Branded

Another storm in a teacup over glib comments made on the lamentable Russell Brand Radio 2 show, with the collaboration of the equally dubious Jonathan Ross. In their case, for both Messrs. Brand and Ross, it's a fairly lucrative cup of tea they sip at the BBC.

Alas, there is a section of the public that seems to revel in such excess, until of course it gets out of hand.

Now the furore has even reached 10 Downing Street, and David Cameron has also raised the matter of this slightly overblown story in the House of Commons - I was horrified to see it get first headline on the BBC TV news.

I'm not too surprised that David Cameron spoke up on the matter though: it was Cameron after all, who was asked on the Jonathan Ross Show if (as a teenager) he ever played with himself in front of a poster of Margaret Thatcher in his bedroom!

In Memoriam: Brian Moore

Although I only had a fairly recent acquaintance with Brian, since 2006, when he played the Colonel in Journey's End, he was just the sort of bubbly, bouncy character who makes any participation in a play worthwhile. He was an army veteran, a dedicated motorbike rider, and an enthusiastic amateur theatre player, both on the dramatic and the musical stage.

We shared some scenes for the first time in the film Witchfinder, where Brian was the Revd. John Eades of Lawford and I was John Stearne. For most of the shooting he was rigged up with a radio microphone for his sermons, which picked up every single inflection, including a hilarious series of outtakes for one particular scene entering an inn/restaurant, which brought the house down on premiere night.

We learned he had terminal cancer earlier this year, but when I saw him again at a Journey's End cast reunion in May, he still remained as bouncy and engaging as ever.

I'm reminded now of a scene in last year's Headgate Theatre production of King Lear, where I played Kent and Brian was the Fool - very much in the style of Max Miller. Andrew Hodgson came up with the idea of having the Fool die in the hovel rather than just disappear from the story as he traditionally does at this point. At the moment when Lear (David Knight) realises his old friend is gone, I had to wrench David away, with similar feelings of loss myself. I find it similarly hard to have lost Brian now.

Tolkien's World

By a combination of circumstances, I found myself visiting Northampton at the weekend. The original intention was to go to a Star Wars convention, which was later cancelled (see previous blog) and to combine it with a visit to a football match at the Sixfields Stadium.

I decided to carry on with my original remaining plans, and watched Northampton Town beat Yeovil Town 3-0 (whilst just down the road their Rugby Union compatriots also defeated Montpelier 51-7 later that evening), and Sixfields is a pleasant little new stadium nestled in a grassy valley. But the most visually striking sight when passing through West Northampton is a giant oddity of a tower, that to all intents and purposes reminded me of something out of J.R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings.

My first impressions were that it was some sort of communications tower on the lines of Birmingham and London's GPO Towers, or some sort of huge factory chimney - with windows - but in actuality, I discover it to be Northampton's Express Lift Tower, used originally for testing lift shafts, and now a listed building.

Curiously also, as a listed building it is one of the youngest of its kind - having been built as late as 1980. Perhaps it's appropriate, that the region of country that was the basis for Tolkien's "Middle Earth" (the Midlands) should have so prominent a construction. I almost expected Christopher Lee as Saruman to step out from the top.

Good Things: 15

Autumn/Fall

There's bad news, and bad news

Noted BBC (and prior to that ITN) newsreader Martyn Lewis once famously made the remark that there should be more good news broadcast on television and in the media in general. As an example he cited the famines in Ethiopia and Rwanda - hot news at the time, but no-one since bothered to report about the subsequent aid packages and subsequent hopeful reparations in those countries years later. There's a lot of truth in what he says, I feel. The way such grim events are reported too, is so rammed down people's throats - just in case they didn't get the gist the first time. The newspapers likewise, would rather cover pages and pages of the main apocalyptic news event, rather than covering all the stories with anything like a fair representation.

This morning it was more credit crunches, banks spiralling out of control, railways overcrowding, unemployment rising, and of course the weather (wet).

Listening to it all (on Radio 3) was about as much bad news as I could bear for one morning.

Learn Your Blinking Pelican Signals!

From my minor knowledge of the Highway Code (as a non-motorist), I've learnt that cars are not allowed to proceed when pedestrians are crossing during the yellow "flashing light". But that's exactly what happened to me along the crossing from one end of Crouch Street to the other over Balkerne Hill this afternoon, where an impatient driver decided to start moving, and I had to dash at a slightly quicker pace to get across safely.

It's a flimsy excuse to provide a link to an old Dad's Army commercial from the 1970's, but a topical one nonetheless!

The Torch(wood) is passed on

Until last weekend I was preparing for a Star Wars convention at the Park Inn in Northampton in 2 weeks time (October 17th-19th), until I heard rumours that the event had been cancelled. Upon checking a sci-fi magazine in the shops today, I see that the same venue is now being used for a Torchwood convention.

Perhaps this is quite appropriate in a way. Anyone with a childhood memory of watching Star Wars would have to be in their 30s now at the very youngest, most likely with kids of their own. For the new generation the recent Doctor Who and its spin-offs are very much the in-thing now.

I was once backstage on a Colchester Theatre Group production, when Seth Dunt - an 8-year old connoisseur - and I discussed things Doctor Who-ish, and I mentioned that my last active memory of the series was the Christopher Eccleston episode with the return of the Daleks. He berated me for being so old hat!

So having Torchwood conventions instead of Star Wars conventions would seem to be the next logical step in the evolution of popular sci-fi: the guests are younger, and "hotter" as they say in showbiz parlance, and the audience is wide-ranging and enthusiastic.

But.....do not underestimate the power of the Force...its appeal has lasted for the last 30 years, and there's every chance of it lasting another thirty. And I just have to look at the enduring popularity of Laurel & Hardy (another film favourite of mine) as a yardstick, whose films are still being shown on DVD and at society film meetings (and occasional cinema re-releases) over 70 years later!

Ohhhh, Dr. Beeching...

I watched this man being interviewed on an old 1981 documentary this evening (BBC Four), who is still unrepentant in his views on how the network was (and should have been) changed. The British Railways answer to Himmler, he axed thousands of miles of railway line (some of which were mercifully saved) as an overzealous response to nationalisation. The trains were expensive to run, but imagine - as a motorist - having all your roads torn up with nowhere to go, which is in effect what Beeching did for the trains.

Could anyone more unsuitable have been chosen for the job? Quote:

"I didn't really want the job...I couldn't see why any normal person would want it."

As Ian Hislop points out in his accompanying documentary, Ian Hislop Goes Off the Rails, all the woes of the UK rail network - the failures, the fare rises, the privatisation, the delays, the accidents - can all be traced back to the fatally misguided Dr. Beeching.

In an era long before Thatcherite extremism, he is the epitome and the precursor of the ethos that if something isn't making money, then it has to be scrapped altogether.