When the new CBeebies Doctor Who was announced, the usual suspects all came out of the woodwork asking "will it be canon?" (which is the nonsense notion that all made-up stories must fit the continuity of other made-up stories as if they really happened).
Not that anyone asked, but here in comic strip form is my take on how I'd do it if I was running the show. Every episode tells its fun story, a toddler-friendly romp with cuddly versions of Weeping Angels, Sontarans etc, then at the end The Doctor closes their 5000 Year Diary and says:
"At least, that's how I remember it."
And we reveal that The Doctor, a different one every time, has been reading the adventure in the form of a bedtime story, then is shoo-ed away by the companion whose kids they've been reading to, and runs off to The Tardis.
Not that you need to make the new CBeebies stories all be "canon". But if you wanted to, there you go, you're welcome
*****
Oct 7 - Fun with auto-correct episode 312. Have you tried typing Master Of Kung Fu into Google on your phone lately?
I look forward to receiving my copies of Master Of Lung Function
Dear My Phone, would you please stop auto-correcting people’s names when I type them?
Traitors is impossible to chat about when it’s full of Joe Lovatts and Julie He’s months
******
Oct 7 - The Tories get a begrudging smile for the idea of the “Birmingham Tapestry” parody, on show at their conference, but minus points for almost everything else.
The art, as they admit, is “AI-assisted”, the gags are inevitably punching down (though I like the tiny Robert Jenrick being fired when his resignation letter is found on the photocopier, above), and the attempts at looking anything like the Bayeux Tapestry are half hearted at best. There was a chance to get closer to the typeface, the layout and the proportions, none of which have been taken.
Still, we should be pleased that comic art, in spirit at least, is being used to entertain people, of a sort.
Today's fun and slightly spoilsporty game: seeing a cartoon in this week's Private Eye (top left) and going "wait, I've seen that gag before"
Yes you had. The oldest I found was the postcard from about 100 years ago, the others being between 40 and 70 years old.
Nothing new under the sun, eh?
Mock The Week’s got harder since it went to TLC
******
Oct 5 - Thanks again to the Lakes International Comic Art Festival for a cracking weekend. I did a great sold-out class on Saturday, then went on to draw 100s of faces and sell heaps of books to loads of lovely punters.
Well done for attracting such a diverse audience - I could see the blockbuster-length queue for Bill Siencewicz, so a lot of ‘specialist’ fans - while at the same time I was greeting lots of parents with kids - ie ‘my people’. That’s an exceptional cross section to have attracted.
Sadly there was no quiz, and I missed the karaoke cos it was on the Friday and I can’t drink before a working day. I also missed all the talks, panels and events (hard to know which venue to head for on Saturday night, so ended up with a table of friends at the Brewery).
A really successful event, many congratulations to Julie and all involved.
Happiness is finding out at the weekend that you are Number 4 in the top UK Comics Podcasts on Feedspot
Thanks to whoever it was at Lakes International Comic Art Festival that told me. And thankyou to the Lakes aka #LICAF for a cracking weekend
*****
Oct 1 - Empire magazine on Borrow Box. I’ve only recently discovered Borrow Box (the library app that I’ve had on my phone for at least a decade) and that I can get not only the daily papers but also magazines, including Empire, for free.
So obviously I’m feeling guilty for not paying for Empire. But I’m now reading it for the first time in 20 years (I got it every month from issue one in 1989 to sometime in the early 2000s) and loving knowing about movies again.
This month has a brilliant and funny interview with the Ghosts team. Recommended
*****
Sept 30 - Happiness is writing twenty cracking Christmas cracker puns all about comics (for the Christmas episodes of Comic Cuts). I'm so proud of some of them that I'm dying to tell you them all. But I'll keep my powder dry till the recordings.
(Knowing me, get me drunk at the Lakes and I won't be able to resist telling you them all.)
This week in AI, these are on the outdoor cafe across from the V&A East in Stratford in that London. The devil is in the small print.
Sept 28 - Gallery goers, if you’ve not been to V&A East Storehouse in Stratford, you should. A mind blowing collection of… well, stuff. Just stuff. So much stuff.
It even has a small slice of a 1970s brutalist tower block preserved for posterity, and a medieval ceiling from India (see pic). If you like stuff, get yourself to Stratford (the one in East London, not the Avon one)
*****
Sept 26 - Excellent exhibition in the Pierhead at Cardiff Bay, of old music venues. Lots of great posters, tickets, flyers, records and reminiscences. Highly recommended for anyone who went to gigs in the days before health and safety.
*****
Sept 21 - Struggling with the new series of SNLUK. And apart from the sketches which have not been so good, the acting which seems horribly stagey, and the over-use of the guest presenters, I get annoyed by the Weekend Update hosts mugging and smiling at the end of their punchlines.
Is it just me, or doesn’t that undermine every gag? I’ve seen plenty of SNL Weekend Updates, and I realise that Colin Jost and Michael Che also, sort of, smile and break after some gags. But somehow they don’t do it to the detriment of the gags. Looking at classic presenters, like Tina and Amy or Tina and Jimmy, I feel they kept a straight face more often.
And the OG in this game, which was for me Mel Smith and Pamela Stephenson doing the headlines on Not The Nine O’Clock News (I know SNL predates that, but no one in this country had seen it by then) kept a totally straight face, that’s why the mock news headlines work.
What do you think? Straight face or mugging?
****
Sept 20 - An excellent day at the Hi Vis comic festival in Kings Heath yesterday. Well done to Olly McNamee for attracting a good audience of families and kids, my people, and a proper line up of actual comic creators. No toys, no TV stars. (Except maybe Mark Millar who I got to chat to, very briefly, for the first time in twenty years). And I sold more books in one day than at any event so far this year! If it’s on again next year, I’ll be back and I hope you will too.
Apropos of nothing, we stayed in a flat in Edinburgh last week on West Bow, and it smelled a lot from the deep fat fryers of the bistro below.
I've just looked at it on Google Earth and got a fascinating snapshot of it over the last 18 years. When they started renting it out as an Airbnb it obviously didn't smell, cos it was above a vintage shop most of that time. Last time it features on Google Earth it's Auld Jock's Pie Shoppe, which you can see expanding to take over the vintage shop.
Sadly pies are not as popular as whatever your Greek bistro sells. There you go, a snapshot of Edinburgh history for you.
Hear me out. He's ginger, he's bland, he's dressed up as a Nazi but the Daily Mail still hate him. Surely Prince Harry could replace Ed Sheeran on tour?
Bish bash bosh, gigs sorted, everyone happy. Get that bloke off of Mumford & Sons on support, you know, the dodgy one, and maybe Laurence Fox's band. Oh, and Jared Leto's.
I tell you, they should let me book more tours. I've got this
*****
Sept 16 - Newsagent fans and printed-ephemera lovers rejoice! TG Jones in Chepstow has had a reprieve. You can still walk in, appreciate the hell out of shelves full of those magazines that are "guest magazine" in the headline slot at the end of Have I Got News For You, wonder why you haven't seen a copy of The Phoenix in there for a while, and walk out without buying anything. Hoorah
I know Tschabalala Self has probably never seen Robert Crumb’s drawing of women, but it’s a nice observation that they’ve both ended up with similar shapes and poses.
How to offend feminists and racists all in one post.
******
Oct 14 - Loved episode one of Jimmy McGoverns Time (highly recommended do not miss). The only slight distraction was when I started realising every one of the adult leads had been in, you guessed it, Doctor Who.
I immediately knew Tennant, and clocked Rosa Parks and the woman who gets the silent “exterminate” in Christopher Eccleston’s last episode, and the bloke who’d been in a forgettable Jodie Whittaker story - they were all sat in the pub together - but I had to look up which episodes Siobhan Finnernan and Daniel Ryan were in (clue: his is way better than hers, though hers co-stars one of the biggest names in The Traitors)
Watched a very silly movie called Ready Or Not last night, so now I know that Samara Weaving and Margot Robbie are two different people.
Who the other two in this montage are, I don’t know but I’m sure I’ll find out sometime
*****
Oct 31 - Is it bad of me to have loved the Celebrity Traitors but got to the end of it without bothering to google and find out who Bash or Kenny are?
To me they were the two non-celebrity ones in the cast that I treated like it was a regular series.
*****
Nov 4: I know this a serious story and of great importance, but come on. Am I the only person who giggles every time they see the name Keisha Lance Bottoms?
Keisha? Lance Bottoms!
My Books And Where To Find Them...
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