]
I am an award-winning restaurateur with ten Michelin stars. What am I doing here, trying to work for an electronics firm in Brentwood? Not a clue. But boy do I do a good stern face. And as long as the clients are drunk, we can serve them wet tissues in a bun and they'll sit up and beg.

Scene 5. Int. Kitchen. Day
THE GIRLS ARE NOW DRESSED IN WHITE COATS, HAIR NETS AND RED HATS, EXCEPT THEIR GLORIOUS LEADER PASHMINA, WHO IS DRESSED IN MILITARY REGALIA WITH MEDALS AND A LIVE EAGLE PERCHED ON ONE EPAULET. SHE ADDRESSES HER SUBJECTS
PASHMINA:
From now on, I want you all to call me "Leader". Let me hear you!
ALL:
Leader.
PASHMINA:
I can't hear you!
ALL:
Leader!!
PASHMINA:
Are we winners or losers?
ALL:
Winners!
PASHMINA:
Winners - what?
ALL:
Winners, Leader!
PASHMINA:
Are we going to crush the boys with our top-quality, homegrown, organic, artisan-baked, wholesome ingredients?
ALL:
Yes, Leader!
PASHMINA:
How do you pronounce "canopy"?
ALL:
Canopy, Leader!
PASHMINA:
Who is the leader?
ALL:
You are the Leader!
PASHMINA:
Who's a restaurateur?
ALL:
You are! Leader!
PASHMINA:
And what is a wrap called?
ALL:
A flatbread! Leader!
PASHMINA:
Why?
ALL:
Because it sounds better, Leader!

Scene 6. Int. The same props company that's in every series. Day
HAPLESS LEADS THE PROPS SUBTEAM
HAPLESS:
Our theme is the Olympics 2012, so we need some Greek togas. Not Roman ones, Greek ones. And some Greek statues. Not Roman ones, Greek ones. Because the Olympics 2012 is our theme. You've got to have a theme when you're selling sandwiches, haven't you?
WOMAN WHO WORKS THERE:
You're spot on. I would never buy a sandwich off a man who wasn't in fancy dress.
UPSIDE-DOWN-HEAD HAS A PRIVATE MOMENT OF DOUBT: PERHAPS HIS OLYMPICS 2012 IDEA IS SHIT BEYOND BELIEF

Scene 7. Int. Chicago law firm. Day
UNDER THE WATCHFUL EYE OF MARGARET, BLONDE WOMAN AND TWO OTHER WOMEN PITCH THEIR WHOLESOME MEDITERRANEAN CANOPY RANGE TO A MAN AND A LADY
BLONDE WOMAN:
We have hot canopies and cold canopies - basically, if the canopy is traditionally served cold, we're serving it hot, and if it's traditionally served hot, we're serving it cold. That is our theme.
LADY:
[UNSURE] I see.
MARGARET PUTS HER HEAD IN HER HANDS, AND THEN REALISES SHE'S GONE TOO EARLY. SHE COMPOSES HERSELF
BLONDE WOMAN:
First of all, can I apologise for my West Midlands accent? I know what you're all like down here in London, and you probably think I speak like this because I'm thick. I'm actually not thick. I just haven't heard of food. We don't really have food in the West Midlands. Can I make that clear before I start saying stupid things?
MAN:
[PATRONISINGLY] Of course. Fire away.
BLONDE WOMAN:
First, we have tuna in basil oil. I don't know what tuna is, or basil, or oil. What are they?
LADY:
[PATRONISINGLY] That's really for you to tell us isn't it? [THINKING: THICK BRUMMIE! THICK BRUMMIE! BENNY FROM CROSSROADS! BARRY FROM AUF WIEDERSEHEN PET! MRS OVERALL! OTHER UNHELPFUL MIDLANDS STEREOTYPES!]
BLONDE WOMAN:
Bruschetta. That's another firm favourite in the Mediterranean. Isn't it? I think it's a type of melon. Or a national dance. Or a type of gun?
MAN:
Can you do a blini?
BLONDE WOMAN:
Is that like a type of lorry? Or is it a pop singer? We can definitely do it, whatever it is, as our Leader is a restauranteur. Which means she's a restaurant. She can do anything.
MARGARET PUTS HER HEAD IN HER HANDS. PRINT!

INSET: MACKEM
MACKEM: [TO CAMERA, AS IF ASKING THE CAMERA OUTSIDE FOR A FIGHT, LIKE]
I think it's important, like, to undermine Urchin Boy Rocky at this stage, as an act of self-preservation: he's shit, his sandwiches are shit, the costumes are shit, and this is a shit sandwich, with bread made of shit and the filling. Anyone who calls me a Geordie is gonna get a thump, like.

Scene 8. Int. FTSE 100 company, still riding high in deregulated times. Conference room. Day
MACKEM LEADS THE NEGOTIATIONS. HE HAS DRAWN ON A PENCIL MOUSTACHE. IT IS ALMOST SPIV-LIKE
MACKEM:
I think it's a shit quote, but a boy has told me to tell you that it's £65 a head.
BOSS OF COMPANY:
That's a little steep. Can you quote me happy?
MACKEM:
£64.99 a head?
BOSS OF COMPANY:
That's quoting me furious.
MACKEM:
£64.95? And that's my final offer.
BOSS OF COMPANY:
Security!
MACKEM:
Wait, wait! A pound a head.
BOSS OF COMPANY:
What do you take me for? Some kind of pilchard?
MACKEM:
We'll pay you.
BOSS OF COMPANY:
Now you're talking my language!
MACKEM OPENS RAINCOAT TO REVEAL SILK STOCKINGS AND CORNED BEEF IN POCKETS
MACKEM:
Can I interest you in any of these while I'm here?
NICK WRITES DOWN "SPIV" IN MASSIVE LETTERS FOR THE CAMERA, WHILE ROLLING EYES IN AN EXAGGERATED MANNER, AS IF PERHAPS HE'S MATTHEW CORBETT ON THE SOOTY SHOW

Scene 9. Ext. The hustling, bustling City of Old London Town, in the shadow of a big skyscraper in the shape of a dollar sign, with not a single trader on the roof, tossing himself off. Day
THE IRISH ONE WITH A DRAWN-ON BEARD THAT HE HASN'T FINISHED DRAWING ON YET IS DRESSED AS AN ATHLETE AND IS TRYING TO SELL A PEANUT BUTTER SANDWICH TO A TOP CITY SLICKER AS HE IS CARRIED PAST IN A SEDAN CHAIR BY GORDON BROWN AND ALISTAIR DARLING, AS THEY LOOKED IN 2008, IE. MUCH YOUNGER AND MORE CAREFREE [ALISTAIR DARLING'S HAIR IS BLACK]
THE IRISH ONE WITH A DRAWN-ON BEARD THAT HE HASN'T FINISHED DRAWING ON YET:
Gentlemen, can I tempt you with an Olympics 2012-themed sandwich? We call it the Michael Phelps Sandwich, as it's got peanut butter in it, and no butter, obviously, because who in this day and age expects butter in a sandwich? It's also got chlorine in it, to represent swimming.
THE CITY SLICKER THROWS A $100 BILL OUT OF THE SEDAN CHAIR BUT DOES NOT EVEN BOTHER TAKING THE SANDWICH. JAMES IS SEEN IN THE BACKGROUND WITH A MEGAPHONE USING HIS BIG MOUTH TO SHOUT INCESSANTLY ABOUT HIMSELF AND HOW HIS SPIT TASTES OF SUCCESS

Scene 10. Int. Lidl. Day
PASHMINA IS ACTIONING SOME FOOD - THE GIRLS DASH ROUND THE AISLES LIKE IT'S SUPERMARKET SWEEP. MINIONS PRESENT HUGE BAGS OF THE CHEAPEST ECONOMY FROZEN CHICKEN AND THE CHEAPEST ECONOMY FLATBREADS IN THE SHOP TO HER
PASHMINA:
How much?
MINION:
10p for 100 indeterminate knuckles of mechanically recovered meat from an abbatoir bin that have been shown a photo of some chickens. Bargain, Leader!
PASHMINA:
Too expensive. Haggle with the man at the till and try to knock it down to 9p. Don't forget, our city slickers will be drugged and sedated by the time the food comes out, so they will not notice the quality of the meat, or otherwise. Idiots. Have any of you run a restaurant? I don't think so.

Scene 11. Int. Other kitchen. Day
CREAMPUFF AND IRISH ONE ARE PREPARING HIGH-END MEDITERRANEAN TREATS BY THROWING FISTFULS OF SQUASHED ECONOMY TOMATOES AT THE WALL, THEN USING LARGE HUNKS OF BREAD THEY STOLE OFF SOME DUCKS IN THE PARK LAKE TO WIPE IT OFF WITH. ALL BODES WELL

Scene 12. Int. Kitchen. Day
URCHIN BOY ROCKY PROFESSIONALLY SPREADS PEANUT BUTTER ONTO BROWN BREAD, CONFIDENT THAT CITY SLICKERS WILL GO FOR IT IN A BIG WAY, JUST LIKE HIS 20 MILLION SATISFIED CUSTOMERS IN THE NORTH DO - HE'S LIKE TOM CRUISE IN COCKTAIL, FLIPPING JARS OF PEANUT BUTTER OVER HIS HEAD AND BALANCING THEM ON THE END OF A BIG SPATULA. THE OTHER BOYS LOOK ON IN CONFIDENT AMAZEMENT, EXCEPT MACKEM, WHO SHAKES HIS HEAD, AND NICK, WHO SHAKES HIS HEAD

Scene 13. Ext. Ye Olde Threadneedle Street, City Of Londonium. Day
AN ANGRY MOB OF EMACIATED CITY SLICKERS CHASE THE BRUNETTE ONE FROM LAST WEEK AND MOMMA AND THE REDHEAD ONE DOWN THE STREET, WAVING WRAPS WITH NOTHING WRAPPED INSIDE THEM EXCEPT POST-IT NOTES SAYING "APRIL FOOL", PLASTIC TUBS FILLED WITH HUMAN HAIR AND TIN-FOIL PLATTERS OF DRY 70s LETTUCE
BRUNETTE ONE FROM LAST WEEK:
Thanks for your feedback.

Scene 14. Int. The Actual Gherkin. Conference room. Day
A WORRIED EXEC WRINGS HIS HANDS AS THE CLOCK TICKS EVER NEARER TO 6.30. THE BOYS ARE STILL DECORATING A TABLE WITH A PIECE OF GOLD PAPER AND A CANDELABRA AND A BALLOON IN THE GREEK/ROMAN STYLE
WORRIED EXEC:
Chop chop, gentleman - it's nearly time for the opening ceremony of the 2012 Olympics.
MACKEM:
[MUTTERS] I'm embarrassed. I disassociate myself from this farrago. It's shit. It's shitter than shit. It's shit with a hint of shit. Shit is looking at this and calling it shit.
URCHIN BOY ROCKY:
[HEARD FROM KITCHEN] Which way round is a sandwich? Is it two pieces of filling on the outside and a piece of bread in the middle? I can never remember!

Scene 15. Int. Reception room. Day
THE GIRLS SERVE THEIR GIANT-SIZED MEDITERRANEAN CANOPIES TO THE ASSEMBLED CLIENTS OF THE CHICAGO BANK: WHOLE BAGUETTES DIPPED IN TOMATO, FLATBREADS WITH "BLINI" WRITTEN ON THEM IN MARKER PEN, ALSO DIPPED IN TOMATO, AND DOG FOOD SMEARED ON SOME OLD TILES THEY FOUND IN A SKIP WITH A LEAF OF BASIL ON
CLIENT:
[GAGGING] I'm going to swallow this mouthful of vomit, because I don't know where to put it.
PASHMINA:
[TO CAMERA] It'll be fine. The Rohypnol will start to take effect in a minute, and we can just start ramming the food down their throats like we're guards at the Maze Prison. That's how it works.

Scene 16. Int. The Actual Gherkin. Conference room. Day
MARGARET WRITES DOWN THE WORDS "BARE ARMS" AND "SPOTTY BACKS" AS A SALIVATING JAMES, A GRINNING UPSIDE-DOWN HEAD AND THE IRISH ONE WITH A DRAWN-ON BEARD THAT HE HASN'T FINISHED DRAWING ON YET MOVE AMONG THE CITY SLICKERS BEARING TRAYS OF BUTTERLESS PEANUT BUTTER SANDWICHES ON STICKS, WEARING TOGAS THAT REVEAL THEIR BARE ARMS AND SPOTTY BACKS
JAMES:
[BARELY ABOUT TO FORM WORDS DUE TO THE SUCCESS-FLAVOURED DROOL COMING OUT OF HIS MOUTH] ... And this one represents the Indian subcontinent because it's shaped like India, you see?
THE IRISH ONE WITH A DRAWN-ON BEARD THAT HE HASN'T FINISHED DRAWING ON YET:
... And if you join the dots on my back, it forms a likeness of Michael Phleps, who is in the Olympics 2012.
UPSIDE DOWN HEAD CRASHES BACK INTO THE KITCHEN WITH A FULL TRAY, GROANING WITH UNEATEN, RETURNED AND IN SOME CASES REGURGITATED CHEESE-AND-PICKLE-ON-STICKS
UPSIDE-DOWN-HEAD:
The ploughman's-themed ploughman's are going great guns. Make some more, make some more!

Scene 17. Int. Sir Alan's waiting room. Night
IMPIRE AND EGNITE SIT WITH THEIR SUITCASES EXPECTANTLY. THE BOYS KNOW THEY'VE WON. THE GIRLS KNOW THEY'VE WON
ACTRESS PLAYING FRANCES:
A production assistant says for you to go in now.
THEY TROOP INTO THE BOARDROOM, SOME OF THEM ACTUALLY GULPING SO THAT YOU CAN SEE THEIR ADAM'S APPLES MOVING UP AND DOWN LIKE DAFFY DUCK

Scene 18. Int. Boardroom set. Night
JAMES STARTS BANGING HIS FISTS ON THE TABLE
JAMES:
[BANG] It's not my fault! [BANG] I was brilliant. [BANG] I could taste enzymes in my spit when I woke up this morning! [BANG] Sack them! [BANG] Sack them! [BANG] Save me! [BANG] I have so much more to offer!
SIR ALAN:
I haven't told you who bladdy won yet!
JAMES:
[BANG] Sorry.
SIR ALAN:
The girls have won.
PASHMINA:
I have won!
SIR ALAN:
You won because your clients paid you 2p and the boys' clients paid them 1p. I would say it's a Pyrrhic victory, but I don't bladdy know what the bladdy hell that means because I was born in the back of a van in some old rags.
PASHMINA:
I still won. And it wasn't my hair in the hair salad, it was that girl's. [POINTS TO CREAMPUFF, WHOSE NAME SHE CAN'T EVEN BE BOTHERED TO LEARN]
SIR ALAN:
You, sonny [POINTS AT URCHIN BOY ROCKY], you'd better decided who you're gonna bring back in here.
URCHIN BOY ROCKY:
Him and him. [POINTS AT JAMES AND HAPLESS, EASILY THE MOST LOYAL AND USEFUL TEAM MEMBERS]
JAMES, SUCCESSFUL SPIT POURING DOWN HIS CHIN, BRINGS HIS FISTS SMASHING DOWN ONTO THE BOARDROOM TABLE
SIR ALAN:
And you [POINTS AT THE GIRLS] are gonna learn how to drink champagne and be smug at an exclusive polo club, whatever that is, in the country, wherever that is.
PASHMINA:
I've always wanted to learn that.
THE BLONDE ONE:
Now, it champagne hot or cold? I know it's a firm favourite.
THE GIRLS ACTUALLY SKIP OUT, LIKE GIRLS, THE BLONDE ONE ACTUALLY CANTERING AS IF ON AN IMAGINARY POLO HORSE

INSET: JAMES
JAMES: [TO CAMERA, CRYING]
I feel hurt. I feel the same way I did when my hamster died when I was four. That's how hurt I feel. I feel the same way I did when my first girlfriend chucked me. That's how hurt I feel. I feel the same way I did when my parents told me I was adopted, and that's why they didn't really feel any kind of emotional bond with me, no matter how hard they'd tried. That's how hurt I feel. I feel the same way I did when I just plucked one of my own nose-hairs out. That's how hurt I feel.

Scene 19. Int. Boardroom. Day
URCHIN BOY ROCKY, HAPLESS AND JAMES COME BACK IN, SHAME-FACED, EXCEPT JAMES, WHO IS WEARING SACKCLOTH AND ASHES
JAMES:
[IGNORING SIR ALAN] I blame you!
HAPLESS:
[IGNORING SIR ALAN] I blame one of the others..
URCHIN BOY ROCKY:
[IGNORING SIR ALAN] My mum's going to be wondering where I am.
SIR ALAN:
Talk among yourselves why don't you? James, you're a bladdy foghorn loudmouth bigmouth Dartford Tunnel rabbiting yap-yap-yap ow-my-ears-have-fallen-off look-at-that-donkey-with-no-hindquarters! I'm straggling with you, and I'm straggling with you [POINTS AT HAPLESS] because I just am, but you, sonny-Jim fella-me-lad half-pint [POINTS AT URCHIN BOY ROCKY], you may once have had a trial for Middlesborough, but it's time for the whistle, you're not singing any more, you will walk alone, and other footballing cliches I've had written for me: you've made some immature mistakes, such as drawing on the wall with crayons and doing a wee in your pants and losing your bike, and I can't have lost bikes at my company, so I'm afraid, you're fired.
URCHIN BOY ROCKY IS PICKED UP BY HIS MUM AND TAKEN HOME. JAMES STARTS TO MEND THE BOARDROOM TABLE

Scene 20. Int. Penthouse. West London. Night
BOYS AND GIRLS GATHER AROUND A BURNING AN EFFIGY OF JAMES
BOYS:
We never liked James. He's got a big gob.
GIRLS:
We never liked him either. We're glad he's bound to have been fired by now.
JAMES WALKS IN, WITH HAPLESS IN TOW. BOYS AND GIRLS CHEER AND WHOOP AND HIDE EFFIGY. THEY CARRY JAMES AT SHOULDER HEIGHT AROUND THE PENTHOUSE IN A SWIRL OF PARTY POPPERS AND STREAMERS AND VENAL DISHONESTY

Scene 18. Int. Cab to the north. Night
URCHIN BOY ROCKY IS ASLEEP ON HIS MUM'S SHOULDER
URCHIN BOY ROCKY'S MUM:
He's had a long day, bless him.
VOICEOVER:
The search for the Apprentice continues. Next week, our 13 candidates are cleaning toilets for Arab sheiks.

CAPTION:
Most of the flats in Portobello Lofts are empty and available to rent, snapped up last year, no doubt, in the last gasp of the doomed buy-to-let boom after Talkback had finished with the recently completed high specification new built development overlooking the grand union canal and located within the Portobello Dock regeneration area. Please come and rent them. Pleeeease. We'll throw in a blini?

Week One

Last night's episode of Mad Men, A Night To Remember: the final shot. Don Draper drinking a solitary Heineken in the kitchenette of his office, having been told by his cuckolded wife, Betty, not to come home ("I don't care what you do, I just don't want you here"). Anyone else seeing the work of a very famous American painter here? A New York-born painter whose work, focused often on single, stoic, reflective figures in still lives, predominantly urban and artificially lit, dealt with the loneliness of modern existence? (I know his most important work was painted in the 1940s and 50s, but what's a couple of decades between existentialists?)