Mercury Fur

Mercury Fur is the next play up at the Ramshorn. It opens on Monday night. I'm going along to see it on Friday. This is the write up it got on Saturday in The Guardian.

The Marriage Ref

Here's an interview with Jerry Seinfeld from The Guardian. In it he talks about his appearances on the new season of Curb Your Enthusiasm as well as his new gameshow 'The Marriage Ref'.

He doesn't think much has changed in the pitching process since he was talking to NBC about Seinfeld in the 1980s. "Broadcasters still use the word excited to mean nervous," he nods. "Like, Endemol saying they have loads of shows out here that they're excited about." He gives a sly grin.

Some Links

I've found I've been posting less on here and more on daft Facebook and Twitter. Probably more people read them there right enough, but anyway, here's a couple of things I've posted there that I'm now posting here.

Kenny Burns, the former Nottingham Forest defender, gives an amusing interview to The Sunday Herald about the 'poofs' and 'pansies' playing the modern game.

The always funny Adam and Joe in The Observer. Again from The Observer, a reminder not to vote BNP next week.

Finally, here's a great scene from The Office where Kevin brings in to work his famous chilli.

Real Madrid-Getafe

A great article from Sid Lowe in The Guardian about last night's Real Madrid victory over Getafe. Watch down below for Pepe going mental and one of the worst penalty kicks of all time.

Liverpool and The Sun

A good article in The Guardian about the people of Liverpool's continued hatred for The Sun thanks to the lies the paper told about Hillsborough.

Iannucci In the Loop

Armando Iannucci talks about In the Loop in The Observer. The Sunday Times talks to Iannucci and Peter Capaldi. The Sunday Herald chats to In the Loop star Chris Addison.

Down below Iannucci talks to the Edinburgh TV Festival about the film.

Cavett Talks to Updike

If you've read this blog for a while you may know that one of my big comedy heroes is Dick Cavett. He's also, I think, one of the best TV talk show hosts of all time. The New York Times has posted a full half hour show where Cavett talks to John Updike and John Cheever. Cavett is also one of the many real life characters portrayed in the new Watchmen movie.

Chalkboards

The Guardian have launched interactive chalkboards on their football pages. These boards analyse Premiership games from this and past seasons showing you goals, passes, player movements and everything else you might want to know. Go to their Quick Start Guide to find out how to make the best of it.

Musical Inspiration

This is a good article from last Saturday's Guardian about people who were the inspiration for famous songs. Down below is one of those songs.

Seinfeld Meets Steinberg

Jerry Seinfeld interviewed by David Steinberg in the LA Times.

"When you’re in comedy, people always come up and say, “Oh, it must be so hard.” It really isn’t hard unless you’re not good at it. If you can do it, it’s really kind of fun and easy."

Brand Hammers Hitler

Russell Brand points out in his Guardian column that he has been named the second worst celebrity football fan in history - behind Adolf Hitler.

"It is however somewhat surprising to see the Führer described as a celebrity as I'd always seen him as more of a fascist dictator but, as you know, a good many papers in England believe that to be a position worthy of celebration."

More on the Brand/Ross Carry-on

One of the things to amuse me about the Russell Brand/Jonathan Ross carry on is that no one can quite settle on a name for it. I've seen Ross/Brand Gate, Brand Gate, Sachs Gate and Manuel Gate. Perhaps it's time to stop trying to shoehorn 'gate' onto the end of each new scandal.

As the fallout continues there's been a couple of funny articles on the subject. In yesterday's Observer David Mitchell wrote this piece.

"Because it's been a particularly lovely week for those 30,000 and rising who've found the time in their undoubtedly busy schedules to thank the BBC for taking the trouble to offend them. Obviously, 29,998 of them missed the broadcast, but thanks to the miracle of YouTube and our dispassionate, fact-printing media, they've all had the opportunity to catch up and get their fix of what offends them.

They're an odd bunch, these people who actually enjoy being offended. Some would call them perverts but I, in common with much of the media, think that in our new inclusive society, their fetish should be indulged. In fact, live and let live, it should be celebrated. It's harmless, if incredibly weird, and they're an important and growing demographic. In fact, I'm thinking of pitching a TV show specifically targeted at them called Why Don't You All Go and Fuck Yourselves!? I imagine it'll be a hit."

Then in today's Guardian there comes this insightful and amusing article from Charlie Brooker.

"Perhaps it's time to put a "Complain to Ofcom" button right there on the remote control: if enough viewers press it, the show gets yanked immediately, like a bad variety act being pulled off stage by a shepherd's crook."

“There’s always something for him to fucking whine about.”

This is a great profile of Alec Baldwin in The New Yorker.

Popular in the US Not Popular in the UK

Here's a pretty pointless feature from The Guardian asking why Seinfeld wasn't a hit in the UK. Simply because the BBC could not give one fuck about it. Once I sat up to watch an episode, scheduled for around midnight, and I'm not making this up by the way, this did happen, only to discover that it had been cancelled to make way for shinty. That's no wacky random thing I've came up with, it was genuinely cancelled in order that BBC show highlights of a shinty match that had by the looks of it only about 30 spectators at the actual game.

I once bought an unofficial guide to Seinfeld. As you'll see by the photo in the link it's endorsed by the BBC. That about says it all on their commitment to the show.

You could ask why a lot of US sitcoms weren't hits over here and it's all pretty much down to scheduling. In the link on top US sitcoms that I featured yesterday Night Court is included. It also appears on one of the links in that article at 18th in the list of most watched TV show finales. Why was Night Court not a hit here? It wasn't because we didn't enjoy Harry Anderson and John Larroquette's clowning, it was cos it appeared infrequently late night on BBC2 (if I mind right).

A good and popular sitcom in the US has no guarantee it's going to be a success here and that's usually because whoever imports programmes and schedules them for the terrestrial channels over here has to be convinced first. Let's not even get started on Arrested Development.

Getting Comedy on the Radio

This is a fascinating article by John Pidgeon, one time music journalist and until a few years ago the man in charge of putting comedy on the radio. He tells an interesting story of how Radio 4 resisted practically everything he brought them. Astonishing when you consider that what he brought them included Flight of the Conchords and Little Britain.

What Danny and Ross had in mind was going to be hard to sell, but the Boosh were ready to go. We submitted a proposal. The network responded: "The Mighty Boosh are a million miles from Radio 4."

This is another article on Pidgeon from 2005.

"Carry On Hip-Hop"

It appears that the RZA isn't always the intelligent well spoken guy I saw on Saturday afternoon if this story from the Evening Times is to be believed.

"One of the girls took her bra off and she was telling her friend to do the same, so she did."

Bead-Rattling

Quite hilariously the Sunday Herald today were forced to run an apology over an article one of their sports writers contributed to last week's edition. The offending article highlighted Celtic fans' dislike of their gaffer Gordon Strachan. Its closing paragraph contained the sentence "Some fans would probably rather have a bead-rattling Hoopy the Huddle Hound in the dug-out."

How that phrase managed to reach the printed pages of a national newspaper I don't know. And neither does the Sport Editor who appears to be busy fielding the postbag of furious letters and firing and demoting his offending staff.

Death Cab in the Guardian

With their new album out in May and their cracking epic new single out next Monday Death Cab For Cutie gave an interview to Friday's Guardian.

"Your Princess Eugenie, apparently she's a huge Death Cab fan," he says, grinning bashfully, of Tatler's cover star. "Is she single? Would she date a guy in a band? All the other guys in the group are taken, but I'm available. Can't you just picture me, standing by her side, at some official function?"

Down below is the video for The Sound of Settling.

Robbie and the Aliens

Here is a fascinating article from The Guardian where Jon Ronson joins Robbie Williams in his search for alien life.

On December 18 2006, Robbie Williams played the last of 59 stadium shows in a row, announced he was going to spend Christmas at his home in Los Angeles, and then basically disappeared. He was hardly seen at all in 2007. He briefly checked into rehab. He spent quite a bit of time hiking and playing football (he owns a football pitch on Mulholland Drive). Then he stopped hiking and playing football. His record company, EMI, announced he had no plans to release an album in 2008. Today he unexpectedly calls me to ask if I want to go with him to the desert in Nevada to meet UFO abductees.

Williams manages to come across not as mental, but as someone who is genuinely interested in UFOs and aliens, and wants to believe. Of course he has enough money and free time that he can persue any mild fascination that occurs to him to the nth degree. It's an enjoyable article well worth a read.

The Guardian Gogarty Gaffe

There's been an almighty hoo-ha on the Guardian's website this weekend over a travel blog. Max Gogarty is a 19-year-old embarking on a gap year trip to Thailand. The Guardian thought it would be a good idea to let him document his journey in a weekly blog. The readership thought otherwise.

Firstly the many dissenting comments felt that young Max had fuck all to say. Then someone spotted that he was obviously the son of a Guardian writer (his dad is actually a freelancer who has had articles in the Guardian amongst other publications). If you read the piece it's dull as fuck pish, but the newspaper seems stunned that it launched hundreds of furious comments.

This is just the nature of the internet. I've said before if Charles Dickens or Albert Einstein had blogs on the Guardian's website, within ten minutes five folk would be on calling them plums.

This is Max's blog entry here. This is the travel editor's response to the many, many comments saying the Guardian's standards have slipped dramatically. Finally the editor sums the situation up.

The other odd thing about it is that Max writes 'bits' for Channel 4's yoof drama Skins. Inexplicably the url includes the words 'skins_blog'. The travel editor says this was a working title he forgot to change and in no way was it a plug for Skins. Why the fuck would you use it to save the piece if you didn't want to link the two?

Anyway here's a round up of forums and such discussing it.