All our Hogmanays

I can't remember all the ways and places I've seen in New Year, and I certainly can't remember which years, but since I've just finished my last gig of 2009 and I'm home in time to see in the new year with my beloved and my sad comedian friends on Twitter, here's a thinkback over some Hogsmanay (that must be the plural, mustn't it?)...

Up to 1977, Mum & Dad's legendary Hogmanay party in our house. Up to 80 people in our house, no-one allowed in till midnight, haggis, tatties and neeps and it goes only til 6 or 7 in the morning. My first one would be Aberdeen, then Evington, then Kibworth. As 76 goes into 77 I'm not old enough to drink yet and the golf pro detunes my guitar.

1977 into 78 Me & Steve babysitting in Pucklechurch, popping a bottle of cider and getting drunk for very nearly the first time

78 In Bristol with Steve again, feeling very sorry for himself as he canoodled girlfriend Denise and I had to settle for stroking a dog. Watching Old Grey Whistle Test with Meatloaf, a lasting memory.

79 For the first time I bring art college friends to the parent's Hogmanay and it is brilliant. 8mm film exists of them all sleeping on my bedroom floor. Legendary.

80 I bring art college friends to the parent's Hogmanay again, it is once more legendary. Pete Godwin called a local businessman a Nazi.

More art college years, more friends come to Kibworth (that's where the parents have Hogmanay). I recall one seen in in the Coach and Horses and one in the Lodge (then back to folks house). Coach & Horses is now an Indian Restaurant, not a pub, and the Lodge was demolished to become houses in the late 80s. Around 84 when Hev & I move to Leicester, I seem to remember a Hogmanay goes tits up cos someone didn't feel well.

86 must be the year Hev wanted to spend Hogmanay at home so I went to Kibworth and did my nascent comedy act in front of Mum & Dad's friends. Died on arse.

Late 80s become a blur. At least one is seen in in the Clarendon Arms with Alan (& Hev, obviously). Then we moved to the South West so a Hogmanay in Kibby would have involved travel.

One was seen in with Steve & Sarah in Yatton. Someone's brother was getting divorced, there was some unease there.

Returned to the parents circa 89 to find the throbbing buzzing crowd had become group of very old people. Quite depressing I recall.

One was seen in in an Indian restaurant on Whiteladies Road, under K&S's aegis, where the staff clearly weren't expecting things to go on after midnight so we heard the new year in on a transistor radio after the food had been cleared up then cleared off.

Saw another in in Junior Poons, again K&S's suggestion, where they showed off their sculpted carrots but you weren't allowed to eat them. Seem to remember the vegetarians amongst us felt we didn't get the best deal on the food and said we wouldn't do that again. Oh god, I officially became middle aged in the mid 90s.

We had a Hogmanay in our flat in Clevedon, maybe two. I would like to believe they were the best that could be had. I bet they weren't, but I'm not listening.

99 into 2000 was the Boycott Year. Because the English had decided to take New Year seriously for once, K&S decided to go big on fireworks, but chose to ask everyone to split the cost. Paying for Hogmanay was so anathemic to our constitution that we boycotted their party and saw it in with Mark & Gail. Silly really, as it ended up decimating our cosy social crowd, but that was what we did.

Saw one in with H&R. Bless. Watching Texas in Edinburgh on TV, not legendary.

Seen a few in with Felicity & Tom. Always the greatest effort put into their parties, especially the games. Never what you'd call Rock & Roll, but always coothy. And actually New Year in the 2000s more often than not means Felicity & Tom I think. HNY T&F

Saw another in at K&S's, making up for the Boycott Year.

Worked a few, since Hev remained not that bothered by the event (did I mention she's English and I'm Scots?). One seen in doing comedy at The Tobacco Factory, at the behest of George Ferguson (coincidentally in this year's New Years Honours). One seen caricaturing up at the folly on the golf course (paying gig). One seen caricaturing at that hotel off the M5 between Bridgwater & Weston. This year seen caricaturing at a private party near Taunton, then home in time for the bells.

Then in 08 into 09 I saw the New Year in in Edinburgh, actually in the thick of it all in Princes St Gardens, having been performing all month with the Socks in the Spiegeltent as part of Winter Wonderland. It was fun, we saw some fireworks. But really I expected something more.

Maybe nothing will ever come close to Mum & Dad's Hogmanay from my childhoods. Look at me, I'm sat at my laptop, watching Jools Hootenanny, blogging about my last 30 years of Hogmanays while getting quietly drunk. Okay, next year big party in giant country house with rich & famous people who want to be there rather than somewhere else. Actually no, sounds awful. Let's do it somewhere surprising.

Happy New Year.

Socks spring tour 2010 - Dates announced

Hi Socks fans, here at last are the dates for the Scottish Falsetto Sock Puppet Theatre's Spring 2010 Theatre Tour. As well as these dates, we will be announcing our comedy club appearances (though many of those happen at short notice). The dates listed below are all full length performances of the Socks solo show (plus double bill show from comedy magician Ali Cook where marked). Put them in your diary now, and we'll let you know more when we know it:

Jan 30 Omagh Strule Arts 7pm £4
http://bit.ly/8vAjxI

Feb 18 Preston Continental (+Ali dbl bill)
http://www.newcontinental.net

Feb 19 Bury Met (+ Ali dbl bill) 8pm £8
http://themet.biz/month/2010/02/

Feb 20 Aberystwyth Arts Centre 8pm £8
http://www.aberystwythartscentre.co.uk/whatson/comedy/info/8284/

Feb 25 – Farnham Maltings (+Ali dbl bill) 8pm £10
http://bit.ly/6AsWK2

Mar 2-Swindon Arts Centre (+ Ali dbl bill ) 8pm £10
http://www.swindon.gov.uk/artsandculture/arts-artsservicesbrochure.htm

Mar 6 - Ropewalk- Barton on Humber (+ Ali dbl bill) 7.30 £8
http://www.the-ropewalk.co.uk/roperyhall/comedy.htm

Mar 10 – Burnley Mechanics (poss Ali tbc) 8pm £8
http://www.burnleymechanics.co.uk/list.php?month=3&year=2010&Go=Go

Mar 13 Madcap Milton Keynes (Socks doorsplit) tbc
http://www.madcap.org.uk/

Mar 18 Lighthouse Poole (+ Ali support) £10 7.30pm
https://tickets.lighthousepoole.co.uk/public/

Mar 19 – New Cut Arts Suffolk (+Ali dbl bill)
http://www.newcut.org/whatson.php

Mar 20 Theatr Harlech (+Ali dbl bill) 7.30 £7.50
http://theatrharlech.ticketsolve.com/shows/2010/3/20

April 3 Bath Widcombe Studios tbc
http://www.bathcomedyfestival.co.uk/whats-on

April 10 Chorley Theatre 7.30 £8
http://www.chorleylittletheatre.com/whatson/whatson.html

Apr 16 – Harrogate Theatre (+ Ali dbl bill) £10 8pm
http://bit.ly/8P3bwQ

Apr 23 –Loughborough Town Hall (+ Ali dbl bill) £10 8pm
http://www.loughboroughtownhall.co.uk/events/the_scottish_falsetto_sock_puppet_theatre

April 30 Stafford Gatehouse (+Ali dbl bill) tbc
http://www.staffordgatehousetheatre.co.uk/?show=comingsoon

May 20- Blackwood Miners (+ Ali dbl bill) tbc
http://www.caerphilly.gov.uk/bmi/english/whats.html

June 25 - Helmsley (+ Ali dbl bill) tbc
http://www.helmsleyarts.co.uk/info/shows+on/25-6-2010

Dr Who - The End Of Time

Unfair to judge an episode of Dr Who when it's only halfway through, and maybe every question I've got will be answered in part 2, but having watched The End Of Time part 1 I must confess to being a bit disappointed.

The first half took a long time to get anywhere, then the second half seemed to be on fast forward. So Lucy Saxon's saliva, months or years after she last met the Master, can be used to resurrect him? And a bottle of liquid can be used to destroy him in a scene that looked like an outtake from Harry Potter. So he's destroyed? But just as quickly he isn't? So why should we care?

Then he turns up again, with a flickering metal skeleton inside? What's that? And because he appears to be part robot, he's a very hungry cannibal? What sense does that make? And why is there a burger van in the middle of a deserted industrial site, its only two customers being two homeless blokes? Huh??

So Wilf goes looking for the Doctor, then he finds him, and holds him up while he's about to catch the Master, then the Dr plays along with some silly old sods taking photos of him, then gives up chasing the Master? So the Dr has a chat with Wilf, has a bit of a cry (despite having run away for years between episode, getting married? Huh????) then nothing happens.

Then they kidnap the Master and suddenly there's green aliens and suddenly there's a big machine, and suddenly it's explained that it repairs everyone on the whole planet (a bit like the nanogenes in The Empty Child but neither so original nor so well introduced) - and didn't you immediately, the second you heard that the machine heals the whole planet, know exactly what was going to happen? And isn't that room exactly the same place where they filmed Silence In The Library*? (*I wrote that then discovered, from DWC, that in fact it's a set. A set that ended up looking like a previous location. Still, I was wrong.) And also I've seen a bit much of Tredegar House now.

Yes I knew he was going to say "Master race" before he said Master race. Yes I knew they were about to do Being John Malkovich before they did Being John Malkovich. And...

If I'm so clever I should prove it by writing something good, not just criticising other people's efforts. I happen to have found The End Of Time disappointing (from its very RTD title - is it actually literally the End Of Time? What, like it was literally The Next Doctor? and World War 3? and...) although actually the image of everyone turning into the Master wasn't bad. So, New Year's Resolution, write something good or shut up about everyone else's writing.

Quibbling about unamibitious futurology

So I'm reading and enjoying this fun story on The Onion:
http://www.theonion.com/content/news/ghost_of_christmas_future_taunts
where The Ghost Of Christmas Future taunts kids with 2016's Playstation 5, and I'm thinking surely things will be more advanced than that by then.

They suggest 2016 games will have "a PS5 hooked up to 2016's most popular TV, the 4'x8' Hi-Def Sony Titania" and that "you can play this against 63 other PS5 owners simultaneously" and imagines "Star Wars—Episode IX: Jedi Destiny, a game which employs the world's most advanced artificial-intelligence algorithm to place the player inside the film's climactic battle sequence on the planet Mon Jeedam".

Surely this is unamibitious isn't it? I recently dug up a copy of a comic from 1989, obscure American thing by second string creators, can't remember the name. But the outstanding thing was how poor the predicting was. Some guy had the equivalent of superpowers because he had a chip in his brain that could store, gasp, 2 gigabytes of memory. In 1989 the idea of storing 2GB was not expected to happen for 50 years. Now I can store that on my watch.

And when I was trying to write Ghost Rider 2099 in 1994 (I never got any stories picked up) I was imagining the internet, of which I had no first hand experience, as something you'd fly into like all magic with hologram worlds and chips in your heads. The scripts they went with had people sitting in front of fat computers with cabels all over the oche. Nice to draw obviously, but not that good prediction wise.

So, for this prediction of PS5 in 2016, not that I'm a game playing person, but I'd say everything's in 3D and virtual reality, so no old-fashioned TV screens involved. And.. I've just realised I can't be bothered continuing this thought, Gavin & Stacey's on.

A child's Christmasses (in, as it happens, Wales)

On having just read, for the first time, A Child's Christmas in Wales by Dylan Thomas, which we found a copy of here at my inlaws house in Bodelwyddan, North Wales, which we sought out having watched Mark Watson's A Child's Christmasses in Wales and wondered how close the two were to each other (the answer, by the way, being not very).

I have random memories from random Christmasses, which I jot purely in note form (I may be many things, none of them a poet).

Nick & I went Christmas carol singing with our guitars. It can't have been that cold because, well, because we had guitars, we were outside and we could play them. We clearly didn't want to impose upon anyone as we sat on a bench outside the church and sang our songs there. We did our group's version of White Christmas (I have subsequently mastered Nick's guitar solo which, at the time, seemed daunting and impressive) and anything else that could be sung using E, A and D or C, F and G.



When my Illustrated Picture Diary was getting into its stride, which began when I was 11 in the last week of what the kids would now call year 7 and fizzled out in the first year of art college, I devoted a double page spread to illustrating my Christmas presents. They included that year's Giles annual. Sigh, I am old enough to have been able to get new Giles annuals, while he was still at his peak.

The first Christmas at Heather's in Basildon was my first away from home and I was disturbed by all the thing that were different. Or, as I saw it, wrong. Christmas dinner was at the wrong time, the presents weren't opened first thing in the morning, the crackers were ornamental and not for pulling, and there was crying. Crying? Nobody had ever cried in my family's household at Christmas (and, I think, has not yet). Since that first Christmas away from where I'd spent my childhood Christmasses I can no longer remember when things were supposed to take place, or how or why, but I'm pretty sure they've never been quite right. Being a kid, who would no doubt be diagnosed as having OCD or ADHD or Arseburgers (I know I know) these days, was very bliss.

I have probably not laughed so much before or since as I did at Jasper's Carrot's Twelve Days Of Christmas. I still have the recording we made of it. VHS had not yet been invented, not in our house leastways, so I pointed a microphone at the telly from my cassette recorder. The loudest thing at many points is our laughter, particularly mine and Mum's. "Three clack and bangly wogglies, two niddly niddly woddlies, and a piddle up your poggle woggle." They don't write em like that any more.

For many many years there were Christmas records that you just couldn't get. In the long lost wilderness years before Now The Christmas Album there were songs that you'd heard on the radio or seen on the TV, but there was no way of getting your hands on them. Bing & Bowie's Little Drummer Boy was no unlikely that I had arguments about it, swearing blind I had seen them perform together on TV in 1977 and being soundly and roundly disbelieved (it finally came out as a single in 1982, which settled the argument). Anne Nightingale had played Bruce Springsteen's live version of Santa Claus is Coming To Town, once in the late 70s, but no-one had ever seen a copy on vinyl, until finally it snuck out as a b side in 1985. The most elusive was The Waitresses' Christmas Wrapping. Simon Mayo would play it every year, but I could never find a copy. And it had never been on an album at the time, and singles were deleted pretty fast, especially Xmas singles that never even made it into the charts. Finally it popped up on a CD compilation in 1993, around which time everything seemed to become available and a little bit more mystery was lost forever.

I remember my dismay when, in 1981, a friend's family said they'd watched a video on Christmas Day. The thought of not watching the same Christmas Day TV as the rest of the country was anathema.

The big TV advert of Christmas 1983 was for Laserdisc. Two policemen walked round a deserted Trafalgar Square, explaining that there were no crowds this year because everyone was at home watching their Laserdiscs. No they weren't. I know the one person who bought one. His name's Steve. He only ever had two discs for it: Grease and Lenny Henry Live. I don't think he watched either.

Last Christmas we were in Edinburgh, in a flat on the Royal Mile, looking out over the snow free rooftops. Our tree was areal one, walked from the foot of Broughton St all the way to the High St. A number of people asked us where we'd got our tree from, as if we were locals and the only people who knew where to buy a tree. It ended its life being smuggled among the trees outside the Spiegeltent in Princes St Gardens. I wonder if anyone ever noticed.

There are more Christmas memories, but that will do for the moment.

Merry Christmas from the Socks

Hello Socks fans around the world, and seasons greetings to you all from the Scottish Falsetto Sock Puppet Theatre.

As a special present to you all, the Socks have uploaded a healthy handful of Christmas videos (12 Days worth, would you believe, some slightly less Christmassy than others), newly recorded just for you. In case you haven't caught them all, check out:

The 12 Days of Christmas
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uPMDoKpgKGA
Christmas Songs You Daren't Sing
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jI2UkohTDYY
Santa's Pants (new HD upload)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dBP_S-AHbfw
Away In Pret A Manger
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ziLH8wjNmxE
Christmas Lights song
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lSV7eaC6IBQ
Christmas On The Farm
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J29KcUNSowY
The German Market
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M0-x9HRKMEA
Socks Suck at Christmas
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c-IHNgVmqcw
50 years of our family's Christmas cards
White Christmas original cast
Sunset
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L8tIruQ8B0s
Tiger Woods song
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=icwkkcyL6Ak

And a Happy New Year when in it comes

Love from Kev F & the Scottish Falsetto Sock Puppet Theatre

TV reviews of 2009

So, what did I enjoy on TV in 2009?

There's been some great TV. I think. My memory is so poor I can only remember what's been on in the last couple of months. So best new sitcoms would be Miranda, Gary Tank Commander, How Not To Live Your Life, and Home Time - plus something that I know must have been on in the first half of the year but that I've totally forgotten. Overall favourite sitcom of the year is Big Bang Theory which we discovered on Catch Up in the summer and have watched two whole series of since. Also excellent were The Thick Of It, Peep Show, Gavin & Stacey, Outnumbered and the IT Crowd. And Curb Your Enthusiasm and The Daily Show, but they go without saying. The comedy show that really was missing was The Scottish Falsetto Sock Puppet Theatre, about which I shall try and do something in 2010.

Best drama was, I guess, Torchwood Children Of Earth, or Being Human. Surely there was something else that really stood out? Oh yeah, started watching The Wire nightly on BBC 2. Got through series 1 (the excellent series) and series 2 (the Why's Everyone White All of a Sudden? series) then during series 3 I was missing so many episodes things made less and less sense and it started to feel repetitive and boring. It remains the longest US TV drama series I've stuck with since the X Files, but still not something I'll ever see all of. (I've still not seen 24, Sex In The City, Buffy The Vampire Slayer, Battlestar Galactica, CSI, The Sopranos and many more, life is now officially too short for me to catch up).

On balance I must have avoided more TV than I watched, I guess everyone did. In our household we dipped into a few box sets. Best of the year was complete Bilko, which Hev picked up at a charity shop, is an excellent find. Every episode a classic, many I'd never seen, many laugh out loud funny, and the box set included TV interviews, the pilot and other fun rarities. A fave from my birthday was a Dr Who box set with Sea Devils and Silurians in (two highly enjoyable Pertwee classics, followed by an abysmal Peter Davison story, tolerable only for the commentary, where Peter Davison & Janet Fielding rip the piss out of it).

 

I'm happy not to have seen: X Factor (not a moment), Big Brother (first night only, the best bit of which was Charlie Brooker's Tweets), Strictly (none), Britain's Got Talent (first night inc Susan Boyle, then no more), I'm A Celebrity (not a second) and any lesser reality shows. Watched The Apprentice, kidding ourselves that it's not that bad, and the disappointing School Of Saatchi and Philip Starck thing. I was envisaging the Sitcom Trials following in the mould of the last two, but was left realising even I might not watch it if it did.

I must have seen more trivial filler TV than anything else. Mornings when I don't have to go into schools or get to early meetings I see The Wright Stuff, which is a well above average morning chat show. It's not quite the Today show, but it's not insulting to the intelligence. Which I can't say of BBC Breakfast, which now seems to devote its last half hour to being an advert for Strictly or a plug for bad movies or celebraity autobiographies. The One Show is actually really good fun, though I do try not to watch it, it's just there when you're too busy to turn it off, and dammit parts of it are interesting without actually being intellectually challenging. And I was on it in 2008, which still gives me a fondness for it. (That said, the Socks appeared on The Culture Show, and I find that really hard to watch. The presentation style changes so much between series that it has no continuity and always makes you nostalgic some something they used to do that they don't do any more. They should settle on a style for at least two consecutive series.)

The only must see TV in our house is University Challenge, and ,when it's on, Only Connect. The funny panel games usually entertain, with Mock The Week this year having the edge over HIGNFY and QI (which is, I think, running out of interesting facts), though We Need Answers is too shouty for me, and It's Only A Theory stutters. What The Dickens on Sky Arts is good, and Would I Lie To You has its moments.

I'm sure there was something that knocked my socks off that I have subsequently forgotten. If there is, I shall write it in these brackets here (addendum: I'd forgotten Psychoville, Harry Hill's TV Burp and Mad Men). I take that to mean I was so busy having an actual life, which I must look back over next.

Merry Christmas world.