Never Knowingly Underwhelmed

Dozier, dozier and dozier

2010-03-22T23:56:00.004Z

According to a story put out by Press Association at the weekend, Craig David didn't know that Motown was a record label, saying he believed his latest album was based on the Motown "genre". Craig's record Signed, Sealed, Delivered (out March 29) contains 12 tracks, but only seven or eight are in fact Motown. He said: "[I] didn't actually know that Motown was a label ... I thought it was an era or genre, like New Jack Swing or something - I didn't know that if you weren't on Motown records, it wasn't Motown."

The clueless buffoon went on, "I wanted to make an album of me re-recording famous songs. There was no strong concept, but it ended up falling into a Motown thing, which really stemmed from Michael Jackson dying last year."

Craig David is 28 years old and has been recording music since 1999. Seriously, how do you get that far without finding out that Motown is a record label? That takes some doing. You have to hand it to him: that's real commitment to ignorance and not finding things out about your chosen area of work.

Here's what you could have won, EMI

2010-03-19T14:16:00.003Z

Very interesting piece in today's Guardian about OK Go, whose latest video, for new single This Too Shall Pass, has been watched over 8m times on YouTube, but has not sold them very many records. This, I guess, is an obvious downside to viral marketing and internet buzz and the world in which we live where The Kids don't expect to have to pay for anything. Anyway, it really does need seeing, if you are among the tiny handful who have not yet seen it. The key fact I learned from the piece was that EMI did not want YouTube viewers to be able to "embed" the video, as I have done, and thus share it around. So OK Go parted company with EMI. As the writer says, "It's clear EMI has no idea how to promote bands in the internet age, but also scary that bands like OK Go might be ill-equipped to survive in places that aren't the internet."

Pink ladies

2010-03-19T11:57:00.002Z

I have been a feminist for many years. I grew up, as all teenage boys do, as a qualified sexist, albeit one in thrall to the female gender. But as the 80s progressed, so did I, and I came out the other end a reasonably clear-thinking cheerleader for sexual equality. (In my weaker moments, I confess to being a self-hating man, but mainly when men seem to be at the root of so many of the world's problems, which they just are.) Anyway, I was introduced to feminist writing in the 80s - Marilyn French, Germaine Greer, the novel Praxis by Fay Weldon had quite an effect on me, as I remember - and have ever since dipped in and out of contemporary feminist theory: Susan Faludi, Susan Sontag, Naomi Wolf, Laura Mulvey and Natasha Walter. (I met Andrea Dworkin once, in a BBC radio green room back in the early 90s, and I was in awe of her in her big dungarees.)

Anyway, I've just finished Natasha Walter's new book Living Dolls: The Return Of Sexism, which makes a bonfire of her optimistic The New Feminism, published in 1998, during the first wave of Blairite hope - soon to be dashed. In Living Dolls, Walter, incidentally the mother of a young daughter, takes stock of where the new feminism is at. ("I am ready to admit," she writes in her introduction, "that I was entirely wrong." How's that for honesty?)

Casting an eye around the girls' section of Hamley's toy shop, she concludes, "Everything was pink, from the sugar-almond pink of Barbie, to the strawberry tint of Disney's Sleeping Beauty ... a pink nail bar ... a pink boutique stand ... pink 'manicure bedrooms' and pink 'salon spaces' ..." She also gasps with due horror at Nuts and Zoo, attending a last-days-of-Rome "Babes On The Bed" competition at Mayhem nightclub in Southend, sponsored by Nuts ("This Cara Brett," shouts the DJ, "She's on the cover of Nuts this week! So buy her, take her home and have a wank!") - from her account, the whole wretched circus is just as demeaning to the boys/men depicted as to the girls/women queuing up to stick their arses in the air in regulation "red hotpants and crop-top with Nuts logo". Nobody comes out of it too well. Walter takes a look at the booming sex industry and questions the "empowerment" myth of lap- and pole-dancing.

Then she moves in part two onto biological determinism, which is a much drier subject, but key, as Walter fears that "bad science" is leading us down a road where the inequality between men and women (in this country "childless women earn about 9% less than men, women with children earn about 22% less, even if they work full-time") is seemingly backed up by genetic orthodoxy based on often spurious studies at which bits of the brain are bigger in men and women. (She returns again and again with narrowed eyes to professor of developmental psychopathology Simon Baron-Cohen's book The Essential Difference, in which he confidently delineates between the "male brain" and the "female brain", and rewards owners of the latter with the following list of "suitable" careers: "counsellors, primary school teachers, nurses, carers, therapists, mediators or personnel staff", while men get to be "scientists, engineers, technicians, musicians, architects, taxonomists, bankers etc." - that's that sorted, then.) If we're not careful, she warns, the "domestic goddess" myth of cupcake-baking Nigella clones, coupled with "pink 'manicure bedroom'" conditioning, the glamourisation of prostitution in the media, and the Spearmint Rhino "bit of fun" defence might set the clock back on feminism a good 30 years, or more. (At best, she calls it "a stalled revolution.")

It's a complex picture she paints, but a recognisable one. I found the book thoroughly readable, and terrifying in places. I was lucky to come of age in the 1980s, when men were at least encouraged to examine their actions and their feelings towards women - the "New Man" might have been a myth, but you need ideals if you are to adjust your baser instincts. When I was a boy, porn was softer, and almost impossible to get your hands on, so I kept my innocence longer. Today, unreal images of sex bombard schoolchildren via mobiles, social networks and the internet, raising ludicrous expectations, sexualising kids way too early, and making life particularly tough for young girls, in my view. I don't know how modern parents deal with it all. Perhaps some of them don't.

If there is a flaw to Walter's book, it's the author's slightly woolly moments, where she is so afraid to be seen to criticise women who work in the sex industry, or dance for money, or spend too much time at work, or too much time at home, or bake cakes, she backs everything up with a caveat: "That's not to say that everyone who has chosen to go into glamour modelling is being exploited ... " that sort of thing. This is hardly the strident, fuck-you feminism of Germaine Greer in her pomp, but maybe it's a sign of the complicated times we now live in.

It reinforces my view that I am, at heart, a feminist. On part one of BBC4's Women documentary series last week, I think it was the imperious Marilyn French who defined a feminist as anyone who doesn't assume men to be superior to women. Reading about that Nuts night at Mayhem in Southend, I had a horrible feeling that we're all going to hell, male or female. ("One girl, who was a bit too fleshy around the middle and not fleshy enough around the chest, came in for boos rather than cheers. She looked tearful as she went back into the line.")

Oh, and yes I was a bit embarrassed to get the book out on the train because of that cover. I wanted to say, it's a book about sexism, it's not actually sexist!

A week in drama

2010-03-10T00:02:00.002Z

I watch all TV drama as a viewer and as a writer. I can't help it. Having written scripts for TV - soap and sitcom, thus far - I can't help but view what I consider to be superior homegrown drama with one eye on the skill of the writer and the mechanics of the writing. In the case of Five Days, which ran every night from Monday to Friday last week (and whose final episode didn't come out on my Sky+ due to the series link refreshing each day and a clash being missed, so I had to finish the run on iPlayer on this tiny screen - grrrrrrrrrr), the writer I found myself admiring was Gwyneth Hughes. She also wrote the previous Five Days in 2007, about a missing mum, which was packed with top-flight British TV acting talent and was based around police procedural. As I remember it, the final outcome didn't quite merit the five nights I'd invested in it, but it was clearly a quality piece of work.

This second helping - different setting, different characters, different cast, same reliance on policework - had a much more satisfying outcome. No need to go into plot, but it began with an apparent suicide off a railway bridge and an abandoned baby in a hospital toilet, developed into a full police search and drew much of its tension and intrigue from relations between the Muslim and non-Muslim communties in what must have been a Yorkshire town, as it was somewhere near Scarborough, which was named. Not being a Coronation Street viewer, I hadn't really come across Suranne Jones before, but she was very strong in the central role of a police officer, keeping her end up in an incident room largely staffed by blokes, and having to deal with the inevitability of Alzheimer's with her mum, Anne Reid (who seems to get all the old lady parts now). David Morrissey, who doesn't do substandard drama, gave depth and heart to a detective with family problems of his own, and the likes of Hugo Speer, Bernard Hill, Ashley Walters, Shaun Dooley, Shivani Ghai and Steve Evets added further ballast. I must admit, I enjoyed the direction, too, from Toby Haynes and Peter Hoar: stylish and artistic but never to the detriment of the story being told. No idea what he's done before, but the music, by Craig Pruess, was also outstanding. Although to be honest, I was concentrating hardest on the script, which had to deal with a wide range of characters, and did so with skill and good humour. Most threads were satisfactorily tied up, and I didn't second guess the action.

This is what British TV drama can do, and I for one am relieved to know that it can still do it, backed by a broadcaster bold enough to strip it across five days. I'd pay my licence fee for stuff like this.

Meanwhile, over on ITV1, I've been irritated and underwhelmed by new comedy drama Married Single Other, whose decent cast (including the ubiquitous Dooley) are battling against clunky exposition and a patina of arch wit that seems to make every character sound like every other character ie. arch and witty. That said, I haven't written a piece of drama that's actually been on telly since EastEnders and that's eight years ago now, so maybe I'm not in a position to nitpick.

Soft languge from the start

2010-03-05T08:28:00.004Z

Ah, the BBC, how carefully you tread. On Wednesday's Masterchef, we met Tim, 36, a very nice-seeming man and a very good cook, as it happened. He is, by trade, a Paediatrician. However, he was captioned as "Children's Doctor". This struck me as coy at the time, but the more I think about it and discuss it with other people, the more it becomes apparent that he was given this storybook epithet in order to avoid putting a word with "paed" onscreen. Children's Doctor is factually correct - he is a doctor who specialises in treating chidren - but this makes him a paediatrician, in the same way an animal doctor is a vet, and a foot doctor is a chiropodist, and a vagina doctor is a gynaecologist. Can it really be true that the News Of The World has won? That any word which might be misconstrued as "paedophile" is now too sensitive to put before this stupid nation? If the BBC had captioned Tim a "paediatrician", WHICH IS WHAT HE IS, would an angry stream of emails been sent at the very sight of the letters "p", "a", "e" and "d"?

Dear the BBC

I am writing to complain about the fact that a convicted child molester is currently making a raspberry jus on my screen. What kind of sick programme is this? I do not pay my licence fee so that murdering, pervert scum can learn how to cook a scallop on a bed of pea puree balanced on a slice of black pudding ... oh hang on, the next letters in the word are "i", "a", "t", "r" and "i" ... what does that spell?

I hope I'm wrong. Maybe Tim asked to be billed thus. Maybe it's not the BBC but the society we live in that's to blame. Neither is a good outcome.

Oh, and come on, Tim!

Happy birthday, Bobby Womack

2010-03-04T07:57:00.002Z

Today is Bobby Womack's birthday. I know this because it is also my birthday. I had a Radio 1 diary when I was about 14. This is how I first learned that I shared a birthday with Bobby Womack. I didn't really care about Bobby Womack at that stage. I care more now. I met and interviewed Bobby Womack when I was hosting the Teatime show on 6 Music in 2003, a network that should be saved, by the way. He was over to promote Lookin' For A Love: The Best Of Bobby Womack 1968-1976. It felt good to meet him at last, especially as I grew up to recognise that Across 110th Street is one of the greatest soul records of all time. (I asked him, by way of keeping the conversation going in the studio while the record was playing, what it was about. He smiled and told me to listen to the lyrics, which was the correct response. It's good when soul legends tell you what to do.) I was 38 when I met Bobby Womack. He was 59. Today, we both seven years older than that. Neither of us is likely to be sitting on a horse, smoking a pipe. But if one of us is more likely to be, it will be Bobby Womack.

Key marginal

2010-03-03T08:21:00.004Z

I don't go to many plays. I have seen plays, I'm not a total philistine, but I mainly like it when there's a big famous American film actor in them, and for the most part, I prefer musicals in the West End because you get more singing and dancing for your inflated ticket price. However, due to it having comedy connections and not being in a typical, velvety, warm-Becks-serving West End theatre, I went to see Party by Tom Basden last night at the Arts Theatre in London's Covent Garden (where I once saw Richard Herring do Christ On A Bike). I really enjoyed it, but I am going to try and explain why like a theatre critic would, even though I hardly ever go to the theatre to watch people sitting around a talking and not dancing or singing.

Party was the toast of Edinburgh, and I met and interviewed and was charmed by Tom and co-star Tim Key on 6 Music the week before last, so these elements led me to it. It also starred Jonny Sweet, Katy Wix (whom I sat next to at the Comedy Awards the year Not Going Out was nominated, and with whom I feel a kinship as I co-wrote the episode in Series 2 which introduced her character Daisy) and Anna Crilly. Katy and Anna have stormed Karaoke Circus on more than one occasion too. See why I was so drawn to it!

They play five young people in a shed/summerhouse forming a political party. There is one set, and the five of them are pretty much onstage, in the same crap chairs, for the duration, but the narrative is artfully constructed to create peaks and troughs out of their naive bickering without anyone being shot, having a nervous breakdown or being outed as a paedophile. There's a bit in it where they are all arguing and Tim Key's character, Duncan, sits in silence and just reacts, facially and bodily, and it's a moment of pure, beautiful theatre. It's full of funny lines - a credit to Mr Basden - and the satire is done by stealth, but it's often the performances, the nuances and the reactions, that make it special. (I am going to mention director Phillip Breen here, as directors never get mentioned, and he has blocked it and staged it brilliantly, and must be at least partly responsible for some of those skilled reactions from the actors.)

Party runs until March 13, and details are here. You can stay to see Tim Key's Slutcracker some nights, too, for a discounted ticket price, which I didn't, but should have.

Gurn, baby, gurn

2010-03-01T22:40:00.002Z

It's hard to dislike a Jean Pierre Jenunet film: he's so inventive and visual and economical (this is a director who can really tell a story), but you have to wade through so much self-indulgence and what can only be described as Cirque du Soleil-style gurning! Mimacs, his first for a long time - the last being a positively restrained A Very Long Engagement - is being heavily trailed and marketed. I'm sick to death of seeing its trailer at Curzon cinemas, although they do trail the narrow band of movies that the Curzon is showing, so the range is limited - that said, it is a very annoying trailer. In it, you quickly surmise that a man gets shot in the head by accident, finds his way into the bosom of a family of misfits who live underground and then takes revenge upon the armaments firm that made the bullet which remains lodged in his head. The only key piece of information missing from this hyperventilating trailer is that ... mmmm, the film is FOREIGN! An increasingly dishonest practice from the distributors of foreign-language films that make it to a wider release: mask any trace of a foreign tongue from the trailer. As I wrote in last week's Radio Times, this is like taking jokes out of a trailer for a comedy. Poor old Jeunet, it's always happening to his films, because he's - sacre bleu! - popular; Amelie and A Very Long Engagement were similarly mis-sold as films of non-specific origin, and the only word in the trailer for Micmacs is ... "Boo!"

Anyway, it's about as French as a film can be. Dany Boon, who plays the lead, actually seems to mutter away in a bizarre French dialect, which isn't even subtitled. Maybe it's a language he has invented. Anyway, I almost wished Micmacs was a silent movie. It's visually splendid, with loads of incredible imagery and tableaux and shorthand, but the script is really horrible. There are puns in it, even though it's French - one about Rimbaud and Rambo (yawn!), and, worse, one about "gaze" and "gays" - although I'm reluctant to criticise the finer points of a screenplay (co-written by Jeunet) that wasn't written in English! Perhaps it's more subtle and nuanced in the native French.

For all the gurning and screaming and bendiness, there is a very serious and very contemporary message within Micmacs about arms dealing and modern warfare and terrorism, but for the most part all this ballast is lost under that trademark Jeunet style: everything's composed and hyper-real, like a Coen Brothers movie without the restraint or nods to the real world. It wasn't as irritating as the trailer - in fact, it's far slower and more considered than I expected. But it's tiring to watch a movie where everybody is eccentric and nutty. I certainly preferred Amelie. And A Very Long Engagement. And Delicatessen. And City Of Lost Children. And ... oh, everything he's ever done except the rubbish Alien one. It's much better than that. I was hoping the allusions to Bogart and Bacall at the beginning would bear fruit (the credits sequence is beautifully realised in the style of a Hollywood film noir), but they are lost in the overall kinetic madness. Pity.

Soo-keh!

2010-03-01T15:32:00.002Z

True Blood, Season Two, then. Hey, I didn't want to crow in an unbecoming manner about the fact that I saw the first few episodes before they were aired on the mighty FX, so I kept quiet. Now the first one's gone out, I will crow. But NO SPOILERS BEYOND EPISODE ONE, don't worry. (If you haven't seen that one yet, look away nooooooow.)

This series has a lot riding on it - and I mean riding, tee hee! The first season was such a jolt in the ribs - sort of a bit like a few things, but utterly unlike them, and even from the charmed pen of Alan Ball it was a new kid in town. Sure, it chimes with the current zeitgeist-mania for vampires, but it's so not aimed at children, like all the other ones are. (And I speak as a grown-up who was fooled into going to see Twilight at the cinema. I should have stayed at home and watched Skins or In The Night Garden.) S2 begins literally seconds after the end of S1, with the identification of the corpse in the back of Andy's car, and we're off! As before the town is the skellington of the show, with Merlotte's its beating heart, the intersection where all human, and non-human, life passes. The two big shifts for S2 are Jason's conversion to happy-clappy right-wing Christianity, and Tara's willing submission into Maryanne's surreal, dead-eyed netherworld of sex and creepiness, a kind of masque of the red death. (Sam's flashbacks give hints of something way darker than turning into a doggy or sucking a bit of neck.) There's some shocking Saw-type action in a grotty cellar where Lafayette is having the joys of life sucked out of him, courtesy of Eric (who continues to be mah favourite character): how appalling to see abject fear in the eyes of Lafayette, a character where previously we only saw lust, wisdom and mischief. Sookie and Bill and vamp-gooseberry Jessica keeps the soap element going, especially when they get ... mercy me, if I go any further I will accidentally give away the other sights I have seen from the other side of Episode 5. All I will say is, these are sights to behold.

Popcorn double feature

2010-02-28T23:14:00.003Z

Two new films this weekend, both at lovely Curzons, one a triumph, the other a bore. Capitalism: A Love Story is the latest Michael Moore. I know Moore divides as well as conquers. I happen to be on his side, and have written before about the disgraceful body fascism employed by some of his critics (the venerable Philip French was moved to describe him in this way in his downbeat review of Capitalism in today's Observer: "Meanwhile he struts around, pot-bellied and badly shaven, in ill-fitting jeans and scuffed baseball cap ..." - what is this, a fashion parade for thin people?), but I do understand why he's not to all tastes. His scattergun approach to editing and presentation may not stand up under the microscope of close scrutiny, but his heart is in the right place, it's good that somebody is making films like this, and he reaches a wide audience. He is a polemicist, just one who happens to be entertaining with it. Some don't like him because he's left wing and successful/rich, which is apparently the highest form of hypocrisy. This doesn't bother me: he's making films that expose America's gun laws, foreign policy, healthcare system ... they may preach to the choir to an extent, but he remains a thorn in the side of corporate America and could easily have shut up and retired by now. He hasn't. He's still needling.

Those who find the sight of Michael Moore distasteful and would prefer it if he looked like Robert Pattinson or George Clooney, there's less of him in his more recent films, and less again in Capitalism. And there are fewer stunts. A bit of megaphone action and the now traditional dealings with security guards at revolving doors, but when you see Moore in this one, he's either interviewing someone or revisiting Flint, Michigan, and gazing thoughtfully at some rubble where an industry and a town used to be with his dad. In relating the recent bank bailout to Roger & Me, Moore provides a neat circularity (the simple message: every film he's made has been about capitalism); also, he depicts his childhood as happy and abundant, and no doubt does so through rose-tinted thesis-making spectacles, but at no point does he big himself up as a poor, working class hero; though his dad was an auto worker, they lived well, as many working families did in 1950s America. It's not the first time Moore has presented utopian images to help prove his gloomy point (remember the kite-flying Iraqi children in Fahrenheit 9/11?), but since these images are personal, it does what all great documentaries do, it focuses the bigger picture on individuals. It's not the first time he's shown evictions either, but these "foreclosures" have become more and more common, and it's the hard reality of being turfed out of your house that better illustrates the subprime crisis; we can sling mud at bankers all day, but that makes the issue more abstract. See a family set fire to the furniture they can't fit in the back of their truck as they load up and head off for ... where? ... is image enough.

I was moved by much of Capitalism. Unfortunately, the happy ending - Obama's election - although a hint of the people rising up, doesn't work, as Obama hasn't yet done very much. This is a shame, as the two upbeat stories Moore uses to shows us that all is not lost - both depicting people power (ie. unionisation, Moore's favourite drum to beat) - are far more effective. Frankly, I think you can guess by now whether you're going to enjoy this film. If you think you will, you probably will. If you think you won't, stay away.

By the way, you can, I'm delighted to say, still read the transcript of my interview with Moore at the NFT in 2002, when Bowling For Columbine was released. It was a real treat to do, and to go for a Chinese meal with him the night before.

Ah well. The Last Station had all the makings of a decent historical drama: fine cast, a nice bit of literary heft and an unploughed narrative furrow ie. the battle for Tolstoy's will between his idealistic disciples and his aggrieved and fruity wife, Unfortunately, it's dull. I actually found myself resting my head on my hand; never a good sign, and the cinema was packed with enthusiastic old people. James McAvoy, Helen Mirren and Christopher Plummer gave real spark to the opening scenes, but the story itself turned the story into a to-ing and fro-ing game of blame tennis, and as Tolstoy's death approached, I found myself willing it on. Pity. This was a clever way of doing a literary biopic: avoiding showing its subject actually writing anything and focusing instead on his legacy, but the bedroom antics between Plummer and Mirren were excruciating, and you were left with a series of arguments in ornate rooms. By the way, it was set in Russia in 1910. Nobody smoked as much as half a roll up through the entire film. My question: is this historically accurate? My guess would be that pipes would be belching out smoke pretty much 24 hours a day. Was Tolstoy anti-smoking? Or was this some kind of health and safety version of pre-revolutionary Russia? I'd love to know.

For all London-based lovers of the Curzon: check out the Curzon Soho's Midnight Movies slate. Edgar Wright hosted one of Death Wish 3 the other week, and they have a disco-based Candy Darling one coming up on Friday March 19 for the Warholian among you, and a Barbarella cocktail evening on April 30. (Apologies to those not in London, but there are some benefits to living here, to counter the mess, the engineering work and extortionate house prices.)

Dead air?

2010-02-26T08:41:00.005Z

Is 6 Music really on death row? Nobody actually knows for sure, and speculation and paranoid rumour have been rife for some time. But it's looking worse this morning than it did when I left the building at 10am on Wednesday. Well, the news broke last night, when the Times announced that 6 Music was to close and those that were still up went a bit nuts. The full story, by Patrick Foster, is here, but the thrust is this: the BBC will close two radio stations in an overhaul of services to be announced next month. The piece uses the word "will," not "might" or "may" or even "is expected to". Its unequivocal tone is what makes it so scary.

We all know that DG Mark Thompson is being forced to make cuts to appease readers of the Daily Mail and the Tory government-in-waiting, who think that the £3.6 billion annual licence fee is being wasted on some programmes and stations that they don't watch or listen to. The bashing of the BBC has long been a national sport among the media conglomerates who control the Rest Of The Media, corporations with fingers in multiple pies that chuck money at redesigns and failed ventures every day but are only accountable to their shareholders. Because of what used to be called "the unique way in which the BBC is funded", the private sector want the BBC to be cheaper and better and have the means to lobby for this outcome; the own all the newspapers. Any medium reliant on advertising income is suffering in the recession. They're bound to be pissed off that one of their major competitors doesn't have to rustle up ads. (Except the likes of Radio Times, for whom I also work, which is run out of the profit-making wing, BBC Worldwide, as a wholly commercial venture - more blurring of the public/private lines that started under the previous Tory government, who demanded the Corporation pay for itself. It's since come under fire to making too much money. A lose-lose situation. Close some things down, quickly!)

The Times piece says, "In a wide-ranging strategic review, [Thompson] will announce the closure of the digital radio stations 6 Music and Asian Network and introduce a cap on spending on broadcast rights for sports events of 8.5 per cent of the licence fee, or about £300 million. He will also pledge to close BBC Switch and Blast!, leaving the lucrative teenage market to ITV and Channel 4. But BBC3, which is aimed at 16 to 35-year-olds will not be touched."

The question is - and it really doesn't matter in the broader scheme of things - how come Patrick Foster has read this report, which is due to be made public next month? There are jobs at stake here. This is not about me - I just freelance for 6 Music, and have been thoroughly enjoying doing so since just before Christmas - most of the people who work at the network, day in, day out, doing a death-defying job with less resources and less warm bodies than any other comparable 24-hour music network while attracting some of the biggest names in music and receiving full support of the record industry, are on staff, or contracts. I worry for these people first, and for the loyal listeners second, with my own interests a long way down the list. I am like one of those media conglomerates - I have fingers in many pies; that's how the self-employed survive. To axe 6 Music and Asian Network - that's two entire radio stations, think about that for a minute, it would literally strip away two options on your DAB - seems sensational to me. I understand that cuts must be made, and that you can make an argument for or against any of the digital services ("Why don't they just shut BBC3?" say wags - but BBC3 is a fantastic training ground for new talent, whether you watch it or not - I don't listen to Radio 3, but I want it to exist), but my guess is that it's a lot less complicated to do the maths by chopping out entire organs than to put the body on a better diet.

The report has been drawn up by the BBC's director of policy and strategy, John Tate, who apparently co-wrote the 2005 Conservative manifesto with David Cameron. I present that simply as a fact. It seems - if the Times has actually read the report - that BBC2 gets a budget hike as long as everybody stops spending money on posh imports, like Mad Men. Frankly, as long as somebody shows Mad Men, I can live with this. (Most of my US imports are watched on FiveUSA and Hallmark anyway.) I'd rather not watch it with adverts, but I can always wait for the box set, or speed through them - oops, look at me contributing to the commercial sector's woes with the fast forward button Sky put on my remote control for me. It's so confusing!

I thought 6 Music's death had been greatly exaggerated, having emerged from the BBC Trust report with a clear brief: to ramp up the specialist music content. Brilliant. We can do that. (I speak as someone who co-hosts a Saturday morning show where the onus is very much on the other stuff.) It seems my optimism was misplaced.

Of course, we should all sit back and take a pinch of salt; the Times pieces is necessarily written and published from a stance of wishful thinking, and may not turn out to be gospel. Rupert Murdoch is easy to paint as the villain, as he's foreign and he broke the unions and gave us Page 3, but he also gives me House and Caitlin Moran, and as a media ogre he's no more against the BBC than whoever runs the Guardian Media Group, a media conglomerate to whom I happily give £1 every day, and more than that at weekends (I paid a pound!), and for whom, very occasionally, I work. I do the odd piece for the Times. I subscribe to Sky. It's complicated. But I love the BBC to the very marrow of my bones and always have done. Anything that chips away at its authority, its creativity, its inclusivity, its ability to inspire, its mission to serve and its dominance in the specialist fields of excellence and stimulation is, to my mind, bad. If they'd announced that they were closing 1Xtra and CBeebies I'd be just as pissed off, and they literally do not cross my radar. It's not just about my friends losing their jobs, it's about a prevailing storm.

Batten down the hatches, lovers of diversity and cleverness. As I always say, those who seek to give the BBC a good thrashing for being a Communist and having some croissants at its meetings and paying really good presenters some money for doing their job will be the first to write to the letters pages of the Times and the Mail and the Telegraph when the Today programme is sponsored by Immodium Plus.

Breakfast time

2010-02-23T07:53:00.002Z

Two days in for Shaun Keaveny at breakfast on 6 Music, 7-10am, which meant a 5am alarm, a 5.30am Prius, a 6am cup of instant coffee at the office, a 6.30am meeting with the team, and a 6.50am handover with Chris Hawkins [round of reciprocal applause]. It's an absolute killer on day one, when your clock's all out and your head's on upside down, but I must admit, going to bed at 8pm last night made day two so much easier to cope with. I truly take my hat off to Shaun and all the other breakfast DJs, who make a routine and a lifestyle of it. I only had to do it for two days and it damn near wasted me.

Of course, the early shift would have been a lot less painful had I not been committed to two full days of brainstorming a new sitcom straight after, both days, 10.30am-5pm, followed by my Radio Times stint at the end of this afternoon, on top, which took me up to 7pm. I was flagging a bit by the end of today. Hey, I don't need your sympathy - it's all work, and if I don't work, I don't eat, and I'd rather be eating than not eating. But once again, working at the heart of 6 Music, my view is galvanised: this is an inspirational little radio station, with cool and enthusiastic people - like the two breakfast teams - working at it, and I wonder if it might be in its prime right now? Certainly the access and the interaction and the sheer swagger of the operation, combined with a more varied spread of music, a higher class of listener, and the freedom to be as spontaneous and amateurish as me on a near-daily basis and power a show on pure adrenalin and fun, makes it a unique operation. Long may it continue.

Collins & Legge

2010-02-22T15:21:00.003Z

Not really. But Michael Legge and I are teaming up for a couple of Edinburgh work-in-progress shows at the Hen & Chickens in London's N1, on April 18 and 19 (starting 9.30), and May 31 (starting 7.30). As they are works in progress, the shows themselves could get better, or worse, so take your pick whether to go the earlier or later ones. Tickets go on sale TONIGHT at MIDNIGHT. We'd love to see you.

Pretty pictures

2010-02-22T09:17:00.004Z

Going to see lots of films at the moment, but too busy working to actually write about them. But hey, it's Oscars run-up, so let me take this opportunity to catch up with three that have awards-season form. A Single Man is one of my favourite films of 2010 so far, a singular piece of work, based on a 1964 novel, set in 1962 just after the Cuban Missile Crisis, by Christopher Isherwood, which, despite being a key piece of gay lib lit, nobody I know seems to have read. (Perhaps you had to be there.) It's an intrinsically gay film, in that it's about a gay man who loses his gay lover and risks a gay affair, and even his one meaningful friendship with a woman is affected by his gayness. And yet, it's not a gay film at all, it's a film about grief, loss, love and lust that just happens to be about same-sex grief, loss, love and lust. I'm not spoiling anything to say that it begins with the news of the loss - a scene in which, after all these years of mucking about and narrowing his eyes, Colin Firth gets to act. With his face. This is not stage acting, this is screen acting; it's all in the tiny nuances. These minutes are worth an Oscar - or a Bafta - on their own. The detail that makes the scene is that the family of Firth's lover, who he's been with for something like 14 years, don't want him at the funeral. This stings, and reminds us that the world was very different in 1962, even if you were on a trendy Los Angeles college campus. Tom Ford is a fashion designer. I know this, even though I care nothing about fashion and have only heard of fashion designers. (I have heard of Alexander McQueen, and accept that he was clearly good at his job, but I don't connect with him in the way that I might an actor or a writer.) I sort of don't care what Tom Ford was, or is - can he direct? Well, he has directed Colin Firth to his first acting awards, and teases honest and full-blooded performances from Nicholas Hoult and Julianne Moore, so he's doing something right. And A Single Man is an exquisite looking film, as you might expect. It is neat and tidy and tailored, but that's because the main character is neat and tidy and tailored, a neatness and tidiness and tailoredness that masks the fact that he's in bits. Some have accused the film of being cold and distant; I felt the opposite. It's Mad Men-on-sea.
Hey, I thought Eddie Murphy had finished wearing fat suits and caricaturing black people! Ha ha. That is my little joke. Precious has been around for a while now, and if you've seen the trailer, you've seen the film, and if the trailer puts you off seeing it, you're probably best off not seeing it - this is not for the socially squeamish. Based on another novel that nobody I know has read, it's an unshowy film that moves at the sluggish, incidental pace of real life, with occasional bursts of action which, sadly for Precious herself, are usually bursts of rage or cruelty or pain. Again, some have accused the film of indulging in social and racial tourism, in that unless you live below the poverty line in an ethnic ghetto where a foot hovers constantly over your chances you are necessarily going to be viewing another world. But isn't fiction all about taking us to other worlds? (The film is set in Harlem in 1987, although you'd hardly notice that it's a period piece beyond the lack of cellphones.) This is a soul movie. It works like all the best soul music: it's simple, it's emotionally charged and it comes from here. Gabourey Sidibe and Mo'nique deserve all the praise that's being heaped upon them - especially Mo'nique, as she has to play the monster without turning this into a horror movie - but all the girls in Precious's special education class are excellent, too. If it was all misery, it wouldn't work, but it's not. In the trailer, Paula Patton's angelic teacher says, tearfully, "Your baby loves ... I love you," to a sobbing Precious, and it's the Soul Moment - but you need to understand the context.

Well, I've never read The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold, but I know people who have, mainly women, and they seem to greatly admire its tale of a 14-year-old girl raped and murdered in a small Pennsylvania town in 1973 who watches over her grieving family from a waystation between here and heaven. I am unmarried to the original text, so approached the film, directed by Peter Jackson, without prejudice. I thought it looked intriguing and would be a nice change from all his CGI stuff. Oh dear. He seems to have opted to fillet a rather bleak story and remodel it into a kids' fairy tale. It's a 12A, which is fine, so is A Single Man, and that's for grown-ups. Saoirse Ronan, aged 14 when she filmed it, is a luminous presence, and does a pretty good American accent too, but she is neither here nor there in a film where two films are poured into the same jug and just swirl around but do not mix. One film is a kitchen sink drama about a girl being murdered by the local weirdo (Stanley Tucci with a comb-over, identified as the killer from the beginning, thus making any tension about his capture flimsy and uninvolving); the other is a gloopy, Yellow Submarine-style fantasy about the gap between heaven and earth, which, instead of some kind of terrifying limbo as it initially appears, quickly flowers into a kind of paradise with trees and grass and beaches and sunshine, where huge symbols crash into view - ooh, look, the model ships-in-bottles that the girl's dad used to make as his hobby are now giant ships-in-giant bottles and they're in the sea and they're smashing against the rocks, subtly symbolising that all is not well in her father's world and the fact that, oh, he's smashing the bottles in real life. It's like Terry Gilliams sneaked into the editing suite and inserted bits of one of his films into an episode of Waking The Dead. It's surely significant of the film's cowardice that there is no mention, not even a hint, that the girl has been raped in the film. The nature of her murder is also skirted around, but that's not a problem, as she is dead. It's as if the awkward sexual assault aspect would spoil Jackson's film about the afterlife. Having her murdered is OK, but not raped as that's a bit icky. So we have a film about a serious subject - death - that's rendered ludicrous by wishful fantasy. Please tell me the book had a bit more heft and depth.

Now, back to work. Although I am on BBC News at 6.30 tonight, talking about the Baftas, so banging on about films and work collide.

Niiiiiiiiiiiiiiiice

2010-02-17T22:45:00.002Z

I'm on nights all week, sitting in for Gideon Coe, 9-midnight on 6 Music, and it's cosmic. We have the lights down low, nice hot cups of green tea, maybe a biscuit or a cheeky Double Decker, either me and Mark, or me and Justin, there's barely another soul in the building, you're entitled to a Prius home at the end, and it's just fabulous old concert recordings and session tracks and nuggets thrown in like a track from Ostrich Churchyard here and a Young Marble Giants track there, and I get to hear more recent stuff that actually merits an ear like Felix or Tune-Yards or the Dum Dum Girls, or something ridiculously obscure like the Liggers from a Manchester Musicians Collective compilation. If the BBC Trust want less celebs and more music, which apparently they do, then they should listen to Gid's show; it's the station remit in an approachable hat. It's been a pleasure playing with it, gentlemen. Oh, and look, Steve Lamacq popped in for a chat before his Radio 2 show tonight to tell us about Gyratory System, a nightmarish experimental jazz trio he saw by mistake. And then we played a Happy Mondays session, Public Enemy and Elvis live in Vegas, 1970. NEVER SHUT THIS NETWORK DOWN, YOU IDIOTS!

Scrumdog millionaire

2010-02-07T22:23:00.002Z

Saw the new Clint Eastwood movie Invictus on Friday. He directed and produced it, which is usually cause for celebration these days. It stars Matt Damon as actual South African rugby captain Francoise Pienaar and Morgan Freeman as actual South African president Nelson Mandela. Because I can't stand rugby - to me, it's a team sport seemingly entirely free of grace and mainly packed with big fellas running into one another - I had no idea South Africa won the rugby World Cup in 1995, but they did, and it was clearly a big deal on two levels: one, they were a bit shit, and two, they were mostly white, a fact that became conspicuous when Apartheid ended and Mandela launched his vision of a rainbow nation. Thanks to Invictus, I now know this. I also know that Pienaar is a man without a personality but with a wife, a mum and a dad, and that Mandela was a bit lonely and a workaholic and liked to have a bracing walk at 4am every day without fail. There's not a tremendous amount more to learn.

I thought Invictus was underwhelming and dramatically thin. It is handicapped by being a sports movie. Sport movies don't usually work - certainly not team sports anyway. Boxing has a cinematic quality, so does running, albeit only in slow motion. Football simply cannot be captured in drama, and nor, it seems, can rugby. (I love This Sporting Life, but then again, there's not that much rugby in it.) Beyond the sport, it's sort of about Nelson Mandela getting on with taking the reins of power, which involves making black and white security men work together, and attending some meetings, and making some speeches in his iconically slow, measured English. Freeman, who looks nothing like him, makes a decent stab of doing the voice. Damon, who looks nothing like Pienaar, does the same. It's not so much acting, as impressionism.

Anthony Peckham, the screenwriter, seems so enamoured and dazzled by the iconic celebrity of his two main characters, he doesn't bother to fill in any of the other ones, and yet, one of the characters speaks very slowly and the other one says nothing of any consequence on or off the field. In order to be swept up by the film's broad-brushstroke drama you have to be very easily pleased by the fact that post-Apartheid South Africa was nicer than Apartheid South Africa, which in a fundamental sense it was, but don't expect any subtlety or surprise. The initially awkward white rugby players sit young black kids from a township on their shoulders in a sequence that feels authentically like a bank advert. The white security guards learn to like the black security guards, united not by anything dramatic - as, sadly, nothing dramatic happened to Mandela in 1995, despite the fear of incident at his public appearances and a hokey low-flying aircraft that we know posed no threat - but by, well, getting on with their largely boring work in small offices. I think you are expected to admire and forgive Pienaar's white family when they take their black maid to the Cup Final, but this presupposes you see it as redemptive rather than patronising, which is how it comes across.

Clint Eastwood is a monumentally competent director and that's not faint praise. He is not showy or pretentious or tricksy, he does not grandstand, and he famously shoots as little film as he can, but you cannot argue with his best work. I thought Letters From Iwo Jima was brilliant, for instance, as was Unforgiven, obviously: two seriously good genre movies. Invictus proves that he is not scared of big stadium scenes. But he fails to make the rugby matches exciting, resorting to slow motion, naturally, when in a corner, and the obligatory scenes of people watching the telly. Too late he decides to show us the scrum from underneath and turns up the volume on the animalistic grunting, but this seems tokenistic, and what's he trying to say? That it's a brute, primal sport? Where has this observation been hiding? This Sporting Life begins under a scrum; its first thought is of the violence and the machismo of rugby. Invictus wants us to buy rugby not as a contact sport, but as a metaphor for community. See how the little black boy is eyed suspiciously by white security guards outside the stadium but ends up celebrating with them when the Springboks win the Cup - this is no more profound than when the grey ash descends across Los Angeles at the climax of Volcano, and, hey, black and white people are turned one colour.

This film's heart is in the right place, but it's deadly dull, its 12A certificate earned only because of strong but infrequent language. And, next to District 9, a science-fiction film made in South Africa by South Africans and starring South Africans, it has nothing to say about South Africa beyond facts, figures and cliche. And its two key South African roles are taken by North Americans. Meanwhile, both of these North Americans have been ludicrously Oscar nominated for their work. I admire them both, but this is not their best work, and nominations seem to be forthcoming because a) it's Clint Eastwood, and b) it's Nelson Mandela.

Everybody else seems to like it, however, so I must be missing something.

If al-Qaeda had dropped a bomb on the green room of the Bloomsbury Theatre ...

2010-02-02T16:06:00.005Z

... on the Friday night of December's Godless run, all of these talented comedians, musicians and curators would have been killed or injured, while I was hanging around with them. This fantastic, historic group shot, taken by Des Willie (left to right: Jim Bob, Jo Neary, Stewart Lee, Robin Ince, Richard Herring, Peter Buckley Hill, Waen Shepherd and me) is part of an official New Humanist set which can now be accessed on Flickr. This picture represents the culmination of all those years I've spent hanging around and ingratiating myself with talented comedians and musicians. Look how they let me be in their photographs and appear at their gigs! I am a monument to persistence.

Radio Times Zelig

2010-01-27T18:14:00.005Z

Had a nice time at this year's Radio Times Covers Party at Claridge's on Tuesday. As usual, I told famous people that I liked them - this year, David Morrissey - and engineered having my picture taken by the official photographer while standing next to people I know quite well - this year, Rob Brydon and Ben Miller. Oh, and James Nesbitt, who turns out to be as friendly and gregarious and, well, merry, as they all say he is, said to me, "Write me a sitcom!" More than once, and with a lot of emphasis. I suggested he could co-star with that other great Northern Irishman Michael Legge, and he agreed. So, that's a commission, then, right? That's how TV works, yes?

I believe in America

2010-01-26T08:34:00.004Z

OK, it's time to round up the television that's currently not just occupying my evenings and weekends, but owning me. And when I say television, I mean drama, and when I say drama I mean American drama, as American drama is all that matters. (For balance, and to prove that I am not being racist, I watched a double-episode of Silent Witness last night, and it was excellent in every way, written by Andrew Holden and directed by Sue Tully, so let's bear that in mind.)

Sons Of Anarchy has just started on FiveUSA. (I sometimes wonder where I'd be without FiveUSA, FX, Sky1, More4, E4 and Hallmark. Oh, occasionally the BBC will buy something in, but they usually mistreat it, and us.) I had this recommended to me way in advance - it's two seasons in, on FX, over there, with a third already booked - and I must say it's filled the horrible vaccuum left by Breaking Bad: yet another British actor, this time Queer As Folk's Charlie Hunnam, essaying what sounds to my ears like an impeccable American accent as the heir apparent of a rough, tough Hell's Angels chapter operating out of the Californian town of Charming. The pilot episode pushed all the right buttons, setting up the Sopranos-like business, run by ailing old bear Ron Perlman. It's a soap opera that allows a peek in on another world, in this case, hairy bikers fighting internecine battles with other gangs, running guns, keeping meth off their patch (oh yes!) and being secretly sweet to their wives and in one case, being an Elvis impersonator. Created by Kurt Sutter, who did The Shield, it's hard as nails and yet its underbelly is soft. ("Soft", in fact, is what the gang think Hunnam's character, Jackson, is - and "soft" is what got his legendary dad killed.) So, just one episode in, and I'm in.

House continues to be my current favourite. Although we're up to date with Season Six on Sky1, FiveUSA have shown Season One and are now almost through Season Two, which is handy, as Season Three is on Hallmark (we're saving it up until Two is finished, for fear of losing the plot.) In many ways, I'm blessed to have discovered it so late, and to have so much back catalogue to enjoy. Yes, yes, every episode is the same, but only in the sense that House and his mutating team have to solve a medical mystery and along the way make it worse, then make it better, then make it even worse, then make it better, running up what must be an extortionate bill with all those tests and treatments that don't work, and yes they always discount lupus, but that's part of the fun. The hook is not the mystery, it's the relationships - between House and Wilson, House and Cuddy, House and Cameron, Chase and Cameron, Wilson and whoever his girlfriend/wife is, and so on. In the ep we watched last night, House vs. God, it was House and God. Brilliant stuff. Dazzling. One episode is never enough in one sitting. Always the mark of a truly magnificent drama (see: The Wire, The Sopranos, Battlestar Galactica, West Wing, Breaking Bad). I can't believe I watched the first episode when it first aired, years ago, and didn't like it. I didn't buy Hugh Laurie's accent. How ironic is that? Mind you, I didn't like Curb on first viewing either, so I can't be trusted. And let's face it, Laurie has improved so much with time. In the current run, he's skyscraping.

Is Nurse Jackie a drama or a comedy? It's half an hour long, which in network TV terms means it is a comedy, and yet there's no laughter. I say it's best viewed as a drama, just like Up In The Air, was was mis-sold as a comedy, I think. Jackie seems to be the first big commission for creators Liz Brixius, Linda Wallem and Evan Dunsky, which makes its ease and sass and grit even more astonishing. Edie Falco is, of course, strong in the title role, and the action revolves around her double life and nursey skills, but once again, and this is a recurring aspect of great US drama, the supporting characters obviously receive an equal amount of attention in the writing and the casting and the directing. (I saw some of a quite lame-looking, and very squealy, romantic comedy called Bride Wars yesterday and it was clear that once they'd case Kate Hudson and Anne Hathaway, with a bit of Sex & The City cameo heft from Candice Bergen, they'd almost deliberately cast forgettable actors in the other parts, as if to highlight the talent of the two leads. You don't get that feeling from great TV drama.) I won't list the actors who bring so much to Jackie, but Merritt Weaver, who plays a flappy student, can steal a scene just by walking into a room and walking out again. Oh, and Eve Best, a British stage actress, actually plays a British doctor. That's a novelty. What a shame BBC2 felt so excited about their new acquisition they ran it every night for the first week, and are now running it every Monday night. Isn't that a form of sadistic cruelty?

And Glee, airing on E4 - even though it's created by Ryan Murphy, who gave the world the gloriously preposterous Nip/Tuck (currently showing on FX), I had my doubts that this would tickle me. I was wrong to have those doubts. It's arch and clever and camp and deeper than I expected, and manages to be sneery about the high school caste system while at the same time finding actual joy in the corridors. It's not the pisstake I mistakenly took it to be. And there's nothing ironic about the musical numbers - which are actually deftly staged - unless modern high school kids singing old songs that the grown-ups who write it remember from their childhoods is ironic. I sort of don't give a fuck that it's spawning hits in America - that's something for the Fox accountants to rub their hands together about. Thanks to Jane Lynch, who is fast becoming the most reliable actress in anything, I fell for this pretty quickly, and if it really did hate High School Musical, it probably wouldn't work. But it doesn't. And it does.

For the record, I'm also watching Season Two of Prison Break on box set and still enjoying that. It's not as if it's any more ridiculous than Season One. Looking forward to the return of Hung. Gave the new season of Heroes a go, on pretty much the sole proviso that T-Bag from Prison Break is now in it, but there simply aren't the hours in the day to get back into it, so that's been shelved after one episode. I fear I may have to give the final season of Lost a crack, too, even though, as I've stated, there aren't the hours in the day. Taped The Good Wife last night. High hopes for that. Uh-oh!

Oh, and I like Law & Order UK, unfashionably. And that's, like, British. Yuck!

Oh, and if you think I'm not supernaturally excited about True Blood, returning soon to the mighty FX, you'd be wrong. I have been sent the first two episodes of Season Two, but I don't want to watch them yet, for fear of being all frustrated at having to wait for the third, and the fourth, and the fifth. I may have to stop working and go bankrupt in order to fit all this in. Oh, and don't moan at me for prioritising US drama over British drama, especially when I work in British TV and have written British drama and would love to write some more: I know we get the cream of their telly, and it's not all The Sopranos and Breaking Bad, but enough of it is to make us feel ashamed of ourselves.

And I forgot to mention Mad Men in all the excitment, which has a lot to beat with Season Three this week on BBC4, as Season Two was sublime. *sighs*

New blog

2010-01-22T00:40:00.003Z

Today we officially launch the Collings & Herrin blog. Please bookmark it and sign up to the feed, as it will from now on become the indulgent home of all C&H news, and I can post up as many pics as I like without testing the patience of people who visit this blog but get fed up of all the C&H plugs and news. I may occasionally post things on both, but by and large, if you follow us, go here.

Radio Zelig

2010-01-19T12:51:00.004Z

It's been a fun run of 6 Music shows. I am back in the Nemone slot, 1-4pm, on Monday, after my three day Cardiff jaunt, and that will be my last week before she returns from maternity leave. (I have notched up something like 20 shows. It's been like having a job.)

Anyway, These are my holiday snaps so far. In the first, I am trying to look grumpy and misanthropic for Luke Haines, who wasn't grumpy or misanthropic at all, of course, even though his publisher had failed to get his book into the shops for Christmas. In the second, I am unable to be as grumpy-looking as Henry Rollins, so I have plumped for beaming happily (also, Fleet Foxes are playing, and Henry doesn't like the sound of them at all). And finally, Damo Suzuki from Can is putting an arm around me and making me super proud. Interestingly, both Rollins and Suzuki objected to me playing a vintage track of theirs while they were on - for Rollins, Rise Above from Black Flag's classic 1981 debut Damaged; for Suzuki, the unlikely hit Spoon from Can's 1971 album Ege Bamyasi - Rollins went into a rant about dismissing all the work he's ever done since 1981 by playing it and I let him get it out of his system before pressing the button; Suzuki was more languid but said that he only looks forward as the eyes are at the front of the head. He wasn't going to fight me over it. Neither had a new record to promote or play, incidentally; both were plugging gigs.

Most days we don't have famous guests in - it's just as much fun talking to Martin White or the Pajama Men or Dave Hill the comedian or Rhodri Marsden or Alex Heminsley. But it's cool to get some snaps for the family album.

Dead as a Dido

2010-01-16T00:41:00.003Z

So, Richard is back from Mauritius, jet-lagged, with a small put poignant avian gift for me (pictured) and the rich tan of a vain Giorgio Armani footballer. Having been apart for two weeks, during which Richard developed an unhealthy hatred for a nine-year-old girl in his hotel and saw four films on a plane, and I worked really hard, in our 98th podcast we have plenty to catch up on, including: the snow, Peter Kay's autobiography, Richard's autobiography and the Ronnie Corbett Scandal. We also find time to discuss what Beyonce will do for money, whether Wales counts as a proper country or not, the rubbish threats of Daffy from N-Dubz, the solecisms of poorly educated people and Lenny Henry's big hands.

Les nerks

2010-01-13T00:26:00.006Z

"Film of the year", says one newspaper's quote at the top of the praise-plastered posters for Un Prophete, or A Prophet. It's released next Friday, January 22. Can it be the film of the year yet? I suspect the critic was hailing the film as such after seeing it at a festival last year. Certainly, Sight & Sound's collected critics named Un Prophete as their film of 2009. For those of us who don't attend festivals, however, it's going to have to be film of 2010, and it has a long way to go. Mind you, I've seen it now, and it is astonishingly good. Film of the month, for sure.

It's the French prison movie. Directed by Jacques Audiard, who made The Beat That My Heart Skipped, it is not strictly a prison movie, rather a tale of manhood (or "self-education" to use Audiard's words), forced upon a young offender who spends six years in jail. It is also a film about ethnic tribalism, in this case, to reduce it down: Arabs versus Corsicans, the main groups in this French clink, with the Muslim contingent growing all the time. Malik El Djebena (Tahar Rahim) hopes to keep himself to himself and his nose clean, but is sucked into the prison's subculture of racial violence in a truly shocking first-act incident that will cause even the most immunised to wince and instinctively cover their eyes when it happens. Needless to say, we see an immediate change in Malik and over the six years that unfold over the film's two and a half hours, it's not just facial hair that marks out the passage of time and the maturing of a young man. Audiard is fascinated by the rituals and routines of prison life, and the way that men are when left with other men; he's also adept at running a workable thriller element into a more meditative, even impressionistic whole - when Malik eventually earns 12-hour passes for good behaviour, you'll be amazed at what he gets up to!

All hail Niels Aristrup, who was in The Beat That My Heart Skipped, and plays the banged-up Corsican Godfather Cesar Luciani with the perfect blend of Genial Harry Grout and Frank Booth (although he looks disconcertingly like Anthony Worrall Thompson). The actual cons who take on roles as extras in the film - and the seemingly authentic setting - root the occasional esoteric touches and fantasy elements in cold, hard reality. There are rare moments of beauty in this prison, as there were in Steve McQueen's Maze in Hunger (both, interestingly, have snowflakes coming down outside a barred window). If you can handle the occasional bursts of unyielding violence and the inevitable atmosphere of threat and menace, Un Prophete is a film that's really worth seeing. You will learn certain techniques of defence and offence that you didn't know you'd ever need. Keep that [removed due to accidental spoiler].

Abdication crisis: latest

2010-01-07T23:58:00.004Z

The people have spoken: I should not take over from Jonathan Ross on Film 2010. Fair enough. (I understand the BBC will be basing their decision on the results of this mail-order DVD rental shop poll.)

Icon go for that

2010-01-06T10:50:00.001Z

Even though Rich is on holiday in Mauritius and I am hard at work on the radio, we present a special 97th Podcast Review Of The Decade. Using only the Guardian's Icons Of The Decade supplement as a guide, we look back over the last ten years and try to make sense of it all, by not making sense at all, which seems appropriate. There's talk of 9/11 conspiracy theories, David Beckham's vanity or lack thereof, and a bit about Tony Blairs. It's a bit like Newsnight, really. We hope to be back, in person, before the end of next week, when Richard gets back all tanned and tropical and full of insects.