A Spooky kinda love.

Harry's Game

All sane people love Spooks it's mad ,barking and wonderfully filmed in my backyard; I've yet to see Ros getting a cheese and onion pasty in Percy Ingles but it must be only a matter of time.

Anyway tonight we had some running around in the estuary hurrah!A bomb with a big timer hurrah! the aforementioned Ross (the must uptight middleclass  English woman ever) casually walking into a east end squat. Of course she walked past the usual dancing ravers, scary black guys and people snogging (last time I went to a squat I had some under seasoned raw ratatouille drank sloe gin and played (and won) a game of Risk!)  Hurrah!

But best of all this brilliantly daft piece of dialogue that name checks the "Whitecube Gallery"what next

"Harry they've got a bomb it's in the Chelsea Art Club, it's strapped to Lucian Freud!"

I love the theme tune but come on fellas how about this on the Christmas special.

PS: This was going to be a quick mention of Trebor Double Agents sweets (the badge shown above) until I was just checking my memory and found this entire site devoted to the double flavoured treats I love the internet I really do.

Empire of Rust

Watch this Programme it's great
I know I go onto about him but the latest Jonathan Meades is top ep.2 about the Isle of Rust is brilliant. Bonkersly verbose as usual but excellent any fan of rusting sheds and abandoned rotting lorries should not miss the last 15-20 minutes I actually laughed out aloud (yeah I know I'm not normal but then again I never wanted to be that much) Anyway in a land were 3rd division ball room dancing and over wrought generic pop music hold sway on our screen do youself a favour and get Meaded

Oh and did Nigel Slater really make bubble without cabbage last night? He's got one of the those weird larders like Nigella has that has a camera man hiding behind the pickle and spice jars too must be tiresome in morning.

Last night's tv: 1066 and all that tat

Oh and Ian get those battle axes of
the van an 'all Treacle
Originally uploaded by bltphoto

List of the day:
Anachronism in last night's Channel 4 film about 1066.

Not sure even medieval armies camped on the beach at Beachy Head below the tide line!
Every one had nice shiny white uniform round tents.
The cgi Vikings rowing their longboats the wrong way round.
The general healthy look of all the actors
The English army’s campsite “comic” who seemed to have a rather dinky caplet that had a Burberry checked lining.
The replica of Stamford Bridge seemed closer to pooh corner than anything made by people who didn’t have galvanised steel bolts with square washer and yards of yards of smooth machine cut and planed timber. You half expected to see a sign Wol’s house this way
War as a game of American football, “you open them up on the left and I’ll nip though the middle and nick their flag”.
Oh and why didn’t they shoot the big f*ck off Viking on the bridge with arrows like they did Hardrada later on.
Why is Harald Hardrada the only name you can remember from history?

This is all not to say it wasn't a lot of hairychested chainmail and battle axetastic shouty fighty fun.

James Taylor and the woman in caramel

his & hers
Originally uploaded by bltphoto

What we learnt from early this morning's TV

James Taylor in concert BBC2

After watching the Wire again last night I was about to turn in when up pops a concert film initially I almost turned it off because even though he just passed a way I had confused John Martyn film (I’m a bit echo effected out I’m afraid) with James Taylor. This confusion I‘ve had for a while. I’ve come to James Taylor only recently I think years ago someone in cool leather jacket said he was a bit MOR and I just accepted this opinion coming as it did from behind some knock-off Camden market Raybans and in cloud of Marlboro light. I’ve heard his most famous songs but not much else. Anyway my computer was doing some down loading so I stayed watching. It was really good concert film (I think in general what with better cheaper cameras most concert films have got better all).

I didn’t realise he was so funny and engaging. He has a PowerPoint going behind him with funny suitable pictures to illustrate songs.
This was a home town gig so was a bit of a love in (which isn’t a crime) and some the material was clearly been road tested (but that again isn’t offence) if you not heard a line before it’s still as funny even the teller used it 100 times.

So it was a good show, I’m not sure if he did any “new” as I don’t know his back catalogue but it was entertaining and very human show. The audience were on the prosperous side. They were dressed in that smart casual way that Americas go in for, you know iron polo shirts tucked into ironed chinos coordinated down to their toes. In was probably at the time I’d listened uncritically to the leather jacket’s opinions that I first encountered this sort American uber coordination.

There was this rich American lass at Uni who was coordinated in a way no British person even the girls I knew were, with her clothes shoes, scarf even her eye make up all of a piece. She was a symphony in tasteful Armani brown like a character from a John Hughes film. I imagine she may even had had some James Taylor playing in her room, she was terribly exotic she ate popcorn with salt on it (I’d only recently moved from butterkist toffee to sugar), could afford to pay for scalped tickets for concerts and made international phone calls oh and she’d had been to Iceland to buy gold!

Not sure this all amounts to anything other than maybe black leather jackets don’t have all the answers despite their glamour.

Red Riding: a view from the ’Hood

I’ve been watching and thinking about the Red Riding trilogy these last 3 weeks. I grew up just a few miles from the setting of the films, the cooling towers that loom in many of the films’ shots a reminder of the ones I could see steaming away from my bedroom window.

I am about the same age as David Peace and so around at the time of the films, his imagined world seems a little alien and so I’ve chosen to treat them as a hard boiled enjoyable fiction and not worry about too much about the anachronisms.

Except that is for the following:

“Half chips half rice”:
The character eating a Chinese at lunch time in “1983” in Yorkshire! When every one knows you can’ t get fast food even chips in many places except between 4 and 6.30pm even today. Many chippies even closing before the pubs turn out and never being open on a Sunday. Don’t get me wrong Yorkshire wasn’t backwards its just well people ate at home or not all. Oh and noodles what’s wrong with chips with your choppy Suey I mean one “Chinese” (I won’t use the name we use to use) near us use to even sell apple crumble or arctic roles for “afters” score!

“What time’s the Jump Circular due, love?”:
Another anachronisms common to most these films is driving; less people had cars in the olden days I know in drama cops and reporters can’t hang around waiting for Yorkshire traction to roll up but majority of people didn’t have cars back then. I bet even reporters had to use staff cars and went round the centre of Leeds etc on the bus.

“there’s a lass down the Rec who’ll let you do owt for a ride on y’BMX”:
Oh and I can say from bitter experience that Yorkshire women aren’t that easy. Of course brittle lonely needy blondes with a cruel past and inner nihilistic demons may have been in short supply at our school but me and my friends rarely popped round some lasses house and then cross faded to smoking sorrowfully regret laden post-coital fags in the gloom of thin light barely breaching the brown curtains. Having said that we all weren’t middle age men in car coats and fake tashes so were much much less of a catch obviously.

“Any shade you like as long as it’s brown”:
Oh and for the record after my magic roundabout curtains passed to my younger brother we had some home-made ones with vintage cars on them and I can’t think of room with large geometric wall paper in all my youth it was textured Anaglypta or wood chip as far as I can remember all painted white.

“Packed full of nuts.....”
Oh and in these 70’s re-creation shows they never mention Dutch Elm disease (imagine if all the foxes in Britain died out over 10 years) or the outbreak of Planter’s dried roast peanuts that swept through kids in 1978. Forget scag or rent boys there were kids at school who were on 3 or 4 packs of peanuts a day. Strangely I don’t remember anyone ever having a nut allergy.

“ Luxury......”
Everything else in the films was fine:
Being tortured with a small mammal tick, I have had ferret down my trousers (some regional clichés do have a basis in fact!).

Random violence tick (apart from the kids there were a number of teachers who would randomly hit, clip, whack you for not much reason at all).

Drugs tick (apart from peanuts for all my childhood years we existed on a heady mix of refined sugar, sherbet, liquorice(Spanish), cheap crisp, midget gems, ice pops and of course warm cans of top deck shandy, refrigeration being a modern invention apparently).

Corrupt violent racist police tick (yep when the Met invaded South Yorkshire to illegally and immorally suppress the Miners’ Strike the place was immediately full of dodgy, cruel, foul and bent coppers!)

ps do you like our S’s picture of rhubarb fields and powerstations in the sodium glare, talented chap that S.

Where's Yogi and boo boo?

What we learnt from tonights telly:

Yellowstone BBC2. What did we learn well you can only ever be po-faced about nature. This programme was one of the beebs new High Def nature programme so it was full of stunning images. You can imagine that the fur of the fox on the credits looks amazing in real life or in HD. We also got the obligatory helicopter shots and speeded up time lapse shots. Frankly I could have done without the programmes portentous voice over (by I think Spooks' Peter Firth). There doesn't seem to be any other way of describing nature on TV but in these hushed tones, tonight though we had at least three bits which we just plain funny:

A fox hunting for mice under snow diving headlong into a drift, if this was your dog you would've got 250 quid from Harry Hill but on Yellowstone just more seriousness.

Next up we had the otter, now otters are just funny. I bet even Brer otter giggles a bit when he sees his mate bound up. Otters in the snow are even more amusing.

lastly we had the punch line to the old Indian naming joke "so how did you get your name "2 wolves F**cking" " . We had to put up with Mr Serious intoning something about the alpha male as a hapless interloper wolf tries to run of from the pack all the time trapped in the "embrace" of the cheeky minx who lured him in. I bet this isn't the bit the BEEB want on youtube.

One of the great things about David Attenborough was that he wasn't afraid to laugh when confronted by the sheer joy of nature. But of course in this HD world you can't have presenters on screen on wildlife programmes anymore because you can't dub them into Portuguese to sell to Brazil.

Which is why we had to have the pointless 12 minutes Yellowstone People slot (to bulk out UK timeslots minus adverts to an hour). This film was about some bloke who shovels snow of buildings (to stop them being crushed) it was shot by someone who have never seen this or even this as what was an interesting tale was stretched way to long. Next week fascinating tales from the parking attendant.

So in future maybe just some music and perhaps a website with the minimal science they sneak into this sort of thing.

Oh and don't get me started on the Monty Hall's Great Escape. This is just the most expensive holiday video you've ever seen. At least the tossers on similar Channel 4 programmes are opening a Tuscan b&b with their own money. Old tossy Monty is on a paid holiday from my £139 lecturing us on we should all build our own compost toilets and make friends with our local clam fisherman.

Monty's proud of his carbon foot print but Monty it's fine to grow your own cabbages not sure if they are that organic if you have a helicopter shot of them going to market. Oh what's he doing now oh we are seeing that incredibly rare creature the pine marten as seen on every cocking Scottish wildlife show eating off someone's bird table whoopy do! I off to see if Family Guy is on!

Monday Update:

“Great minds” agree in T’old Sam Wollaston’s TV review of Yellowstone (in the paper) he comes to much the same conclusions as me. This is reassuring as I often seem to be at odds with large swathes of the viewing public’s taste. It’s good not to be the odd one out all the time.

There’s also an interview with School of Seven Bells. So let’s get this right the female members of band (who just happen to be striking looking) like eating pies and chips and talking about obscure dead mountaineers I may well be smitten.

Oxford Blues

There's often long explanations as to why places like Oxford University still manage to control the country, beating places like Manchester that invented the computer and popular music and places like Barnsley responsible for the world's greatest football team.

But the reason isn’t the class system or privilege or even a higher intake of brainy types it’s because they are a big bunch of cheating gets!

Coward way.

TV comedy:
Couple of things what do people think of the Cowards on BBC4. I can see what they are trying to do and I quite liked the smoking judges sketch but I didn't really laugh so basically a failure as a comedy show.

Still don't know why BBC3 didn't recommission "Pulling" a genuinely good sitcom that was cruel but daft full of recognizable (if exaggerated) characters oh and they all just happen to women.
One reason could that Sharon Horgan is in new Channel 4 series about talent agents. Regardless of the quality of the new show it does show one of the failings of British TV comedy it's obsessed with the media virtually every comedy (good or bad) is either set or seen through the prism of the media. What was refreshing about the likes of Pulling is the characters hardly ever mention the big broither or aren't obsessed with shopping channels (like most comedy writers are) you know like real people.

Higher education

Horizon BBC2
Watching an interesting and balanced programme about cannabis on Horizon: the keen fan of the stuff at the beginning of the programme seemed familiar I think he might be a mate of a mate or someone I met at a festival which figures

Anyway later they went to a top secret commercial cannabis lab, the presenter couldn't show us the address, sadly the firm has a website with their address on it!

Also at the end they had that usual voiceover "If you've been affected by any of the issues in this programme....." funny they don't say this on the editions of Horizon dealing with evolution or the big bang and speaking personally these "issues" have "affected " me a great deal.

If it’s Tuesday...

MC Update:

Spurious Job Title of the Day: Sports PR Manager ... no me neither I have suspicion he's the bloke who wanders around the edge of footy pitches on match day making sure the likes of Toby Tyke don't fall over the corner flag and of course he was called "Charlie"

MC relief barman:

Britain's Leading Beer Writer writes with his "A beer to go with Masterchef": it has to be something LOUD and yet predictable, but none the worse for that. Comforting like an old friend but with the occasional hint of spiciness. I'm thinking Young's Special London Ale or Fuller's ESB. Cheers PB.

Down (the) market

What we learnt from last nights Telly:The True Cost of Cheap Food

"Pies damned pies and statistics!
I finally caught up with my celebratory stalker's
programme on cheap food (thanks to every one for the Deptford tip off). It was all good stuff straightforward if strangely old school journalism i.e. Jay Rayner went out and found out stuff and then told us about it. Basically cheaper food could be a bit better nutritionally for very little extra cost, this cost the supermarkets could swallow in their huge profits. It was good for a food programme not to be too preachy about the necessity of many people to shop cheaply which often means shopping at supermarkets.
For ease of access presumably he filmed down Deptford market (after all he does only live in Brixton!) he did avoid quoting TS Elliot which was a shame.

"This is a Local shop"

In some respects Deptford is slightly anomalous place to test the programmes theories because it has a really good and relatively thriving market. The market is run at least 3 days a week and also has wealth of small independent food shops (which makes it sound poncy but they're just grocers, butchers, fish mongers etc.) You can get good meat, a range of veg from far and near most of what you'd want apart from in my case cheese and perhaps beer. The only chain supermarket is Iceland and the nearest big supermarket is a bus ride away in New Cross.

Another irony is that down the bottom of the high street there are 2 pie and mash shops (Jay was handing out pies for people to taste and compare) ideally placed at one time to feed the workers from the now closed docks and the power station but a bit out of the way for the main market. Also almost opposite where Jay set up his pretend pie stall was the former shop of south London favourite Kennedy's sausages which sold locally made pies up until last year.

I think I'm lucky to live near such a good market and get a large proportion of my food (and Vinyl)! from there, only going to chain supermarkets if I must. Obviously someone shopping for3 or 4 people will have lots to carry but the people who shop in Deptford probably don't have cars anyway so unless they get a taxi with the added cost or struggle onto a bus the local supermarkets aren't much help. Also there are plenty of people in London with small or no families who still drive 1-2 miles to shop at supermarkets rather than walk to the shops.

Obviously in many places people don't have the choice of a market like we do but when I visit supermarkets I'm not totally convinced of their virtues, I'm always amazed at how long it takes to pay for the food, they aren't that cheap plus they encourage you to overspend with their mulitbuy deals etc.

People complain about Tescos (and the woman on Hugh complicated names programme this evening was a particular poor example of your corporate type the way she blustered and evaded was shameful) et al but well if you have a local choice why not use it and perhaps try to find someone that sells pies with more than 10% meat in 'em.

When pathetic sharks attack ....

What we learned from this weekend TV:

Telly programmes do go on a bit

Who will be the next Dr Who? BBC1 Sat 3^rd 5.35 Great White Shark - A Living Legend BBC2 Fri 2^nd & The Lost Pyramid channel 4 sat 7.25.

While I wait for my freeview adapter to turn up I've been watching the 5 terrestrial channels and watching stuff I may have skipped past normally.

Last night bbc2 added to the global shark documentary ocean with another film about the great white shark. I had a quick look and there seems to over 700 species of shark in the world so why does only one ever get shown on TV? Well I know about Jaws but let's be honest the effect of wildlife documentaries telling us great whites aren't voracious killers while showing them chomping seal cubs is greater these days than Spielberg's overhyped b movie. This is especially the case when loads of people watching these shark attack programmes have never seen Jaws.

This documentary was typical of the form in that it took ages to tell us very little; the films main selling point was that the shark expert swam with the sharks in open water which was less dramatic than it could have been as his camera man was also swimming along with him. In fact the whole show was based around five seconds of film showing a great white attacking a seal shot from below the water. Which would have been even better if it wasn't a plastic seal being pulled a boat being eaten! So interesting bit of film 2 -3 mins total length of film 1 hour.

The pyramid film was worse, all channel 4 docs are too long, I dread to think how long they must be in America with their advert rate they must last 3 hours easily. This film was about the remains of a pyramid on a hill near Giza, the whole story could have been told in half an hour tops. But they took an hour and half thus rendering an interesting story tedious. Basically the reason the pyramid disappeared was that everyone from the Romans onwards have been nicking the stone. That being said after taking so long to tell us this they didn't explain why the same fate hasn't befallen the other pyramids to the same extent, oh damn they'll need another decade to tell us that.

As for the new Dr Who, we got another half an hour of the series' worst crime "the making of documentary", nothing to do with new Doctor is worth a damn until Russell T Davis has spent 10 mins in his charming and cheeky way telling us about William Troughton genius, is there really anyone alive who doesn't know the sequence of old doctors? Is it fair to keep having to skip over the crap 80's ones? I don't care how it was made? I don't care which bit of Cardiff the chippy Celts who make the programme tried to palm off as Camden? I just want to watch the programme. May be like the others here the producers should be honest and say look we have to sell this to America so it has to be 45 mins long so they can fill the rest of the hour with pop tart commercials, why don't you go and make some tea and toast for a bit and we'll be back with that dancing programme on the hour.

As for the new Doctor well he's clearly been brought in so they can have more pouty snogging in the rain scenes which are the most over used plot devices since the series was relaunched that and because you can't have old people on the TV anymore.

sunday night update:

The Real Italian Job: James Martin's Mille Miglia: Cheeky yorkshire TV chef tries to take part in a road race in Italy he spends 800k on an old car and then it breaks down on the first day of the 3-4 day race (20 mins in) but of course the the programme ground on for the full hour hurrah!

I’m dreaming of a very white very posh Christmas

What we learned from tonight's telly:

a Christmas hamper of posh foodies

Nigella's Christmas kitchen: I decided to skip over the artifice of the whole affair and see if the food is any good; well she started off well with most of the programmes including hard liquor in various forms. Most cooking programmes are content to sniff the odd glass of wine (never beer mind) but Nigella made a martini with the merest hint of lychees liqueur in it which looked good.

Other cocktails just involved pouring booze into jugs excellent. The food was the usual over the top stuff all fairly doable. If you can bare a show with more theatrical winks than Frankie Howerd in summer season and parties full of Nigella's fake friends its harmless Christmassy fun. One thing did start to pall tonight they dubbed the hubbub of a party over the festive shots sadly it sounded more like a staff canteen than the noise the 6 or so people artfully snuggled round N's table would make.

Before Ms Lawson was a repeat of Rick Stein's Christmas food heroes which was the usual stuff Rick goes round the country enthusing about food not much to say really although I could have done without another lecture from Rick about people wanting cheap food, multi millionaire foodies like Rick and Hugh ex Etonian-complicated name going on how the rest of us should order our pheasants from the local wood is just tiresome.

Last up and most annoying is Willie's chocolate starfish Christmas Infomercial: this is one channel 4 annoying lifestyle programmes which is just an extended advert for which ever upper middle class twonk business is on the show. People complain about the poshness of Nigella's faux lifestyle when Willie's and his even posher wife's lifestyle is "real" and therefore even more tiresome filled with semi staged nonsense and shots of his ever so kath kidson aspirational posh people lifestyle (with every recipe with added chocolate of course).

One dodgy point earlier on Rick visited a stilton factory and had to wash and cleanse his hands etc before going in Willie blithely wanders onto his factory and starts doling out homemade mince pies to the his factory staff mmmmm lovely 80% coco butter chocolate with added spit, pastry crumbs and bacteria somebody call the environmental health. Or maybe these are faux eastern Europeans in his faux factory.

To finish off the tosh the film company shipped in a snow machine to gild that bit more the lives of Willie and his spoilt brood, gilded like his un-ironic gold flake encrusted (chocolate natch) cheese cake.

Sorry I'm forgetting myself this is the season of goodwill to all men but can't we make an exemption for poshboy ex ad men and there so called "cottage" industry foodie empires.

Oh and the hilarious killing the turkey story was lovely too.

Carrybag man

Watching the Detectives:

I've enjoyed the series of Wallander films starring Kenneth Branagh on BBC1 the last 3 Sundays; they seemed above the usual Sunday night fare of Heart beat and midsummer murders. I liked the bleakness and the slightly alien nature of the setting. Branagh has always been a good screen actor being most effective close up, whispering on camera is skill that many can't master. He's also suitably rough looking but with enough humour and humanity to show why people will work/care for him.

I do however worry that faced with possibly only three films the producers felt they had to get every hardboiled detective cliché in the book into one short series:

So Episode one we had the detective has difficult relationship with his father and also fellow cop gone bad.
Episode 2 saw the lead character falls for a hot but troubled women who turns out to be involved in the crime (see every episode of Morse ever). Also included title character gets help with computer problem from hotshot supernerd hacker who he once arrested. Virtually every detective novel from 1990's had something about computers in it; they were to that decade what telegrams and train timetables to Miss Marble and Holmes were to theirs: the Scarpetta novels sometimes read like Windows dos manuals!

Episode 3: serial killer puts member of lead characters family at peril I can't think of a single crime series that hasn't had this one.

If they gone onto Episode 4 I was half expecting Wallander struck down by diabetes solves the crime from his sick bed a la "Poirot is unwell" et al.

Don't get me wrong I don't mind these clichés, genera fiction relies on them and I do like Wallander, I was particularly taken in this last episode that he carried around one of those thin orange and white striped carrier bags from the offy. This was pleasing as I thought Greeny Swedes would have banned them but also because it looked right and wasn't cool. Proper detectives do survive on corner shop food, pasties and lion bars washed down with red bull and Fanta so old ken toting his flimsy bad looked right.

The whole show was 10 times better than the recent woeful Rebus adaptations.

Hopefully they'll make some more.

To celebrate Wallander and his offy bag he's another grumpy northern malcontent Mark e Smith singing about his!

Same old story.......

Why are all modern Christmas films the same?

I was sorting things out this afternoon and had my 5 channels on (still no freeview) and there were a number Christmassy films on, Elf on, channel 4 one about skating and reindeer on 5. There were more last weekend and stacks more to come. The depressing thing is that all recent xmas films only have one plot ie. materialistic person who hates this time of year falls in love with it all again usually via some over optimistic type.


Yesterday the Muppet Christmas Carol was on and here lies the problem as this is were they get their stories from and they all suffer from the problem Dickens had which is Scoorge is much more interesting when he's nasty. So they all trun out abit bland which may be the point I haven't seen bad Santa but I bet he doesn't end bad.

How about some new Christmas films how about someone who loves Christmas too much and has to learn to turn it down abit. Or a rebellion in santas toy factory or how about a film about real British christmas not the "love actually version "where people snog in their pants in the show at Borough Market but you know grim office parties, burnt veggie cutlets, queuing in Argos and having your debit card declined, getting cards from people who haven't written in ages, cheery eastend pubs that open up at minutes notice to give lunch to a random assortment of vaguely related shouty market traders (oh that's christmas Eastenders) any how about anew story.

Advent Day9: Hair of the Dog.

Great hangover cures of out time:

No12: the Sting.

Forget raw eggs, or tomato juice, oysters or even Irn bru.

As seen on The Sting just now if your feeling rough this festive seasons can I suggest being dumped under the shower by Robert Redford after that take one large block of ice approx. 3 kg break into small pieces with an ice pick mix with water and immerse entire head in the bowl, I do feel it may be kill or cure.

Minature Shaggy Dog story of the weekend

Jassie
Originally uploaded by kymagirl

Billy Connolly was doing one of his "world tours" last night and had this good gag.

Bonnie Prince Charlie: the only king named after 3 sheepdogs

last night I had a premonition that today I'd have deja vu

Neil Young night:
Just watched the BBC4 NY programmes and they were all pretty good. The doc about his life was ok if I thought a bit short, they seemed short of footage, there was a lot of that faked up faux super 8 shots that pollute documentary now a days. You feel they could have shown more of the interview with Neil himself. He comes over fairly well, coherent and funny with a degree of self knowledge, he's obviously incredibly driven and artistically selfish in the way that only a few 60's era rock stars can be. Arriving in LA in '65 he's had the fame money, kudos to do whatever he's liked ever since for good or evil.

I think the CSNY:Deja Vu tour film (on afterwards) was if anything even better. The film is a record of the DSNY tours playing Young's anti Iraq war songs. A strange mix of concert footage, interviews and films about audience members. It's got scenes of really angry crowd members complaining about and berating the band for their anti-bush songs but also interviews with veterans and the families of dead GI's. The film is narrated and partly authoured by a senior CNN war correspondent their equivalent of John Simpson who is dispassionate in showing the sometimes negative reception the band gets.
The striking thing about the protestors against the Band's stance is that they shelled out 70-80 quid for tickets seemingly unaware of the Band's view point which although Liberal was actually (from the film quiet balanced). You have to think that some American's do live in bubble of unchallenged patriotism, if they went to the concerts expecting the Marakesh express it's not as if many of CSNY sixities songs weren't overtly political. Their outrage seems niave.

It's a fascinating film and a very rare one you can't imagine the Stones having a film were they are seen being booed by their own fans and having shots of "hockey moms" storming out of gigs giving the finger to the camera all cut to " brown sugar". This youtube clip gives a good flavour of this remarkable film. It may get shown again this week on BBC4 if not you'll have to track down the DVD.

Illuminating Tv

What we'll learn from tonight's telly

I think my counter suggestability is almost an illness, I can't look at a sentence or a sign or a name and not think of an other meaning. I was looking at the tv listings for tonight and 8.30 on BBC2 is that old favovourite "Gardners' World" the description for tonights show is " Carol Klein looks at bulbs".
And because of my "illness" I can't stop thinking about the no- nonsense plants northern woman stood stock still in a TESCO's aisle transfixed by all the 40w baton fitting Osrams for the entire show.

You can imagine I had to read what's on at 7.35 on Channel 4 a few times just check I was getting it right "Half Ton Veg"

Bang Bang machines:

What we learnt from tonight’s telly
BBC4 Big Bang night: Was fascinating, one show was an excellent portmanteau collection of various episodes of Horizon, which not only tried to explain how we got to today’s knowledge about the universe but was also an excellent review of the styles of science shows since the 60’s.

So we got badly dressed scientists, shots of Saturn 5 blasts off, lots of glorious animations of atoms. I can but think that life was easier in 70’s when science programme always had fantastic helicopter shots of some new kit complete with a pumping prog soundtrack.

One scene tonight cross cut from a boffin in Alpha Spyder speeding down an accelerator tunnel with a chopper shot of the countryside above. Top stuff.

The modern programme that followed was as clichéd as the previous ones. In it we get mock aged film , edgy shaky camerawork and Dr Brian Cox a cool hipster Simon Armitage look a like crossed with the drummer from Toploader. The sound track to this was the penguin café orchestra. It had lots of shots of machinery and interviews with wild looking scientist, Dr Cox walked about in the snow and looked enthusiastic.

What’s in a name?
It was only tonight did I work out that CERN was the name of an organisation until now I think I imagined it was the next town along from Bern! It’s one of these French names that’s the wrong way round
It stands for the European Centre for Nuclear Research much like The International Federation of Football Associations or International Federation of Automotive Sport are the wrong way round.

Clueless
I’m afraid after all the classes I’ve attended and books I’ve read and episodes of Horizon I’m still not clear what was around before the big bang!

Neologism
I do find physicist slightly annoying in the way they always over name things. The “God particle” anyone which as far as I can see if we find it there’ll be a smaller series of particles lurking inside it the “godlets” presumably.

Leave it to Dicky!
Lastly what the programmes showed was that any show that has bits of Richard Feynman in it is always better. There are lot worse ways to spend your time than watching these 5 sections of a Horizon on RF bits of which were shown tonight.



this seemed like an appropriate tune "Geek love" By Bang Bang Machine!