For the record, Hev Tweed decorates the best Christmas tree. No contest.
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I was asked, by John Charles, about Ai, and here are my answers:
What was your initial reaction when AI-generated art first began appearing in your field or online?
Mockery. I posted a lot about the six-fingered drawings I was seeing online. Immediately I joined the artists’ backlash against our work being stolen to make this art, and how it was being used to replace us.
Has that reaction changed over time?
Only in as much that I’ve become resigned to how widely it’s been accepted. Only one Christmas card this year has been done by AI (a relative, a ‘normal’ if you will), but I bet most people have been getting many more. It’s possible only artists are showing any resistance to it. It’s become ubiquitous on posters and adverts, basically where clip art would once have been used.
In your view, what does AI art offer to creative culture, if anything?
I need to learn more, because I don’t know enough. My information on the subject ranges from newspaper articles that try and explain LLMs to me, and I almost get it, and podcasts that describe AI hallucination but without much of a solution to it, to the scare stories. Right now I read more scare stories - the power usage, water usage, theft of original art (though I feel that battle is lost), and how AI could become uncontrollable and destroy the world (but that’s moved beyond art) - than positive stories. Positive stories come from the business pages, scare stories from the ecology and culture sections.
Conversely, what do you see as its greatest risk or drawback?
It has moved to fast to tell, so far. If AI can do things I want, I’ll no doubt be using it without thinking before the year is out. If it doesn’t, then I won’t. I feel total resistance is futile, but sensible caution is advisable. I also feel artists and creative types are the outlier, and that ‘normals’ are embracing AI, especially in art and music, faster than us. Maybe that’s how it will replace us.
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Article about digital photos disappearing.
Smugness alert. I got my digital photos printed out at the local Copyshop for a few years, and collected them up in display books, exactly as I’d done with 35mm photos before them. Then, in 2012, weeks started getting them printed in books (by Blurb).
Admittedly they could all go up in flames or get thrown in the recycling when someone eventually clears the house. But for the time being, our futile photos of friends and family, and nonsense we thought was worth snapping at the time, are still there on a shelf. Being ignored.
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Dec 20: Just saw David Walliams referred to as Roald Lidahl and it’s made my morning
Dec 8: Compare and contrast two movies, Tinsel Town and The Roses. We took a gamble on the former. It was sooooooooooooooooooo bad we bailed after 16 minutes. The Roses, in contrast, had us laughing half a dozen times in literally the first two minutes. It ended up being that good throughout. A couple of caveats. You will notice very quickly that one location is pretending to be another (I won’t spoil the details for you), and a couple of casting decisions are a bit off. But a great way of reminding yourself how good the comedy writing, acting, and direction of The Roses is is to watch just a few minutes of Tinsel Town first.
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Dec 6: Report from a provincial newsagent, in this case TG Jones in Chepstow. I can confirm there’s lots of comics, well displayed. The “proper comics” section has indies including Pilgrim and Quantum, as well as an impressive range of Commando Picture Library (I bought the new one drawn by Mike Collins of this parish) and a lot of Marvel reprints. No DC to be seen. On the junior shelves Beano has a few titles, with no sign of The Phoenix. But check out the books: heaps of Bunny vs Monkey and other Phoenix titles. And the new Dogman in hardback for £7.99.
There is also a large section of baby “comics” with toys in plastic bags (their Lego Avengers costs a staggering £6.99) but I’m not lowering myself to showing those.
A healthier state in the high street comics biz than I’ve seen in many many years. I do hope it’s not TG Jones over-investing in stock for tax purposes when it comes to closing the company at some time in the next 18 months. That would be too cynical even for me!
Nov 29: For fear that anyone thinks I only watch superhero films in order to slag them off, I just watched Superman and loved it.
In marked contrast to the Fantastic Four, it was a joy throughout, with terrific use of humour and pathos, hitting the action beats spot on every time, and telling a cracking story that made you care about the characters despite, and sometimes because, of their inherent silliness. Whereas FF introduced players (like Natasha Lyonne) then gave them less than nothing to do, Superman gave every minor character a moment of their own. From Luthor’s girlfriend and Jimmy, to Hawkgirl to Elemento, and it gave a blooming starring role to the dog.
Perfect story structure, great callbacks, perfectly made. Whereas FF may have had slightly more visual originality, Superman beat it in storyline a hundredfold. A delight. I hope it was the winner in the box office (knowing how wildly wrong I get these things, I bet it wasn’t)
PS: Interesting 50/50 split in comments so far on FF v Supes. We literally agree to both disagree and agree.
Supes to me was like the superhero movies I’ve liked before, eg Guardians of the Galaxy (I know, same director - the needle drops in the desert camp fight scene were joyous), Iron Man, Captain America, Avengers Assemble, Ant Man, Dr Strange, Flash. FF was a different kind of script. I don’t know maybe if it had more in common with anime, which I also don’t quite get?
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Nov 23: Finally watched Fantastic Four last night. What a soulless, superficial, unengaging, disappointing and silly waste of an immense amount of money that was.
The pictures were very pretty, and the designs were undeniably impressive. But it was window dressing for an empty shop. The story was worse than poor, it was just rubbish. A six year old using ChatGPT would have written a plot with more surprise in. It had all the twists and turns of a stair rod. And the characters. What characters? The lack of characterisation, where people aren’t so much introduced as described, and whose inexplicably unlimited powers mean they can do virtually anything thus removing any peril or jeapordy, reminded me of how comic books were written before Alan Moore came along.
Older viewers will remember how Alan Moore revolutionised comic book writing, with the simple premise: “imagine if superheroes were real people”. This growing up moment, 45 years ago now, started with Marvelman and culminated with Watchmen. After this gear change, comics upped their game, and a higher quality of character and story writing became the name of the game.
It was this spirit of superheroes living in a realistic world, with rich and well realised characters, that underpinned the Marvel movies of the 2000s. From Iron Man, through the excellent Avengers and beyond, the authors gave us characters you believed in and cared for, to whom, despite the fantastic nature of their lives, you could relate to.
The Fantastic Four abandons all this and gives us a kids cartoon but without the fun.
(Sorry had to rush off to work before I could finish my rant. So I’ll never get round to writing about the fluid-and-drama-free childbirth in zero gravity; the way they’re able to meet Galactus then run away from him in minutes and hope it’ll take him weeks to follow them; how they go from only being able to teleport an egg to being able to teleport a (checks notes) entire planet in a matter of days; how big G goes from being god-sized to being a bloke the size of a skyscraper who can get dragged along by Sue’s “apparently can do anything we think of next” magic powers; how come they live, without any staff (apart from a cartoon robot) in an empty skyscraper in the middle of a New York which varies from being quite busy to totally deserted on a whim; where their sodding money comes from?; and why anyone would trust them to rescue a cat from a tree when they demonstrably fail at everything they’re sent to do …. I can’t go on.
I can’t quite fathom what its supporters see in this film, but it passed me by. )
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Nov 27: You can’t win with tax. Especially on house values. We had a good example of it this weekend when I did a party at a house in St John’s Wood.
Hev looked on Rightmove and saw it had a slightly smaller floor space than our house in Chepstow. It cost literally ten times what ours did! Their council tax bill is the same as ours.
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Nov 20: So when did we start using the phrase “in theatres”?
Not “in a theatre” but “in theatres”. In one of my favourite podcasts, What Went Wrong, they regularly refer to seeing a movie “in theatres”. Plural. Even if they only saw the film once.
How did this start? When? And why? And how widespread is this?
At yesterday’s school I was bunting!
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Nov 15: As someone who started in comics 40 years ago, before any tech existed, I’m reminded how much letterers really worked back in the day!
There was no cutting and pasting text for the likes of Artie Simek and Tom Orzechowski. Unless you mean how they physically cut the balloons out , after they’d lettered them by hand, and pasted them on the page.
If you want to see the real thing, today at
Thought Bubble: in Harrogate I have pages by Mark Buckingham and myself circa 1995-8 with pasted-on hand-lettered balloons. See what real hard work looked like!
Nov 13: Fun takeaway from the Rest Is Politics podcast: both Alistair Campbell and Rory Stewart were asked to be in Celebrity Traitors but they both turned it down cos neither of them had ever watched the series and had no idea what they were being invited onto. Series 2 contenders?
Spotted this when we were visiting the Arte Mundi exhibition at Cardiff Museum. Because it was in the area of a particular installation artist I assumed it was part of
their show, but I instantly recognised it as Ai.
It opens up the debate further. Hev has noticed how I’m able to instantly spot Ai , like our generation were able to tell the difference between film and video on TV, but how many people can’t.
PS: Why doesn’t everyone write it as “Ai” rather than the easily-misread-in-san-serif “You Can Call Me” AI?
So what the hell is this song about? You know when you’ve known a song for 50 years, then you realise you don’t know it at all? What does Don’t Make Me Over -
particularly the phrase “don’t make me over” - actually mean?
I listened to it with Hev and we both had different ideas of what Don’t Make Me Over means. Is it:
a) Don’t make me “be over”, ie end our relationship *
b) Don’t do/screw me over **
c) Don’t give me a makeover, ie change my appearance ***
* This is what I assumed it meant
** Hev thought it meant this
*** Neither of us thought it meant this, but now I think it might
What do you think?
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Nov 6: Happiness is pedantically correcting a podcast. I emailed Insiders: The TV Podcast to put them right on this. Can you spot their error?
Peter Fincham (talking about Bruno Brookes):
“His unique distinction is that he was the last person to interview John Lennon alive…
… I think I'm right in saying, he flew to New York, interviewed John Lennon, great length, in the studio, gotten a plane back with the tapes. And by the time he landed at Heathrow, John Lennon very sadly died. So he had the exclusive, of all exclusives, that is literally the sum total of what I know about Bruno Brookes”
And the error was? (Answer below)
From Insiders: The TV Podcast: 31 Oct 2025
Answer: It was Andy Peebles. Bruno Brookes didn’t join Radio 1 till 1984, four years after Lennon died.
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NOv 5: Two excellent finales this week, Slow Horses 5 and Blue Lights 3. Both recommended.
One very much with a foot in reality, one increasingly leaning into its inherent comedy and downright silliness. In fact Slow Horses 5 buckles under the pressure of any Fridge Logic. As soon as you begin any question about it with the words “but what about..?” you’ll find the plot of SH5 unravels quickly.
Blue Lights has been stunning, making me well up more than any other show, and being true and consistent with its characters throughout. Truly sticks the landing. And there are directorial touches that you don’t even notice at first but really lift it above the rest. Quality.
My Books And Where To Find Them...
Colouring Books: Doctors Who, Hollywood Legends, Punk, Cult TV, Eurovision Vol 1, Eurovision Vol 2, Eurovision Best Of British & Irish, 1960s Pop, 1970s Pop, 1980s Pop, 1990s Pop, 2020s Pop, Bowie, Scottish Pop, Royalty, Rom Coms
