Sept 12: Thanks to Hev Tweed on the camera, we have a photo of me getting the Aust Ferry, about where Bob Dylan was standing 60 years ago.
Sept 10: Went for a walk yesterday and stood on the very spot shown in this famous photo. The Aust ferry has long since sailed, the ramp is totally overgrown, and you can just about make out where the cabin used to stand.
Nice walk, fine sunset, full marks.
The Oasis saga.
Aug 31: A thousand quid to watch Oasis for a couple of hours? Man, I’ve got to charge more.
The service fee costs more than my Edinburgh tickets. And they’ve charged it four times on one booking!
Sept 1 (Stewart Lee writes): “Oasis singlehandedly murdering what 14 years of the Tories’ war on the arts couldn’t quite kill off. Sorted!”
To nitpick, I’d like to be fair, not to Oasis but to the Tories. Though Oasis may well have done a bit of damage to Edfringe 2025 (but possibly not), can we blame Tory culture wars for the state of the Edinburgh Fringe?
The over saturation of acts is the fault of, forgive me if I’m wrong, the acts. Remember, you’re not caught in traffic, you *are* the traffic.
The accommodation rents are the fault of the above and the SNP and Edinburgh council who made it deliberately more expensive to rent out a flat.
And everything else we find to complain about is because we’re comics, whose job is to complain about things. If anyone can blame the Tories for their parlous state it’s the legit theatre companies, grassroots venues, and major arts festivals who rely on funding for their very existence.
But for the moment let’s blame Oasis. If only cos we’re nostalgic for when there used to be Nadine Dorries to blame.
Sept 2: Not that I've been affected by the fleecing/gouging/scalping "dynamic pricing" used on Oasis fans (and note how we use anglo saxon words when we're being honest about what to call it, and Latin & Greek when we're the person doing it?) but here's my prediction for what it's worth:
The last tranche of extra added Oasis tickets will all be sold before the Inquiry into dynamic pricing has even sat down for their first chat (at the end of which they'll have taken so long to agree anything that the new Tory government will have got back in, with dynamic pricing as one of their flagship policies)
...and...
Liam will say something about it from the stage, along the lines of "F*** Ticketmaster, bunch of c***s" and both he and Noel will keep every penny of their share of the fleeced/gouged/scalped tickets you all just paid for.
Any other outcome is about as likely as a TV article on the subject using a track off anything other than their first two albums.
Sept 7: Ticketmaster’s criminal stranglehold on live shows reminds me of something mentioned a few times in Kliph Nesteroff’s excellent book The Comedians: “After the repeal of Prohibition, Mafia-run supper clubs replaced speakeasies, and mobsters replaced vaudeville impresarios as the comedian’s primary employer”
Yes, back in the day (in the States) if you worked in entertainment, as a comedian or a musician, you were working for the mob.
Talking of changing the subject, who else thinks the photographer was definitely trying to to make Liam and Noel look like Ronnie and Reggie Kray?
Ladies and Gentlemen, my grandparents!
Just found in a box, never seen it before, this is from the wedding of my Nana Cissie (Elizabeth) Mann to my Grandad Jimmy Findlay circa 1933. Mum’s parents.
Who knew Gaga (as we called him, he died when I was 4 so my then pronunciation of his name stuck) looked so much like Stan Laurel?
*****
Sept 4: (NanoWriMo gets AI Sponsor) The Nanowrimo AI debate highlights a new culture war that’ll be dividing creative communities for the forthcoming.
Here’s my prediction: they use it on the next series of The Apprentice.
Have you met business people? Next to none of them is ever creative, but they all wish they were and envy those who are. More than that, they know creative people are there for one thing and one thing only; making money out of.
In the next season of The Apprentice they’ll use AI to write an ad or create a product they have to sell.
Remember where you heard it first.
***
Sept 1: Excellent film watched last night, Ford vs Ferrari.
For such a well written and tightly directed film, I was surprised to find it was made by the same director and writers who made the very poor last Indiana Jones film, which I roundly slagged off earlier this year.
Just goes to show everyone has highs and lows.
***
Sept 2: Well this was an odd one. Leave The World Behind.
Lather a Bernard Hermann style 50s horror score over a series of scenes where not very much happens, and happens very slowly, and you can spin one 30 minute TV episode’s worth of material out to two and a half hours.
I think the kindest thing is you can call it is pretentious. It’d like to be called art house, and a good few of its shots are very ambitious, with a couple of very strong and original visual scenes (the traffic jam and the slowly revealed scene outside the neighbours house are very good, and would have fitted nicely into Black Mirror and Breaking Bad respectively)
Still, don’t take my word for it. You might have a totally different impression of this film which is, if nothing else, different from other films.
***
Sept 4: Re Carry On movies
It’s now about 45 years since I, as a new student, got involved in my first debates about sexism in Carry On films. It was these, and Benny Hill, that were the touchstones in the general education on feminism learned by twenty somethings, especially blokes, at the turn of the 80s.
We slowly learned how everything we’d found acceptable in the 1970s, from the ubiquitous sexism and racism to the homophobia and classism, was wrong.
Sept 3: Here's a fun find: my new book, Sweet Smell Of Sockcess - Putting A Show On At The Edinburgh Fringe, is Number 2 on Amazon!
Okay, it's Number 2 in "Puppetry" on the Amazon listings. Come on folks, a couple more pre-sales and I could have a meaningless Best Seller quote to bandy about.
(I'm also number 49 in Stage Actor Biographies. Top tip: pick the most unlikely category that you qualify for).
****
Sept 4: At last my life has structure again.
Sunday night, new episode of Sherwood
Monday night, Only Connect & University Challenge & another Sherwood if I want it
Tuesday, new eps of Only Murders In The Building & Colin From Accounts
Now streaming TV has rediscovered weekly episodes, life has meaning once more. We just need Taskmaster on Thursday, HIGNFY on Friday, and Strictly on Saturday and all will be right with the world.
Found in an unopened box and straight onto eBay: a signed Gladiators proof from 1993
Real live signatures, collected during the launch party for the 1993 season of the Gladiators TV series (at Kensington Roof Gardens). The image is a proof copy of the first issue of the Gladiators comic (which I wrote and drew, and edited the strips for). Art by Mick Austin.
Jet
Lightning
Wolf
Falcon
Trojan
Hunter
Nightshade
Zodiac
Scorpio
****
Sept 5: Nick Grimshaw (sitting in) on 6 Music just asked people to write in about their “Biggest Teacher”
I’m realising that language has changed so much since my childhood that, now, if you call someone “big fat bad and thick” they’ll just thank you.
****
Sept 11: In time for the Christmas presents season, I've updated the #Eurovision Pop Star Colouring Book.
Now includes Every Winning Country and Every Winner, inc Nemo from 2024 and stats & articles for your reading and colouring pleasure.
Order from Amazon (any country) https://amazon.co.uk/dp/1470948907
Possibly cheaper from Lulu (if they reach your area) https://www.lulu.com/.../paperback/product-9pve67.html
Check this out @everyone! We're NUMBER ONE in Hot New Releases on Amazon!
In the Puppetry section.
Shut up, that's a thing.
***
Sept 5: Fringe Society is hoping that the crisis might be eased by Oasis fans buying tickets for comedy gigs while they are up there.
The Fringe: “ Our ask is that those coming to Edinburgh next year for Oasis, will support the 2025 Fringe and the artists who take the risk to be part of it, by seeing shows while they are visiting”
How realistic is this? Do we expect international football fans travelling to Wembley to also take in a West End show?
Oasis fans are more likely to buy a ticket to the Tattoo. Some deliberately, and some cos it’s an easy mistake to make.
Sept 5: Art lovers, did you know this story? Artist Ana Mendiata appears to have been murdered by artist Carl Andre? How did I miss this?
Carl Andre (regrettably the more famous of the two) is “the firebricks guy” whose work Equivalent 8 was bought by The Tate in 1976 and caused quite the furore. He got a mention in my degree thesis (which was about jokes about art, many were made about him at the time).
Excellent podcast going into all the details.
****
Sept 11: Very good programme about how computers have been shown in fiction for the last century or so. Lots of great clips.
Along the way, Steve Punt asks contributors what was their first computer. Well, for me it was a Texas Instruments calculator circa 1975, then nothing until I got a green screen Amstrad in 1988 that ran the excellent programme Locoscript, that I have yet to find the equivalent of to this day.
****
Sept 6 (Neil Gaiman podcast allegations) So where did Tortoise suddenly appear from? This week I enjoyed an excellent podcast Hoaxed, on BBC Sounds, about the Hampstead Satanic Abuse Hoax. And it's from this company called Tortoise.
Then today I find they're the people who've made the podcast which means that Neil Gaiman has had to join Rolf Harris and Justin Lee Collins in the Names That Used To Be On My Name-Dropping List And Now I Don't Even Have Them.
Discuss. (Or just listen to the podcasts. They're by real journalists who know more about everything than any of us lot.)
***
Sept 13 (Neil Gaiman The Master podcast)
Ooh blimey. I'm only 4 episodes into this but someone isn't coming out of it looking good at all.
The minefield of NDAs and plausible deniability means we'll never know who to believe, and there'll be no "winners" as such. But, gosh, it doesn't paint a pretty picture.
On the plus side some might take consolation from the person who, despite a far more damning set of allegations than this, is currently one of the most-suggested celebrities amongst primary school kids in my classes (when I ask them to name a celeb for me to put in a comic strip): Michael Jackson. See, there's always a bright side.
Sept 16: Yech. I’ve just finished listening to all six episodes and it makes you want to take a bath afterwards.
On your own!
Sept 6: Wobbly Bum Pop
Well I didn’t expect that. I’ve been hearing this record a lot on 6Music so I thought I’d check out the video.
I was thinking it sounded like a sweet young childlike voice with a schoolyard rhyme. I certainly wasn’t prepared for a series of arses waved in my face.
Honestly, kids today. (Actually the artist in question is knocking 40, I learn. And she owns a club which, she has to stress, is not a brothel. Says it on Wikipedia so it must be true. )
I’d be all “look at them all wearing nothing but bikinis. What’s the world coming to?”
Then the Beach Boys would come on and I’d be all “Huh, I can’t imagine them still performing in sixty years time.”
Anyway, Moonchild Sanelly, recommended catchy tunes. Videos, if you like that sort of thing.
****
Sept 9: So where are we with outing and Hollywood these days? Obviously outing someone who doesn’t want to be outed is not on (though I accidentally did it a few years ago to a friend who, I didn’t know, had gone in again when they got big on telly*). But what’s the sitch with the rest of TV and movie land?
Are lots of people still having to stay in, cos the biz is so intolerant? Or is everyone just out if they want and everything’s good with the world?
* Said person is a worst kept secret. Alush Pain made a reference to them in a recent radio show “…like a lesbian version of x, if you can imagine such a thing”).
****
Sept 16: Five years, stuck on our eyes. Can you believe EC comics only ran for five years before they ended, 70 years ago today.
I still read them and find them fresher than most comics produced in the decades since. First discovered them in the 1980s, with reprints you could get for, I think, 70p each. Some of my favourites are the black and white paperback collections I got in the 2000s, but unfortunately those are in Spanish (are there b&w paperback versions in English out there?)
Sept 8: Idly the other day I watched Doctor Who Delta and the Bannermen, for the first time since it was broadcast 37 years ago. It is, for the record, bloody awful
If you ever hear some old fossil slagging off modern day Doctor Who saying how much better things were in the old days, force them to watch this, with their eyelids propped open with matchsticks. If they don’t come away swearing that no Jodie Whittaker episode was ever as badly written as this, their head is irretrievably broken.
Among its crimes against TV is this scene. Sylvester McCoy who is, easily, the best thing in the show, mugging as much joy as he can from a risible script, is seen here cradling a Squier Stratocaster guitar. In a story set in the late 50s ( or at the very latest 1962, I couldn’t be arsed to go back and check).
The Squier Stratocaster guitar didn’t exist when this story is set. Ooh how I wish that were the worst part of this dreadful story.
****
Sept 12: An interesting conversation is happening on Jamie Smart's Facebook, where a primary school Mum has banned a kid bringing Bunny Vs Monkey in. It's nostalgic for those of us remembering when comics were so popular this sort of thing used to happen. (eg Professor Wertham's Seduction Of The Innocent, IPC's Action comic getting mentioned in the House, Eagle comic being created in response to US horror comics etc)
To put the comics in context, Bunny Vs Monkey is the single most popular British comic amongst kids that I have experienced in all the time I've been doing Comic Art Masterclasses (which will soon be twenty years, gulp). In the past year, when I do my flipchart drawing at the start of the day, I've found Bunny Vs Monkey (rivalled only by Dogman) to be the most recognised character by primary school kids, and the most enthusiastically greeted too.
It's got to the stage now that, when I'm getting them to guess which Marvel superhero I worked on (before their parents were born, it was Dr Strange) most of them can't even name a Marvel Superhero. Those have slipped from their zone of interest in the same way as Doctor Who did about a decade ago. It's a sad thing to see, but inevitable I guess.
So viva Jamie & Bunny vs Monkey, and long may they be so big that parents notice them enough to want to ban them. Examples of BvM on my flipcharts pictured.
Fun programme about a University TV station at UEA that ran from the 60s to the 90s. Former students interviewed include Gurinder Chadha and Arthur Smith.
Nostalgic not only for my own days on student radio (anyone else remember University Radio Loughborough?) and playing with video when cameras were a rarity (I was in the so called 4D Department at Exeter) but also for the days before YouTube and smartphones when “making content” was an odd thing done by a weird select few. Recommended if you like that sort of thing.
****
Sept 22: We were enjoying catching a bit of Chuck Berry live from 1972 on BBC2 last night, and chanced to google him as we watched.
Ooh. Though it was funny the third time we got to “spent three years in prison for…” on his wiki page, some of his crimes were a lot less amusing than others.
So we’re back to the discussion about which sex criminals’ art, music, books etc is it okay to like, and which are we going to have to continue to subtly hide away in the vaults?
****
Sept 24: Grrrrrr Ryanair! I book my flights, which takes long enough. Then the payment keeps not completing cos of an error at their end which means you have to refresh the page. Hooray, do this and it lets you pay. Then it lets you verify it with your credit card operator. Then finally...
It tells you it's put the prices up since you started and you have to go back to square one!!!!!! Boo Ryanair
Happiness is: a school asking if I can come and do a class next year.
Less happy: ...but only on World Book Day. At a push they'll have you another day that week.
Schools, listen, visiting authors and artists are a bit like puppy dogs. We're not just for "The Big Day", we're for life. Or at the very least, you can have us the week after. Like the kids will know the difference.
****
Sept 13: David Mitchell's Ludwig
Did I ever mention my first stab at writing a cosy crime novel? It was about an insurance claims loss adjuster who had to turn up in every new story at the site of a murder, to assess it for insurance, then turned out to be better at solving the crimes than everyone else around him. It was Columbo meets... something with an insurance clerk in.
(NB Nobody ever saw my great crime novel which still exists as just a plot. I suppose nowadays I could feed it to ChatGPT and a novel would come out the other end. But I shan't.)
Sept 19: My God, the The Guardian, this is the worst bit of click bait you've ever published. And look, it's worked. I have been baited. I have clicked. What I have never done is almost any of the nonsense on this stupid list of twaddle!
Who the hell has "a mate called Danny whose nickname is Danzo, “cuz he’s the king of Lanzo”.
Do you know what this is? This is the journalistic equivalent of the debut stand up routine by a new open mic who hasn't yet discovered that the things that he and his three best mates think are hilarious are unique to them and only funny because they're each other's three best mates.
Imagine the words "what's that about?" after every entry in this list and it makes sense. In real life they'll be gonged off before they get to item six.
Sept 21: A question for my techy friends: Colour Temperature Problem.
We’ve been getting a problem with flickering colour temperature on our Sony TV, while watching Disney plus (it happened all through Agatha All Along last night, hence the picture).
Oddly it stays stable during the Disney holding page, and it’s not happening on other channels (eg after Agatha on Disney we had no problem on Amazon or live TV).
Anyone else have this problem? And does anyone know a solution?
Update: We looked at all the settings but found nothing we could change. Last night we watched episode 2 and it didn’t flicker once. The mystery continues.
****
Sept 25: The Penguin
Horses for courses. A few of my Facebook friends have praised The Penguin, which just goes to show how subjective these experiences can be.
Paper thin characters who aren’t even interesting enough to be cartoony, run through the most unimaginative string of gang crime cliches, literally every single one of which you’ve seen a dozen times before.
I mean full marks to the make up dept, who enable Colin Farrell to play Fat-Suit-DeNiro for an hour. But every woman being either a sex worker or a crime boss (essentially a male character’s lines given to a token woman), the big crime families at war being double crossed by their henchman, everyone being a psychopath and people being shot with no drama or consequence, all amounts to an hour of “so what?”
40 years ago it was novel, for comics, when Frank Miller introduced the Falcone family to Batman. A gang of criminals who didn’t have silly names and wear colourful outfits was an interesting change. For comics. Forty years later, on TV, it’s just boring.
Batman was defined by its pantheon of colourful villains, each with actual characters that you could tell apart from their different modus operandi, their catchphrases, and most immediately their appearances. Take away The Penguin’s suit, top hat, umbrella, squawk and whatever that shit was he did with birds, play down the hook nose and make his waddle the result of a disability (which is already getting some flack) and what are you left with? Fat Suit De Niro with a club foot and a purple Maserati, the most colourful thing in the show.
Writing wise, in a TV landscape where we’re watching it Inbetween fresh eps of Slow Horses, Bad Monkey, Only Murders In The Building, Apples Never Fall, and The Perfect Couple, Penguin comes out as the most disappointing crime writing of the week, and the one we won’t be bothering to carry on with.
(And yes, we’re watching Nightsleeper through to the end. It’s more fun than Penguin).
****
Sept 25: James Cameron joins bard of AI firm
Think of the time James Cameron can save now. “Alexa, make me a movie that’s The Smurfs but they’re aliens, oh and do the backgrounds in the style of Roger Dean”.
*****
Article about queueing in pubs:
At last. I remember forty years ago, when I was back in the holidays from art college, joining my mates in the band playing at Working Men’s Clubs across the midlands where I saw, for the first time, punters forming an orderly queue for the bar.
Having just returned from student Uni bars which were (& may still be) the worst scrums of bodies waving fivers and clambering over each other to be seen by desperate bar staff, this was the peak of civilisation. I’m glad it’s finally caught on.
Enjoyed Ludwig ep 1. But can I be the first to point out the Doctor Who error? Did you spot it?
*****
Sept 30: Hands up who knew the word “superhero” had been trademarked by Marvel and DC jointly in 1977?
Obviously I did, it’s sort of my job. But I’ve also published half a dozen comics with “superhero” on the cover and, amazingly, no one ever noticed. And I’ve read dozens more.
Cos, it turns out, they were never able to trademark the word “superhero” after all.
Genuinely good to see nods to actual art in a broadcast TV show last night that I won’t spoil for you if you haven’t watched it yet. Full marks all round for mentioning more fine art in a five minute comedy routine than BBC Breakfast has managed in the last year.
This tiny screen grab isn’t too much of a spoiler, I’m sure.
(If it’s not a spoiler to mention the show itself, it was Taskmaster)
Glancing at the Blind Date article in this morning’s paper, just spotted this guys face. It’s not just me is it?
Admit it. You’re hearing wobble boards and Sun-a-rise early in the morning. Can you tell who it is yet?
My Books and where to get them:
Richard The Third - Amazon - Etsy - Barnes & Noble - Waterstones
Findlay Macbeth - Amazon - Etsy
Prince Of Denmark Street - Amazon - Etsy - Kindle
Midsummer Nights Dream Team - Amazon - Etsy
Prince Of Denmark Street - Amazon - Etsy - Kindle
Midsummer Nights Dream Team - Amazon - Etsy
Shakespeare Omnibus Collection (all 3 books) - Paperback
Space Elain - Amazon - Lulu - iBooks - Barnes & Noble
Joseph, Ruth & Other Stories - Amazon
Captain Clevedon - Amazon
Tales Of Nambygate - Amazon
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