Podcasting

Arguably the greatest radio programme ever broadcast on the wireless was ‘Letter from America’.  Every week, the veteran broadcaster and journalist Alistair Cooke would speak for a quarter of an hour about an aspect of Americana.  It had that magical combination that only radio can provide, the intimacy of a single voice, broadcast to millions and speaking only to you, with a charismatic and talented speaker saying something meaningful.  Letter from America was broadcast on the BBC, to a British audience and was, as the name suggests, about life in the US.  It was on air for as long as I can remember but the episode that means the most to me, and I guess to many millions of others, was an anecdote about JFK’s rocking chair.

I heard that broadcast driving along the motorway on a wintry night, and recall Cooke’s supremely soft voice and the rattle of grit bouncing from the bonnet of my car as I passed a gritter lorry.  It seemed to me, driving through that darkness on that night that Cooke, speaking about a night-firing exercise by the US Navy being observed by the then President, was speaking directly to me.

The internet has, for good or ill, revolutionised communication.  Now, anyone who has the means and the inclination can record their thoughts on any subject and, within the bounds of anti-extremism legislation and good taste, make it available to anyone who chooses to read, watch or listen.

This revolution has grown with the bandwidth available to folk, and the sophistication of the tools at their disposal.

Back in the day when you had to plug your computer into a telephone socket and dial up the internet, text downloaded a lot more quickly than images and so the blog, or weblog, became popular.  There was a time when to have one’s diary made public would mean social mortification, but the first internet privacy shift began when people began recording what they were up to, and in some case who they were up, for public consumption.  Book deals were done as a result, legitimising the blog as the gateway to a writing career with those who had the talent and saucy content to interest a wide enough audience.

Youtube has, of course, given us the video blog, essentially a talking head or heads discussing a subject dear to them and, they hope, to others.  This can range from arguing about Star Trek, to arguing about Doctor Who, to arguing about the Marvel Cinematic Universe.  Of course, it could be that there are other sorts of vlogs out there, but I know what I like and I am buggered if I am going to waste my time getting professional make-up tips that I am unlikely ever to use.

Want to make believe that you are the handsome and popular host of a television programme, trusted by millions to come into their homes every night and give your opinions about cultural matters, or talk about vegan stuff, then the vlog is the vehicle for you, and you can do it all from your smartphone.

But it is the podcast that has emerged as the greatest beneficiary of the internet’s merging with media.

Anyone of a certain age will have had the shared experience of trying to make their own radio programme, on cassette.  This was slightly different to recording the charts, where the editing process consisted of trying to press record to minimise any sound of a DJ talking over the track, or your family bickering in the background.  Rather, you would use a cassette and record and record your own links.  This would be done in a state of feverish excitement that lasted until the first time you heard your own voice played back to you.  Surely the technology must be defective, as the tinny whine emanating from the speakers was the voice of a little kid, not the smooth tones of a superstar DJ.

If you were wise, you destroyed that tape kid.

Now, we have a whole recording studio on our smartphones, our voices have broken, and we have something to say.

It’s not a radio broadcast, it’s not a cassette narrowcast, it’s a podcast.

Whatever happened to CELEBDAQ?

Back in the days when you had to plug your computer into your telephone line in order to download pornography, sorry, in order to go online, the BBC had a website called CELEBDAQ.  It was fabulous, but it’s probably a good thing that this site no longer exists, for the reasons explained below.

CELEBDAQ was, as the name implies, a trading game.  It was sort of a combination of Fantasy Football and Hello! magazine.  So it was a fantasy trading game, but unlike a game of trading footballers so that you could demonstrate that you were just as fucking clueless as any other manager in the Premiership about squad selection, or fantasy share dealing where you could pretend to be the sort of person who in their day job in the City meddled with the economies of developing countries and fucked them up, then at the weekend continued to spread social ill by supporting the drugs trade and so, generally, being the sort of person Dickens tried to warn us about, you traded in how famous a particular celebrity was that week.

Celebrity fame fluctuated, so if somebody had a film premier coming out, they would get more time in the media and their profile would rise and they would become more valuable as a celebrity.  However, as their fame rose, so their share price did, so if you knew that a blue chip famous person like Tom Hanks was going to be in London promoting his new film, he’s a sound investment for that week but you could only buy a few shares.

Much, much better to go to the ‘B’ listers or, as they were also known, those who appeared on television.

As far as I am aware, ‘personalities’ were not listed.

It was tremendous fun.  You had to register, all the cash was virtual and every week there was a star trader award.

Obviously, it had to end.

The trouble with celebrities is that they have, in recent years, traded fame for infamy.  Jimmy Saville got a lot of press coverage after he died, because it turned out that more than just looking like a nonce, he was a nonce.  Who knew?  Apparently, everyone knew.  People in the industry new and, in front rooms up and down the country when the news broke people who had seen him on telly years ago knew, or at least said ‘I fucking knew it’ under their breath.  Then Operation Yewtree got underway, and might as well have been titled Operation Yewboat because it sank the careers of quite a few telly personalities without trace.

That, as we now know, was just the tip of the shitberg.  Who would have imagined that greasy fucktards would have used their positions of power and influence to take advantage of vulnerable young people.  I mean, really, who knew?

We all know that nonces look like nonces.  We all now also know that any bloke with a fat BMI who is pictured with his arm around a young woman who looks like she is wishing that teleportation were a thing is what the newspapers term a ‘predator’.  And not something sleek that lives on the veldt, or even something with a cool shoulder mounted laser canon that hunts Arnie in the jungle, no, the sort of predator that disguises its distinctive scent of sweat and fat with money and lawyers.

Bluntly, it is no fun trading celebrities when they might make the news for all the wrong reasons.

Celebrities are, by and large, individuals who have used their talent in a way that has resulted in public notoriety in a good way.

The democratisation of the media has meant that anyone with the means to do so can upload a media clip of themselves to a media platform, and other folk can watch it and leave snarky comments.  What this has proved is that although the number of people who think they have a talent is apparently limitless, the pool of really talented people remains finite.

So maybe CELEBDAQ deserves a comeback after all, because of the listing, a bona fide list of who is, and who is not, a celebrity.  Youtubers need not apply.

Who won the Ashes, really?

Who won the 2017/2018 Ashes series?

(The Ashes, for those who don’t know, is possibly the most famous sporting contest on the planet.  It is a competition taking place every two years between England and Australia.  The game in question is cricket.  For those unfamiliar with cricket, please press the backspace icon a few times and Google ‘Kardashians’, this will be a far better use of your time than reading the following).

Of course, there are those that will say that Australia won the Ashes.  There are those also that will say that England lost the Ashes.  There is, after all, an important difference between the two matters.

What is undoubtedly true is that England’s tour Down Under was trouble-prone.  There were players that could not join because they had got into a spot of bother back home (famous sports stars get into ‘a spot of bother’ rather than being ‘charged for assault’ just like middle class students involved in vandalism are involved in ‘high spirits’ or if you go to a decent public school; ‘japes’.) and the performance on the pitch was not great.  Hovering over all of this was the unique cricket pastime of ‘sledging’ or as non-cricketing types call it ‘abuse’.  Any cricket fan will recognise the title of this Blog (although it is named G&P for quite different reasons) and will have drawn their own conclusions about which category certain Aussie and English players.

So, Australia retained the Ashes.

But BBC Radio 5 Live won the Ashes.

Here’s why.

The coverage was magnificent.  There is nothing like Test Match Special.  Arguably, the best thing to ever happen to TMS was for the BBC to lose the rights to televise cricket and then for digital radio to come along.  This meant live and uninterrupted coverage of play in Australia throughout the night, bookended by anticipation and analysis.

The BBC rightly committed programming time to exploring the phenomenon of nocturnal radio.  But it boils down to this:

If you are watching television through the night there will come a point about three in the morning when your entire body craves sleep and you feel as if somebody has replaced certain parts of you with grit.  You trek up to bed late/early and get up a few hours later feeling shocking.

Not so with radio.  One places the radio by the bed, turned down low because distractions are falling away as the midnight hour advances, and then you listen throughout the night.

Of course you don’t.  You are soundly asleep by 12:05 but occasionally stir as you subconsciously process the fall of wickets and any streakers.

You awake refreshed and ready for the day.

Radio coverage is far, far better than television coverage because the quality of the commentary is so much better.  TMS is an institution and can afford to only accept the greatest talents.  Ideally, one should apprentice until one is about 80, and then one may consider oneself a TMS fixture.

The thing about TMS is it knows that it is shepherding souls through the darkness half a world away, and it takes this privilege and responsibility seriously.

On this tour, with the performance of the England team, there was an element of pastoral care to be considered, as the commentary team did not want to wreak untold psychic damage to the unconscious subconscious attentive minds.

Moreover, this was happening over the Christmas period.  The best Christmas present that the TMS team gave the listening public back in England at the commencement of the Boxing Day test was hope.

The war on fake news

As usual about this time of year, I am sitting in a hotel room, thinking that this must be very much what it is like to be a foreign correspondent in general and a war correspondent in particular.  Except of course it’s not.  The hotel room is in central London and so unless I have undergone an unexpected and unnoticed transformation of nationality, I’m not a foreign correspondent.  Having said that, English does appear to be the minority language here in the hotel, a consequence of the continued popularity of London as a tourist destination, a weak pound making it even more popular and lots of worried Europeans getting in a visit while they can before a fucking huge fence goes up all round Britain, or something.  But as has been stated before on this blog, there is something about staying in a hotel room and having a laptop open on the desk that suggests something of the war correspondent.

Previously, I was in the happy position of exaggerating the foreignness of places when the most exotic thing about them was that they had not one but two Chinese take aways.  I was also in the happy position of inventing the ‘war’ element of the correspondent bit.  And actually, as anyone who has read this post this far will know, inventing the ‘correspondent’ element too.  Sadly, this is no longer true.

Of what war do I speak?  Certainly, the next few hundred or few thousand words could be about the war on terror, a war where the front line is on our streets, or actually on our high street.  Various nutters with pokey things have made right nuisances of themselves in 2017, but they don’t really deserve a mention here.  If you want one defining image of the war on terror, it’s that bloke fleeing from the attack at Borough market, still holding his pint.  When the little fuckers roll up in a tank, we might put our drinks down.  Until then, cheers!

Nor is it the war that is being fought over inappropriate touching, usually by celebrities, occasionally of people who wish to become celebrities.  This is not a war as such, merely a continuation of the battle of the sexes, which appears to have somewhat hotted up again.  The view from the G&P trenches (not, you will note, the view from the feminine equivalent, which I guess would be ‘Lady and Spectator’ or ‘Lady and Person Responsible For Cakes’ or something) is that that bastard Wienerstiener has ruined it for all of us.  Basically, if I call somebody ‘Love’ in the office, I’m fucked.  Not that I ever would.  I call everyone ‘chaps’.  ‘Chaps’ is a gender neutral form of address.  In all my tears of using it, I only ever had one person comment that one of those addressed was a woman, or a chappess.  The person complaining was not the lady in question, because she was a bloody good chap and would not do that sort of thing.  No, it was, I stringly suspect, the same person who complained when I brought doughnuts into the office for a treat that I had neglected to provide a fruit alternative.  FFS.

The war in question is the war on fake news, or as Fox News calls it, ‘news’.

London is, of course, the home of the BBC, a corporation with correspondents both foreign and domestic, both war and peace.  The BBC is funded not, as you might imagine, by flogging episodes of ‘Top Gear’ to China and a TARDISload of ‘Doctor Who’ merchandise, but through the license fee, which everyone is happy to pay even if the BBC only ever broadcast ‘Blue Planet II’.  That alone would be worth it and you won’t find anyone that will contradict that because nobody wants to look like an idiot in public.  Recent voting patters demonstrate that people are happy to be idiots in the privacy of a booth, but in public, unwise social media posts aside, it’s a different matter.

Because everyone pays their license fee, two mind-sets simultaneously evolve.  They can be held by the same person at the same time.  The first is that evey license fee payer feels that they have the right to criticise any aspect of the BBC.  The second is that when anyone who does not pay a license fee tries to criticise the BBC, they defend it like Horatio defends a bridge.

Case in point.  The BBC loves to cover extreme weather events by sending presenters with usually immaculate hair and make up to report live from the scene.  This usually involves wellies but it’s not unusual to see a BBC presenter in a North Face parka, screaming into a microphone held to their lips, trying to make themselves heard over the screaming wind that is driving the rain into their face.  So essentially you have a BBC reporter doing their bit from where was until yesterday a busy high street, but is now the Little Puddling Water Recreation Centre.

Then you have one of those masochistic BBC programmes where the viewer gets to make their point, usually that a presenter has been too rude, or too Tory, or too Leftie, or too female, or too black.  And the complaint in question, that the BBC reporter was giving advertising to a particular brand of anorak.

Now, the benefit of this sort of attitude is that there is no other broadcaster of news, in the world, with such rigorous oversight.

Which is why fake news does not happen on the BBC.

Admittedly, some of the correspondents and editors can give an opinion on something that is about as palatable as a Bush Tucker Trial, but that’s part of the fun and it all balances out.

The problem now is that the BBC is reporting on certain individuals, naming no names, who lie, and because the BBC has a duty to report, those lies get broadcast.  It’s like retweeting fake news.

And that’s the soft end.  The hard end is the truly terrifying boiler rooms in malign states that are pumping out fake news clickbait.

By the way, I can assure you that G&P is not written in a vast warehouse just outside of Minsk.  If it was, it would be so much more better writtener.

Every screen is the front line in the war on fake news.  And right now, I’m not sure who is winning.  Certainly, fake news has gained considerable ground.  It used to be that fake news was confined to the playground and the pub.  Not any more.  Thanks to malicious minds taking the innocent internet, that used to be used for such lofty pursuits as porn and bickering about Star Trek, and using it to drip poison into the ear of Joe Public, fake news is a Key Opinion Influencer.

Maybe though things will change.  Fake news is getting easier to identify.  Everyone should have the fake news equivalent of one of those aircraft spotter posters showing the silhouette of enemy aeroplanes, except that they would show the signature shapes of fake news, such as ‘anything that you really want to believe is true, probably isn’t’, or a picture of a fox.

And those that peddle fake news need to be identified too.  It’s a pity that the entire established media hate Facebook because they fear it so, and also a pity that facebook does appear to be a home for fake news.  But so what, who cares?  The Internet is the wild fucking west, there are no rules.  And really, what sort of person believes something they read on Facebook.  Unless it’s about kittles.

Trusted sources, that’s what it’s all about.  Like the BBC.  Never knowingly fake.

Finally, a note on the hotel.  It’s in the centre of London which is a big area I admit, as any area connected to the tube might make that claim, but this really is, there are more busses and cabs than cars.  The hotel is discreet but posh, and judging by the fluffyness of the towels is luxurious.  My room is on the first floor, meaning that the window, with views of a typically cosmopolitan London street, is a few fee above the windows of the top deck of the busses that stop outside at the lights.  Nobody has waved yet.  The bar looks like the sort of place a foreign correspondent might frequent in that it sells cocktails, which is hard liquor mixed with more hard liquor or, if you’re a lady, some fruit.  There was also what appeared to be a fashion shoot going on.  Rude to stare.

Brexiteers would loath this place.  It’s full of foreigners, coming over here, boosting our economy.  And that’s just the staff.

Terrorists could never make 'Bake off' - their video's are shit!

Back when the world was black and white, people knew how to behave in front of the camera.  They stared into the lens as if hypnotised and spoke either in a sort of strangulated RP, or with a regional accent, usually northern.  Headscarves featured.

The popularisation of the family cine camera did little to lessen the public’s respect for film, which was finite and had to be processed by the chemist.  The early days of video cameras started to erode the mystique of moving images, when anyone could appear on their own telly and mistakes could be taped over, or sent to television shows so that you could appear on other peoples’ tellies with your skirt ticked into your knickers or something equally hilarious.

It took Yoohootube to make us realise that the democratisation of broadcasting proved that talent is not democratic, but the lack of it certainly is.

‘The Great British Bake Off’ is beyond Event Television, it is Phenomenon Television that has made stars of its presenters (a bloke apparently made of mahogany and a woman who is a cross between an Aunt Sally and Zelda from ‘Terrahawks’) and of the contestants.  How?  Two words: Peril!

Women directors like Jerry Bruckheimer strive to introduce peril into their movies, and usually do so by Blowing Shit Up while all the time threatening something that will make those explosions look like atom farts.  This can be a meteor, or a bomb, or a bomb strapped to a meteor.

But fuck that.  You want to know what peril is?  Peril is having your bake judged.  Anyone who has every put a plate of home baked biscuits down in front of a bunch of unsuspecting friends knows the moment of peril just after one of them takes the first bite.  The next thing out of their mouth had better be ‘that’s delicious’ and not ‘as I was saying…’ or ‘fuck, that’s atrocious’, because you can go from friend to cunt in one chew if you don’t praise the bake.  That’s what it means to bakers.  They all know this.  Anyone who has ever had their cooking criticised will know that there is only one reaction, a cocktail of shame and psychosis.

That’s why the audience are on the edge of their seats.

That, and the British fucking LOVE cake.  National game is cricket, yea?  Right, name me one other game, IN THE WORLD, that stops for lunch, and then for afternoon tea.  Test matches last for five days.  That’s ten opportunities to get some cake down you.  Think I’m kidding?  Google images of Mike Gatting and tell me that there’s a man who refuses carbs.

People look forward to Bake Off before it starts, enjoy it when it’s one and talk about it when it’s finished.  Know why?  Because it’s lovely.  This is a reality show where the only villain is time and whatever idiot confesses to bringing along any sort of store bought gadget or device.  Knocked up that cookie cutter in your shed?  Great!  Bought it?  You fucking disgust me!

Bake Off is British through and through.  The clue is in the title.  It’s great television and it demonstrates beyond a doubt that you need talent to appear on telly, either to make, present or just fucking cook scones badly on, you need talent.

A sword just don’t cut it.  Terrorists have taken to sharing their holiday videos with the world and the news media.  For what reason, Christ alone knows because if they think it’s somehow going to frighten, scare, intimidate or impress people, they really, really need to fire their audience research people.  The same audience that are nearly in tears when the old chap gets a hug from the Sex Pest on bake off and hang around to watch the news are then shouting ‘arsehole!’ at the bloke with his mum’s headscarf, a balaclava and a glaring deficiency in the girlfriend department.  Whatever terrorist videos are (and the only thing I can possibly think they are in internet terms is ‘troll bait’), they certainly aren’t good.

Think you’re tough?  Try baking two dozen identical flapjacks with the nation waiting to Tweet things about you?  No?  Thought not.

Virtual Edinburgh Festival Goer

Music festivals, I am sure, are best enjoyed from the comfort of your sofa, where you can enjoy the music and actually see the band without the drawbacks of trying to find your way back to your tent in the dark afterwards, having to pay £4.00 for a plastic piss pot of Carling, having to piss in a plastic piss pot because the queues for the toilets are visible from space, and having to pay £400 for the privilege.  All of this and the threat that the headliner will only play new material.

Literature festivals should be better.  Except that anyone who is remotely good has already sold out, and if by chance you do get to see an author who you really, really admire, you will discover why writing is a solitary occupation as they reveal in the interview that they have the charisma of a damp sponge and when doing the reading why they get Charles Dance to do their audiobooks.

There is only one festival that is, from the moment you set out to go there until the moment you get back, sheer joy, the Edinburgh festival.

First of all, you can get there by sleeper train.  How fucking awesome is that!  You can go to sleep on a train and it’s official, you’re allowed.  You won’t wake to the sound of screaming because your head has lolled onto the shoulder of the teenager next to you and you have drooled on their mobile, you won’t wake to see your station receding into the distance.  Also, club car.

There’s the city itself, so marvellous that you might think you are in a Playstation game that will, at some point, involve the use of the term ‘Templers’.  When the Fret blows in the tops of the buildings are lost in mist and Edinburgh moves from beautiful to magical.  People complain that the ‘real’ Edinburgh of housing estates and working class people is hidden from the tourist city.  Great!

And the festival!  There are shows in the morning (apparently), in the day, in the night and long into the wee small hours.

Lots of it is free, thanks to the BBC.  The best comedy shows are recorded for the BBC so you get in for free and grin with anticipation because you know, you just know, that two years from now you will be able to say ‘oh him, saw him in Edinburgh, a couple of years ago.  He was good.  Back then.’ to friends who have just spunked £80 to go see the ‘new’ comedy sensation.

And even if you are having a shit time, if you have seen one experimental dance troupe too many (that’s one) and are wrestling with a hangover that needs a name, like a tropical storm (‘Hangover Henry, all hangovers are male), you are having a better day than the poor bastards who leaflet on the Royal Mile.  Because there can be no sensation quite like trying to interest people in a show you have been crafting for a year and then realising that people have no interest in your one woman ballet chronicling the importance of the role of church leaders in ending apartheid in South Africa, ‘Tutu 2 tutu’, in fact they have so little interest, they won’t even take a leaflet, although they might be avoiding you because you have blacked up for the part.

And that’s not even close to the elation you experience after steadily drinking all day when you are in a tiny club with sweat dripping down the walls, a plastic pot of warm lager in your hand and a comedian so utterly without fear that he has titled his show ‘FGMOMGWTF’.

Sadly, not everyone can go to the festival.  This is where technology comes to the rescue.

What you need is a festival goer fitted with a webcam to rove the city, sitting in pubs, queuing for shows, laughing like mongoose on acid at jokes he won’t recall the next day, while the subscriber sits at home with a shitload of Red Stripe and a bag of oven chips.

Until then, we’ll just have to make do with Twitter and the Tattoo on the BBC.

Who's been sitting in my seat?

I bet Portillo doesn't have to put up with this!

In possibly the greatest rehabilitation of a personality since Paul went from tax collector to apostle, Michael Portillo is now better known as a presenter of charmingly inoffensive soufflé-weight documentaries about train travel than as The Hammer Of The Poor.  Essentially, the format of ‘Trains to Charming Places’ is that Michael, sporting a wardrobe that makes one question his sexuality and clutching a guide book as outdated as the ideas he had when in the Cabinet, takes trains hither and yon and stops off to discuss heritage trades like being a farrier, fletcher or cooper (back when these were trades and not merely surnames.  Presumably following the tradition of names deriving from trades, a century hence Tommy Callcentre and Susie Barista will be common enough names) before announcing ‘look at my bright trousers and tremble’ and ambling off towards the station.

Anyone watching this programme for longer than the necessary time (which is the length of time it takes to press the button on the remote to take you to the next channel) will note that when the presenter makes his train journey, he is inevitably in a not terribly crowded carriage.  This of course makes perfect sense as crouching across from the presenter is a cameraman, sound guy, director and the girl who fetches the paninis.

Anyone who commutes on a regular basis will know that such space is far from the norm, but then again the programme probably wouldn’t have the same relaxed air if Michael were standing in a vestibule (loom it up, it’s the right word) between carriages with his nose rubbing the camera lens, thanks to the overcrowding.

Neither does Michael apparently have to find his won seat by excavating a pile of used Metros and the debris of what appears to be a takeaway Medieval banquet.

Naturally, railway companies have to make huge profits somehow, and the latest trend appears to be charging ridiculous ticket prices and only employing cleaners every third day.  This means that you usually have the opportunity to play the Goldilocks Game when alighting, in other words ‘which anti-social fucker has been sitting in my seat’.  If you are lucky, it’s somebody who has carefully refolded their copy of the Metro before dropping it on the floor, if you are unlucky, it is somebody who has either breakfasted on the flakiest pastry ever made, or is a leper.

Occasionally though it’s just a single coffee cup.

What, Watson, can we deduce from this.  Firstly, that the drinker favours decaf, as their coffee has obviously not given them the energy required to bin the fucking thing.  Secondly, that there are either an oligarch or a fare dodger, as it is unlikely that anyone purchasing a ticket at today’s prices can also afford store-bought coffee.  Finally, that they have joined the growing tribe of adult litterlouts (yes, leaving a coffee cup for somebody else to clear away, when you actually have to walk past a bin in the carriage to exit, is littering).

Cardboard coffee cups are the new fag butts and as such are the very worst and most offensive sort of litter because coffee, like fags, is a product consumed by adults.  Crisp packets and sweetie wrappers are annoying litter but one can almost understand why Little Fuckers, sorry, why children, discard them, it’s because they are careless, have not been brought up properly and have never spent a Sunday morning tidying their front garden by plucking Haribo wrappers out of their hedges.

Commuting, I think, makes one more intolerant of stupidity, be it passive aggressive littering, leaky headphones or the inappropriate use of the mobile ‘phone in any carriage, actually, on any train I am in or on or even waiting for.

Which is why it would make for a magnificent conclusion to the series to see Portillo completely lose his fucking mind with an annoying fellow traveller who has their shitty music on too loud and beat the little prick to death with his Bradshaw.

Now that I would watch.

Dear Sir...

Britain is, by and large, a charitable nation.  Certainly charity is the only possible explanation for the continued enthusiastic support of some of the nation’s national football teams, who can be relied upon to put in a truly tragic performance in any tournament more challenging than the one down the rec using anoraks for goalposts.

Charity takes many forms.  For instance, many older men, even married ones, help to support young women by putting them up in a small flat in Mayfair and ensuring they have enough money for their education, gym memberships, discreet visits to Harley Street and, if necessary, impromptu foreign travel one step ahead of the press.

There are national charity days for broadcasters, when the BBC tests to destruction the patience of an audience who have only tuned in to see the special seven minute long ‘Doctor Who’ episode and who have to sit through musical number after musical number for fear of missing it and not Tweeting something snarky in the moment.

There are charity days that take the form of brave volunteers who, armed only with regulation anorak and a thermos containing a cocktail of gin and paraffin, stand on the high street for hours rattling a tin, in aid of funds for Lifeboats, or the fight against some vile disease, or the welfare of any animal from the donkey to the, well, it’s usually donkeys.

The English in particular love their animal charities.  Ironically this is a result of knowing fuck all about animal welfare and thinking meat comes from the supermarket rather than a Disney character voiced by a beloved recovering alcoholic.  This affection and affectation has given rise to the myth that the English give more to animal charities than they do charities that look after humans.

Why does this myth persist?

The thing is, charities have started sending gifts to those who contribute, like calendars and stickers and, frankly, people are much more likely to use, and display, their bookmark of a grinning donkey in a hat than they are the sort of image usually sent out by a charity that looks after children in some war torn hell hole, which is usually, how shall we put this, authentic, and not the sort of thing you want fellow commuters thinking you consider appropriate to mark your place in ‘What Ho Jeeves’.

Whilst charities may send you gifts to prompt you to donate (‘please find enclosed a free biro, now use it to fill out the enclosed standing order form you middle class biro stealing bastard’), that’s a lot better than the menace that risks turning us from a nation with our hand in our pocket to a nation with our hands round the throat of the gurning tosser obstructing our path on the pavement.

I speak of the ‘chugger’.  And if you thought the BBC News team doing a ‘Kids from Fame’ medley in aid of ‘Children in Need’ was irritating, that’s nothing compared to some twat in a cagoule with a smile and a clipboard trying to get your bank details off of you without even the common courtesy of pretending to be a Nigerian prince.  Or giving you a coaster.  These are young people who are employed to cheerfully try and slow your progress to the cake shop or pub by asking you if you have ever thought about the problems of the lack of availability of drinking water in the world.

BTW the correct answer is not, as I found out, ‘absolutely, Waitrose is out of Highland Spring again, it’s a fucking disgrace’.

I think people find chuggers irritating because British people are genuinely generous to charities but like it that by giving they can be both anonymous and altruistic.  That’s why those (now considered to be a little bit offensive and, actually, when you think of it, somewhat creepy) collection boxes in the shape of life-sized replicas of children that used to stand outside shops could do so safely and unchained, no one would dream of nicking one.

Actually, it was because they were full of coppers so they weren’t worth nicking, and, because they were full of coppers, nobody could lift the fucking things anyway!

Radiohead

Technology is, on the whole, wonderful.  Take alarm clocks.  Once, an alarm clock was a clockwork thing with a couple of chimes and a hammer that, once a day, went off like a Haribo binging ADHD kid.

Then, advances in technology led to the alarm clock that buzzed, then beeped.

Then there was the apex of alarm clock technology, the Teasmaid.  The Teasmaid not only woke you up with a gentle buzz, but commenced boiling a little kettle at the same time, the idea being that you could have that all-important first cup of tea of the day without all the palaver of having to get out of bed.  This was liberation.  For those who sadly lacked butlers, it was a taste of what having staff was like, and for most, that tasted like PG Tips.

The next great leap sideways was the clock radio.  Instead of a bringggg, a buzz, a beep or a scalding jet of steam, you could be woken by a breakfast radio DJ, now probably safely locked up thanks to Yewtree, prattling nonsense in your ear.

Now, you can buy alarm clocks wake you by slowly increasing the level of light in the room whilst playing soothing sounds like the sea, or birdsong.  This is supposed to ease you into your day rather than provoke the natural reaction, which is to sit bolt upright screaming ‘what the fuck am I doing outdoors?’.

My alarm clock is set to Radio 4, because I like to go from peaceful sleep to enraged and in desperate need of tea as quickly as possible.

It is a habit that I am going to have to break, before I break the radio.  Radio 4 at breakfast time means the ‘Today’ programme and, frankly, I’ve reached the end of my tether with that particular show.  The presenters are so adversarial that my mental image of the studio is not some bland studio at Broadcasting House but a gladiatorial arena carpeted with blood soaked sand.

They really do seem to delight in getting their guests on, asking them a question, interrupting them, belittling them and then, just when the guest has managed to get into a full spluttering rage that promises entertainment, end the interview.  All of this before I’ve managed to wrestle myself out from under the duvet.

No more.  The internet has shown that there is a world wide web of listening choices out there.  Because that most modern of communication technologies, the internet, is revealing the true wonder and extent of that most traditional of communication technologies, radio.

Years ago, if you wanted to listen to radio from other countries, there were two ways of doing so.  You could set up a ham radio station in your shed and spend your spare time going up and down the dial, hoping that atmospheric conditions were such that a radio station in Minsk’s signal would bounce in your direction, or you could travel.

Not now.  I have an app that lets me listen to radio over the internet.  So far, so iPlayer.  But this app lets you browse by location.

Foreign radio is fucking brilliant!

By far my favourite is a Parisian station called Allouette.  Even the adverts are cool.  And DJs are so, so much more tolerable when you don’t understand a bloody word they’re saying.

But why stop there.  African radio is a hoot, as is South American.

And bloody hell, do the Americans love a bit of Christian radio.  In a way, it’s a no-brainer that Christians would have radio stations, it’s like being able to do missionary work without ever having to leave the trailer park.

And there’s so much of it.  I’ve decided.  My days of listening to grumpy old men interrupting one another are over.  No wonder the Today programme presenters are all so grumpy, they have to get up at four in the morning.  I’m going to start listening to radio from different time zones, so that when I’m getting up, I can listen to the mellow sounds of the ‘relax hour’ somewhere where it’s getting dark.  Alternatively, just listen to Radio 3, the most relaxed radio station on the planet at any hour.

Still Fast

As has been previously documented, when I lived in a shared house it was far more ‘The Young Ones’ (at least in terms of squalor) than ‘This Life’ (although fair to say I did manage to have a relationship with one of my house mates, before she worked out that beneath the façade that I had erected (yuk yuk) to try and pass myself off as a fascinating adult was somebody with the emotional dept of an Arabian puddle – all I can say is thank fuck this happened during the years Doctor Who was off our screens, or she would have drawn her own, quite correct, conclusions from the number of sonic screwdriver replicas on display in my room and the relationship would have ended with the emotional equivalent of her blinking twice when asked if everything was alright, rather than in the pleasingly traditional manner of her finding somebody with more, i.e. any, muscle tone and dumping me like nuclear waste in a national park).  There was, however, a period where we had a mix of people in the house who shared the same interests; coming home and sitting quietly in front of the telly.
In retrospect, we should all have recognised that in terms of relationships, we were never going to do any better, formed a commune, bought i) the house and ii) an enormous telly and lived out the rest of our days wearing DVT stockings.
We didn’t.  I went on to convince somebody else that I was a fully functioning adult by not revealing the extent of my comic collection, hidden at my mother’s house, or indeed my mother, also hidden there, until it was too late. As for the rest, I think they are all essentially following the example set by the actors from ‘This Life’; you never hear from them but you sort of know they are doing well.
I think the secret to our all getting on well together (two blokes, two girls and one bloke who was never, ever, there) was that we never discussed anything personal, or if we did, we only did it drunk and so everything could be denied or diplomatically forgotten the next day.
So how did we communicate?  Not, I am pleased to say, through the traditional housemate method of increasingly aggressive post-it-notes left on bedroom doors, fridges, loo handles, plates stacked awaiting washing up and so on.  Rather, it would appear, through catch phrases.
This became apparent when I watched the two part ‘Fast Show’ special this week.
When it comes to comedy, reviving a show that has been off air is usually about as effective as passing electricity through a corpse and hoping for a reproduction of the original features, and about as funny as passing electricity through a corpse and having it reanimate and start throttling bunnies.  Not so here, this was hysterical.  In being so, it was in defiance of ‘Trotter’s Law’ - that a revived show is exactly as terrible as the original was beloved.
As the familiar characters and catchphrases rolled out, I recalled not sitting in front of the telly, but standing in the kitchen holding a packet of unlucky cod announcing ‘Tonight, I shall mostly be eating…fish fingers’.  I recall the watching the climax of a particularly bitter episode of University Challenge and, as the buzzer goes for the last question, my housemate piping up ‘Sorry, I’ve just come’.  And whenever any of us encountered another when wearing a dressing gown, one, the other, or both, would simply begin ‘Me?  The thirteenth Duke of Winbourne?  Here?’ and go on to describe something utterly filthy involving penguins.
The revival was spectacular, and funny.  And most important of all (J.J. Abrams please note) it did not take a cherished memory and Yewtree it.

Eurovision 2014

Every year so fresh, every year a new and exciting opportunity to hear ‘bingly-bingly bong’ expressed in a variety of languages.  Every year more opportunity than last year to hear a new language as, things in Europe being what they are, formally happy countries are becoming new, bloody miserable, countries with their own currency, national costume (the flared pantaloon) and language (just like last year’s national language, but with a lot more gargling at the back of the throat).

In a changing world, it’s quite lovely that there are some constants.

Such as the many stock components to Eurovision, without which, it wouldn’t be Eurovision. 

There is the host venue for instance.  It used to be that the competition would be hosted in a prestigious established national musical venue, but that’s before all those Eastern European countries that are intolerant of gays started winning, and so now the venue is likely to be a former industrial site, like a cement factory, abattoir, or prostitute training school, so all the homosexualists the event attracts are already outside the city walls by sunset anyway and nobody has to fret about their goat being fucked by anybody outside the family.  Whatever the venue, some neon and dry ice and it looks exactly like where they film the ‘X Factor’, which I think is a suburb of Hell.

There are the hosts.  Anyone from a foreign country who can speak English reasonably well has either become a banker in London, married a footballer, become an action hero in Hollywood or is working hard on their second Michelin star by doing interesting things with goats.  That’s why the people left hosting the programme sound like their day job is dubbing porn, and look like the only job they could get in porn is dubbing.

There are the acts. 

There are four types. 

The first is, essentially, ethnic Euro.  This is ooompah to a disco beat and it’s only half way through ‘Ein Jolt’ (‘My Goat’) that you realise that this not irony, but a representation of the cultural output of a country that, by the twisted rules of broadcasting, considers itself to be ‘European’. 

The second is the type that has a pleasingly bingly-bongy tune, a bloke singing, and either backing singers or dancers that make the males in the home audience go very quiet. 

The third is the trier.  Typically a ballad, this will normally be a woman in a floaty dress, normally in a lot of dry ice, occasionally with a bloke on a stool in the background strumming a guitar or, if they followed the last act, himself.

Finally there’s the novelty act.  Trampolines can be a feature of this, as can national costume (anywhere East of Paris and national costume is all the same, pantaloons and a hat).  This is the winning act.

There is the definition of ‘European’.  Hello, is that the Kremlin?  Yes, well, according to Eurovision you are part of Europe, and hence part of a larger whole, ruled from Britain (with some help from Germany), so start behaving like a proper European, that is, don’t invade countries, but do by all means buy as much of their goat’s cheese as possible.

There is the Eurovision viewer.  There are two types.  The sort that watch the entire show, possibly making a party of it, either by having an actual party with friends in costume and so on, or by adopting the much more sensible measure of sitting there with a telly, a wine box and a smart ‘phone and txting their thoughts to their friends, all the while occasionally flicking up the channels to that ‘Morse’ they can’t recall if they have seen or not.  Then they get a bit intense and bitter when the voting starts and the camera shows the various camps backstage and the British entry starts the evening bubbly and ends blubbing.

Or the politician.  Miss the acts, sit down in front of the telly for the voting, and probably get a greater understanding European politics than you will from any number of newspaper pundits.

And of course, next year, the possibility of a Scottish entry, with bagpipes.  So, Eurovision 2016 from Leith?

Top Clarkson

Jeremy Clarkson is in trouble again.  The teevee presenter is no stranger to controversy, fronting a show about motor cars and appearing to hold views as dated as his wardrobe, he has in the past offended hand-knitted environmentalists by brutalising shrubs and so on, offended lorry-drivers by implying that their profession is synonymous with murdering prostitutes and offending, well, just about everyone really, by having Christmas lunch with David Cameron and Rebekka Brooks.
There is no doubting his success and his popularity.  ‘Top Gear’, a show that used to be about reviewing hatchbacks but has morphed into event television that sees portly middle aged men taking on car-themed races across countries and feature-length adventures on other continents strewn with spontaneous hilarious incidents based on the lads hapless lack of understanding of their environment, and which is the BBC’s biggest export.  That’s right, it’s not ‘Newsnight’ that gets flogged around the world, it’s ‘Top Gear’.
Clarkson is also a successful author.  Which is not to say that he writes surprisingly touching novels about life in a home for single mums in turn-of-the-Century Macclesfield under the pen name Delores Whitter, but rather his ‘newspaper’ columns are collected into paperbacks, launched onto the market in time for Christmas, and sell in the sort of numbers that make Martin Amis start each writing day looking in the mirror mumbling ‘must…be…funnier’ for five minutes before wandering out to the pool of his house in LA and dictating the next chapter of his new novel about life in London.
If you are a successful cash cow, you are allowed license.  Especially if the controversy gets you publicity and only annoys a minority that would never watch you show, or buy your books, or DVDs, anyway.
However, if you are successful enough for long enough you will end up pissing people off and one day there will come a point where you’ve pissed enough people off to turn an incident into a media event.
Footage was released of Clarkson apparently n-bombing.
The way this was covered in the media was telling.  Normally, the BBC crucify their own presenters when they screw up but for once, the Corporation was balanced.  I suspect this was not so much out of deference for the presenter of a flagship programme, but rather because so many former BBC presenters are currently behind bars, awaiting sentencing or under investigation that unless the next show you are likely to appear in is the prison panto, it’s hardly headline stuff.
Over at Sky news however, it was a different story.  Sky managed to demonstrate just how much they hated and envied the BBC in general and Top Gear in particular by presenting the story using a ‘lap times’ board similar to the one used in Top Gear, but with Clarkson’s gaffes rated instead of lap times from various cars the viewers will never be able to afford.  I’m not sure if television programmes can actually stalk one another, but I would not be at all surprised if the Sky presenter in question has a mock up of the Top Gear studio in her attic and gets her friends round to play at presenting a successful telly show.
Sky so obviously wanted Clarkson humiliated and off the BBC that you could taste it.  That way, when they give him his own show (any format you want Jeremy) in six months, they can do so at half the value of his so-enormous-you-can-see-it-from-space BBC salary.
What was interesting was Clarkson’s column in the Sun.  He actually is a funny writer, even under, or maybe because of, pressure.  He also revealed that the BBC have a list of ‘forbidden’ words that it’s probably best not to blurt out on air.  Apparently the ‘n’ word is fourth on the list, making one wonder what the hell the top three are, and whether or not anyone will ever manage to get all ten into The Afternoon Play on Radio 4.
The secret of Top Gear’s success by the way?  They review a £150k supercar and conclude that it’s shit, meaning the viewer can turn off safe in the knowledge that they made the right choice with their Astra.

Austenmania

Last Sunday I spent a very pleasant hour reclining, listening to a fantastic BBC Radio 4 adaption of 'Pride and Prejudice'.  Hats, and bonnets, off to all involved, including what I am sure is a quite marvellous cast, who, wonderful though they were, merely provided a soundtrack to mental images populated by the cast of the 1995 BBC adaption featuring Colin Firth's wet shirt in a BAFTA award winning role as best supporting garment (informally known as 'the golden girdle').
Just what will be required to ever remove that particular adaption from the nation's collective memory is uncertain, although any future adaptions would do well to feature 3D, or dinosaurs.   Probably though, there's simply no chance of any subsequent version of the story unseating Andrew Davies's version as the definitive pride and prejudice.  It's certainly better than even the one written by Jane Austen, what with hers not being on telly and everything but instead being a print version, and apparently not even available on Kindle, initially.
Maybe it just aired at the right time.  Looking at it, the BBC obviously had access to sackful of loot, each episode obviously costing the sort of money it takes to run a Premiership football team for a week today.
It's easy to see how these adaptions might have an effect on impressionable young women.  Chaps may choose to invest wisely in, say, collectible replicas such as sonic screwdrivers, or limited edition DVDs.  Wise purchases to be sure, until you get a girlfriend and treasured possessions move from artfully lit shelves to boxes under the bed, on top of the cupboard or, in extreme circumstances, to being listed on eBay.  This is a particularly crippling way to part with a purchase as it reveals that the limited edition replica you shelled out a fortune for, one of only 10,000, is practically worthless.
Girls, one imagines, can get 'bonnet-fever' and indeed programmes such as 'Lost in Austen' and films like 'Austenland' have identified this as enough of a trend to wring a series or a feature film out of.
What, as a concerned parent, should one do - if anything - if your daughter shows signs of excessive Austen-mania, such as sighing, wearing bonnets, attending church and sitting in the front room embroidering.
First and foremost, you should just be grateful she's not self harming or reading the ''Twilight' books.  But if it all gets a bit too much, for instance her refusing to attend school as she is convinced that appearing too educated will put men off and prevent her from making a good marriage, then it's time to mount an intervention.
Do not be tempted to take the 'so you tried a cigarette, let's smoke the entire pack and see how you feel then' approach.  Last Christmas I happened across the 1995 adaption being aired, all six episodes back to back, and that was the rest of the day taken care of, and it was fantastic.  No, you need to, in a safe and unthreatening way, shock the hell out of her by showing what happens when people take these sorts of things to extremes.
Start with the blog of anyone who enjoys spending their weekends attending civil war reenactments.  Then visit the blogs of their children, who will point out that while their mates were going to Disneyland and Centre Parcs, their own holidays from eight to eighteen years of age consisted of touring various battlefields, dressing up, and being skewered by a pike before learning that the actual battle took place in the next postcode but hey ho there's always next year.  And lots of mud.  Just google 'resentful teens' and set your filter for 'period costume' (not, as many think, hot water bottles strapped fore and aft and a sweatshirt with ice-cam down the front of it, but usually something with a hat featuring a plume).
Such examples can serve as timely warnings that it's great to be enthusiastic about your hobbies and history, but that if you are having a screaming argument with another adult about the correct pronunciation of 'epaulette'  in relation to British army uniforms during the Peninsular war, it's time to either go for a beer, or complete that PhD.
Austen is seductive.  Which is ironic, given how repressed everyone is.  Who wouldn't want to inhabit a world where the men are handsome and wear very, very tight trousers and are rich, and wear tight trousers and everyone goes to balls, which you can see, because of, well, you know.
One can see how one would want to retreat from a complicated world into a selectively idealised past of balls and bonnets, but beware taking things too far.  How far is too far?  Easy - it's three bonnets.  One for everyday, one for best, that's all the bonnets anyone ever needs.  If you have three bonnets, seek help, or eBay, at once.

Nature Notes - The feast of St Jude

A perhaps unintended consequence of improvements to long term weather forecasting is that the ever-speculative rolling news is now able to report news stories before they have even happened. 

So it was that when the Met Office started talking about fronts, wind and amber warnings, the weather forecasters suddenly found themselves not just tacked on after the news, but popping up during it.  At last, a chance to sit at the big shiny desk, not just hover in front of a bloody big map of the UK wondering idly where Droitwich is.

As the isobars pushed closer together than the boobs of a bird in a wonder-bra, salivation television began.  Two days in advance of the savage storm, we were left in no doubt that you should not travel on the day of the storm, nor should you go out without an unsecured wig, and that if you have pets, you should staple them to the floor.  Anything up to a pony.  Essentially, unless you were down a mine the weekend of the storm, you could expect trouble.

Actually, the weather forecasters earned their money.  The storm arrived as scheduled, was pretty intense and some damage was done, with branches down and travel disruption (that old chestnut of leaves on the line, except this time they were still attached to the tree).  But people were prepared, that was the key, those that would not be able to travel into work were able to make sure they had panic-bought DVDs and Xbox games to keep themselves amused.

The big concern was the ‘storm surge’, as the wind drove the sea onshore.  So terrifying was this prospect that many immediately took to the sea front armed with their mobile to take what would be, by the look of some of those waves, their most exciting selfie ever and quite possibly the last one they would ever take on their non-waterproof ‘phone.

And of course the storm was reported ahead of time, in real time and in the aftermath.  Because it was concentrated in the south of England, it received blanket media coverage, with even the strongest hair care products being tested to the limits as BBC reporters got a bit blown about.  Personally, it’s the squirrels I feel sorry for.

Balls!

'Fast ball!  Fast ball!  Fast ball!'

Ah, the Six Nations.  Good because it’s rugby, good because it’s a major tournament, great because it’s one of the rare sporting events that is broadcast on the BBC.  If Sky and ESPN continue their domination of sports broadcasting, the only sporting choice left to those too tight to pay to watch their team perform disappointingly is going to be Little League and fights in pub car parks.

The thing about the Six Nations is that one starts the tournament with such high expectations and, because it is stretched out over a number of weeks, it takes a while for those hopes to be crushed.

'One can’t help but feel that cricket might be improved if the batsman occasionally 

chased the bowler around the pitch with his bat in response to irresponsible bowling'

There is also spectacle.  At Murrayfield they have a piper and a field gun, presumably to keep order if Scotland actually score a try.  There are the anthems, everybody singing, everybody crying.  There’s also the ever present threat of a bit of off-the-ball action, which is what a punch-up between players is referred to as.  This is not the sort of behaviour one would expect to see from professional sportsmen, although one can’t help but feel that cricket might be improved if the batsman occasionally chased the bowler around the pitch with his bat in response to irresponsible bowling.

The downside to watching the Six Nations is the commentary.  For some strange reason, the BBC’s rugby commentary team seem to be afflicted with a disproportionate number of old women.  Not that I have anything against old women, old women are lovely, it’s just that when an ex-rugby player is being unswervingly negative about a team who, whatever their performance, are sweating and bleeding and steaming in the driving rain in order to win the game, it does rather detract from one’s enjoyment.

This is the year though, when I add social media to the mix.  Have you ever watched a sporting event whilst following it simultaneously on Twitter?  It’s fantastic.  It’s like going to the cinema, watching a film and having everyone talking at once, sharing their ill-informed opinions and giving advice to the characters, all in neat little soundbites, but in real time and with the added bonus that there is plenty of ‘off-the-ball’ action between Twitterers (Twonkers?  Twypers?) who do not share the same opinion.

Following Twitter and watching telly has been something of a short-term craze for me this past week.  Once you get into it, it’s hard to stop until you have a breakthrough moment that you’ve seen it all before and, actually, it’s not adding to your enjoyment of ‘Bargain Hunt’ as much as you thought it might.

It is a great idea, real time updates on social media from people who are having the same experience that you are.  Like with so many great tech ideas though, it’s the execution that lets it down.  That and the users.

Because what you are really looking for is somebody to make amusingly cruel comments that add another layer of enjoyment to whatever you are watching.  There’s even an app that allows you to filter social media comments about live television and, in the short term, it is gigglesome but in the long term depressing that so many people are at home at five thirty on a Saturday night watching ‘Jurassic Park’ in their pyjamas.  That’s my thing, that’s not your thing, alright?

I’ve been in a stadium watching a rugby match as part of a social network known as a ‘crowd’ and the comments are, generally, kept to a minimum of ‘ooooh’, ‘ahhhh’ and ‘fast ball!’, which seems to get shouted an awful lot, along with hints and tips and advice for the players and the ref.  These do not, generally, make for good tweets.  Mind you, neither do the things actually being tweeted.

So I’m just going to assume that a live sporting occasion is a shared experience without relying on any actual evidence, and I am going to go on believing that the sort of people who tweet really do have better things to do on a Saturday night than watch ‘Jurassic Park'

in their pyjamas.

They are wrong, of course, there is no better way to spend your Saturday night.

Culture Corner

Throughout 2013, Gentleman & Player has never been short of an (unpublished) opinion, informed or not, about the cultural landmarks of the year (such as asking ‘is the Costa or the Orange the one for lezzas?’ before not dashing off 700 words on modern literary prizes).  In an outstanding year for the arts, here were some of the highlights.

Television

Reviews and articles about the final season of ‘Breaking Bad’ continued a trend started by coverage of ‘The Wire’ which implied that the audience is somehow intellectual simply because they were watching the thing.

Strictly Come Dancing continued to amaze, Sir Bruce is a testament to either the wonders of animatronics, or the existence of necromancy.

‘Day of the Doctor’ was best enjoyed in a cinema.  Not just because sitting in the dark gave fans a chance to touch a girl, but because the 3D was perfectly realised and there was, appropriately, yet another dimension to the experience by sharing it with others.

BBC ALBA was a revelation.  You can see premiership football and rugby on the BBC.  OK, it’s Scottish premiership football and rugby, and the football is mostly Partick Thistle, but it’s excellent for a couple of reasons.  Firstly, in the world of Scottish sectarian football, Partick Thistle are like a DMZ, wearing a Jags scarf is guarantee of safe passage in Glasgow.  Interesting to see if this continues if they continue to be quite good.  Second major bonus is that all the commentary is a Gaelic, so nobody can understand a word.  But it all sounds poetic and wonderfully passionate.  Blissful.

Art

Manet at the RA was a masterclass in how to do a lot with not very much at all.  Manet was rich enough not to be arsed to finish most of his paintings.  Still, the new audio guides are good, including a little screen where you can see a picture of the picture obscured by the crowd in front of you.  This was a blockbuster and with London so handy for the Eurostar judging by the accents, and the manners, quite a lot of French had made the trip to see the exhibition.

The RA Summer Exhibition 2013 – surprisingly un-shit this year.

Doig at the Scottish National Gallery – confronted by enormous, colourful canvasses of tropical landscapes, the indigenous population didn’t know what to make of them.  Is a blue sky modernist or surrealist?

Theatre

The exceptional performances in ‘Midsummer Night’s Dream’ underlined the casual cruelty of the fairy folk.  Sheridan Smith deserves special credit for being able to divert attention from David Walliams, who appeared to be possessed by the ghost of Frankie Howerd.  Smith’s legs are even better than her acting talent, which is exceptional.

Jude Law’s stellar performance as Henry V confirmed that it’s always a great idea to put a film star on the boards.  In a spellbound audience, you could hear the collective raising of hairs standing up on end during the ‘breach’ and ‘St Crispin’s Day’ speeches.  The tears in my eyes were due to an excess of dry ice used as smoke for the battle scenes.