Today’s bargain buys and afternoon reads: Film Fun annuals 1947 and 1950.
In quite a state, with pages missing, so just two quid the pair. Lor lumme missus, a slap up meal later wot, and no mistake Guvnor (is how all the, supposedly American, characters talk)
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May 5: Loved Doctor Who Lucky Day, and The Well before it. And Lux too. Which is why I have a worrying feeling about this. Bear with me.
Isn’t this an exact repeat of the bell curve we experienced last year? Last year started with the annoying Space Babies, drowned by music and roundly criticised, just like Robot Revolution?
Then there’s the “that’s more like it” episode, Boom and The Well respectively. Followed by the “Doctor lite” episode that’s also excellent. 73 Yards and Lucky Day, in case you forgot.
Does this mean next week we get another Doctor lite which is also quite good, followed by a period romance episode that’s sets up a promising returning character who’ll probably never return, then a two parter finale that everyone hates and ruins everyone’s memory of the entire season?
I do hope not. Right now I’m enjoying a repeat of last year’s “Doctor Who is back on form, all’s right with the world” moment, which lasts a whole month if you’re lucky.
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May 6: Courtesy of Stephen Wood in a Doctor Who group, fascinating stats on the show’s ranking among other TV:
“With final, weekly chart positions now 'in' for the first two episodes of the new Series, we see that Doctor Who in 2025 is averaging the position of 23rd most-watched programme for the week.
“Comparing that to earlier eras… it's performing worse than Doctor Who did - on average - in 1965, or from 2005-2014, 2017-2018, 2021 or 2024.
Little things. But I’m aware this is another little marker of my decline into old age: they’ve moved my radio show. The latest instance is Pick of the Pops moving to Sunday nights.
It’s a tiny almost imperceptible change, but it’s an indication that this bit of history/nostalgia is of less and less interest as a certain sort of listener, ie me, gets older and dies off. It’s been replaced on Saturday pm by a generic Zoe Ball show which will inevitably appeal to a wider audience. Meanwhile my routine of driving home from my Saturday comicon by fast forwarding through the naffer tracks from a chart gone by will have more of a delay.
I am reminded of the same thing happening to my parents when the jazz programme and Russell Davies’s Great American Songbook both went.
So the next question: what’s the best way of me listening to a chart show from a random year past, in my car, with fast forwardability? Can you download commercial pop stations, and do any play as eclectic a range as Radio 2?
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May 1: Kneecap controversy
I’ve found myself in the middle on this one. Free speech advocate who doesn’t want to kill MPs but is also dubious about the North of Ireland having MPs in the first place.
Also still wondering if you can buy Choccy Ar Lar Easter eggs.
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May 2: Local elections
“Labour has held Bristols. That’s not news, that’s just a bit of gossip” - Monty Python 1971
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Enjoyed A Complete Unknown last night , even though it is a very silly film and even someone who’s only slightly au fait with Dylan history could tell it was stretching the truth a little.
Think of it as this year’s Bohemian Rhapsody and you’ll enjoy it.
For me the total absence of The Beatles was the oddest thing. In fact the only British Invasion band that gets mentioned is The Kinks. So where on earth did Dylan get the motivation to go electric from? It was a bit of context that the film missed, showing the general rise of electric pop circa 1964 that was competing with the folk revival, whose wave was crashing.
But what do I know? I never really heard Dylan’s music growing up, radio seemingly preferring everyone but him to play as golden oldies from the 60s.
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Quick question for Shakespeare fans: I’m adapting Romeo and Juliet and I’m about to replace Balthasar with Benvolio.
I’ve read lots of debates about it, and my theory is that it’s a typo.
I think different versions of the play were cobbled together, in one Benvolio was the character throughout, in another he was called Balthasar, and in assembling them, the editor didn’t know they were the same guy.
Today’s brilliant Bank Holiday bargains: two copies of Look and Learn incorporating Ranger from December 1966 (if you fancy any, they’ve got piles of them in the antiques shop in Clifton, Bristol)
And I’m reading the adventures of Doric, Beric and Son of Boadicea. Who, you ask?
Answer below…
Did you guess? In 1966, these characters who would become more famous under their own names, were translated as Ancient Britons Doric the Druid, Beric the little one, and the super strong Son of Boadicea in a strip named In The Days Of Good Queen Cleo.
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May 7: This is the thing that’s long puzzled me: Jesus is Woke. That’s always seemed evident to me. Everything I know about him (remembering I’m an atheist who comes to this from outside) screams wokeness. So how come so many Christians, especially the Americans we hear so much from, are the opposite?
As this very good article spells out, quite simply, caring for “the poor, the thirsty, the naked, and the stranger” is what I thought Jesus was all about. I thought that meant that caring unquestioningly for others - whether that be giving a percentage of your earnings like Mormons and Muslims do (Zakat) - or just maintaining a welfare state, was “what Jesus would do”. And welcoming refugees without question, like The Good Samaritan does, is what Christians are supposed to do.
I also thought, though this article doesn’t mention it, that he threw money lenders out of the temple, because capitalism has no place in religion, and that he kind of disapproved of it.
So what I’m asking is, how can any Christian not be woke?
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May 16: Who else knew why a threshold is called a threshold? Because it holds the thresh in.
“Have you finished the threshing out in the field? When you do, could you bring in some thresh for the floor please?”
“But how will we stop all the thresh falling out the door?”
“Yes, that should do it”
How To Date An Undated World Map
This is indeed brilliant. You’ll find me in many an antique shop staring at a map on a wall trying to answer precisely this question.
Best I can usually work out is: if it says USSR and Yugoslavia, it’s me years old.
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Fascinating stats, the US viewing figures including broadcast and streaming together for the first time. And the second most watched show in America this past year? It’s British.
Notably Disney doesn’t even make the top thirty. And the linear component of most shows ratings is negligible.
May 9: I discover today we don’t say “Ex Offender” any more, which will be a disappointment to fans of an Irish sitcom and an early Blondie track. We now refer to people with Lived Experience of the Justice System
So I’m calling it now. Someone’s going to do a crime TV series, probs on BBC 1, and it’ll be named after the acronym LEJS - Leaches*
Remember where you heard it first
(* NB I do not think this pejorative term is appropriate or acceptable for a former inmate, I just think:
a) it’s a great and loaded name for a show,
and b) someone didn’t think through their acronyms when they were trying to do a sensitivity reading on commonly used language).
Hulk Bogan!
Who knew, before Eric Bana came to Hollywood, to play the Hulk amongst other things, that he was a comedian in Oz, doing this Bogan character Poida?
Thanks to the What Went Wrong podcast for alerting me to this gem.
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May 12: Anyone else watching Jon Pertwee Doctor Who repeats on the channel U&Eden (stupid name by the way)? They’re great fun.
Even though they’re on iPlayer, and I’ve got loads of them on DVD (& VHS for what it’s worth) these repeats have become our teatime viewing. Never watch a whole serial, but we’re loving the atmos of them, and the buzz of them being on actual telly. The action and characters are so simple and direct, ie you know Roger Delgado’s the villain and the music tells you when big things are happening, yet there’s crazy cosmic things happening and brilliantly hammy fight scenes.
By the way, for those of you historical revisionists who insist Doctor Who never had wobbly sets, in the episode of Claws of Axos we’re just watching, we’ve just had three glaring examples of set wobbling. And it’s brilliant.
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May 13: Starmer talks of an "Island of Strangers"
"Island of strangers"?!? My god, who is this man and why the hell is there not a Labour party left that can stand up and slap him straight?
He refers to a "squalid chapter" of migration. That's people you're talking about, you offensive idiot. Would you call any of them of them squalid to their face? People who are working, raising families, being kids? You think they're squalid, and their presence in your country is unwelcome because they're "strange"?
Not the dozens of kids I work with in schools, whose parents started off in Poland or Pakistan, Ukraine or Uganda. They're not strangers, no more than I was when I came to England from Scotland and couldn't understand what anyone said cos they talked weird (it turned out later this was the Leicester accent).
My acid test with a speech like this is: replace the key words with "Jews" and imagine he's saying it in 1938. And there it is.
Among the caricatures I drew at today’s Reading comicon was Ellie from Who Culture (if you know you know). And there was a very strange phenomenon, for an event with Doctor Who guests and lots of Who cosplay: 13 of 15 Who fans I asked, hadn’t watched last night’s episode.
Fandom ain’t what it used to be.
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May 13: My new favourite podcast is James Cook and Andy Robinson’s Shooby Dooby Doo Wop, where they chat details and fun about a Top Ten pop chart. It’s the Pick of the Pops replacement I’ve been waiting for, admittedly with the music itself separate.
Check out this one for the second most comprehensive explanation of who wrote Who Let The Dogs Out ( the most comprehensive being the documentary James got the facts from, but you have to pay to watch that , so sod it)
Recommended. Even if you don’t like the music, which unlike Pick of the Pops you don’t have to actually listen to. This 2000 chart is a good example of that, as most of the tracks aren’t very good, but they have plenty of detail to talk about.
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May 14: I just watched The Colorless Man. I won’t share it because it’s an entirely AI generated movie, and I realise how problematic and despised that is.
I also cannot deny it is the future of movie making and I just saw it.
There are no doubt dozens of movies like it, with every actor, every voice, and every shot made by AI. But this is the first, of that length (about 10 mins) that I’ve seen. It’s chilling. Impressive but chilling.
I’ll remember where I saw it first.
I am Alan Partridge without the irony! Me in 93.
Audrey has kept these cuttings since we sent her copies. Our own have been long lost.
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May 17: If you’ve not been watching The Studio (and it’s on Apple so I understand if you can’t) you must. It is top contender for my TV of the year. So far everything they need to get right they have done. This behind the scene glimpse (which introduces me to yet another new podcast) is fascinating. I’ve already rewatched episodes of this series, it’s that good. Highly recommended
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May 20: Uncle Kev’s inability to remember faces knows no bounds. This time it’s three guys who don’t even look remotely alike, but I have repeatedly remembered one as being in a movie when it was in fact the other guy.
For the record we’re enjoying Jason Siegel in Shrinking, Seth Rogen in The Studio, and I’m sure Jonah Hill’s in something we’ll start watching next week.
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May 23: I have become a re-convert to SNL this past year. Till now I didn’t even realise we could watch it in full every week on Now TV, and was getting it in bites on YouTube. I’m loving it.
It’s quite amazing that TV can sustain a sketch show - a sketch show! - that runs for 90 minutes (60 without the ads) for more than half of the year.
Since SNL started fifty years ago, we’ve managed less than 20 episodes of The Fast Show or Not The Nine O Clock News or The Day Today. In fact if you add together every single sketch show that’s been on British TV since 1975 they still don’t add up to as many episodes as SNL (though many of them are way better, and bear rewatching way way more).
Anyhoo, SNL 50 = highly recommended. Probs just watch the best sketches on Youtube though. As you can imagine, to get to the diamonds you have to wade through a lot of rough.
And my question: why is no one ever off book on the live sketches?
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May 23: Happiness is: a school that I'm going to in a month, who've already got 40 of my books ordered by the kids. It's a great bonus for me. And, if I'm honest, where I sell most of my books these days.
(NB: At this point someone usually chips in and says why don't I put an advert for my books in the comic they take away with them, and include a QR code to take them straight to my books? I do this every time, have done for two years now. Result: zilch. A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush. When I'm there in the classroom, or indeed across a table from them at a comicon or bookfair, the kids want my books more than life itself. When I'm not there, I don't exist.)
Tomorrow: book signing at Script Haven in Worcester. See you there?
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May 27: “the UK (is) both the furthest to the left and the most consistent elector of rightwing governments. Why? Because of our first-past-the-post system”
Stunning but also quite reassuring. This article posits a nifty way of gaming the system. It’ll never happen of course, but something has to be done to steer us away from the dreadful betrayals of Starmer’s Labour, and the bogeyman of Farage’s Silly Party.
(Who’ll be first to say Green, I wonder?)
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May 28: Am I just cheap? Or is joining everybody’s Patreon a bit much to ask?
I listen to a lot of podcasts, Inc the excellent Shooby Dooby Doo Wop, and staples like No Such Thing As A Fish, and lots more. Like dozens more. And almost everyone has an “extra tier” of shows that you can “unlock” by joining their Patreon.
(That said, Apple TV only ever have one good TV show on at a time, and one new movie every six months. Dammit, a fool and his money!)
Anyone sign up to lots of Patreon and glad of it?
I’m loathe to share it, but it was on BBC and ITV local news so I think the damage is done. The Wurzels have recorded an AI assisted song, with - and this is the jarring part - an AI video. You can see it in this clip (or avoid if you don’t want to be tacitly approving of this kind of LLM AI)
How long before this is the norm for promo videos, adverts, training films, and eventually comedy and drama?
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Richard The Third | Findlay Macbeth | Prince of Denmark Street | Midsummer Night's Dream Team |
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Shakespeare Omnibus | Comic Tales From The Bible | Joseph, Ruth & Other Stories | Space Elain |
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