Louis CK and Denis Leary

I'm a fan of Denis Leary's comedy and recently I've become quite a big fan of his show Rescue Me. Here however is yet another accusation of him stealing material from other comedians. Louis CK (who in the past has spoken out about his material being nicked by Dane Cook) tells the story in quite an anecdotal style and you get the feeling he's not all that bothered by it.

Insane Reaction to Brand/Ross Gaffe

Every now and again, you get a glimpse of the real face of this country; the sad, mean, grotesque contortion of jealously, small mindedness and misdirected rage that lurks beneath the mask of spray-on decency and media prescribed civility.

This face was brazenly exposed in the series of events that have led to fans of an excellent entertainer being deprived of their radio show in an insane, media fueled escalation of an incident which as far as I can grasp involved a joke which suggested that a 23 year old Burlesque dancer may have had sex with someone.

Russell Brand has now quit the BBC and I would not be surprised if Johnathan Ross follows him out the door. I hope he doesn't, because he too in his context is an excellent entertainer and has been for years but really, why should he bother with us after this?

The BBC have behaved disgracefully during this entire idiot episode. Having paid Brand and Ross to be Brand and Ross, they have subsequently suspended them for being Brand and Ross, simply because a few morons whipped up into a fervor by professional bear baiters like the utterly vile Kelvin McKenzie have decided they are disgusted by something they have read about and not even heard.

Reacting to a situation they themselves have had a hand in developing, the BBC have looked like a lumbering, punch drunk fool, flailing aimlessly at anything that stays still long enough to look like a target. And the responsibility for the most important issue to emerge from this incident lies squarely with the BBC. In their reactive mishandling of this situation the BBC have allowed the talent at their disposal to be diminished and their output to be reduced in quality.

Worse, the BBC itself has been diminished by this, because it has backed down to bullying moralists and the gutter press without even the first hint of a fight. Their clear failure to get in front of what has happened means that the talent who remain in the BBC's employ know now that the BBC will fail to support them should they be unlucky enough to be the next "uppity celeb" targeted in some red-top engineered moral outrage publicity stunt.

The BBC's senior staff have allowed the corporation to be bullied and manipulated and a popular performer has been hounded from his job. Has anyone even mentioned where this leaves license payers who are fans of Russell Brand's show? Who is speaking for them in all this? The BBC would do well to remember that loudmouth moaners pay no more for their license than the next person - their obligation is to us all, not simply to those who, like spoiled children, shout the loudest.

In an atmosphere where hysterical reactions like this are allowed to pass unbalanced and, for the most part, unchallenged, the UK will end up with the utterly bland, worthless BBC the right-wing professional "decency" camp have dared only to fantasise about until now.

In short, we'll end up with the BBC we appear currently to totally deserve.

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Very interesting to see Georgina Baillie's dewy-eyed chops plastered all over the red tops today wasn't it? Also very interesting to note that Max Clifford is her publicist. What's the betting that once her round of "justice has been done" stories dies out a few weeks later we'll see her again but this time in her work clothes alongside headlines like "Pwarr! Look What All The Fuss Was About!". I'm all for folk making their way in life, but at the expense of another person's career? One wonders if this girl's FHM spread is already in the can.

Another ominous development I happened across today was some simpering lummox of an MP who sits on a broadcasting select committee speaking on BBC Radio Scotland speculating as to whether or not "...the BBC should really be involved in this kind of comedy" while apparently sticking with the erroneous assumption that every license fee payer in the UK wants Jonathan Ross to hang.

I find it unbelievable that, even in the mealy-mouthed cross examination this carpet-bagger received, no mention whatsoever has been made during this entire affair about the millions of license fee payers who tune in to hear Ross every week (on average 3 million per week). Of course in order for your opinion to be valid these days it has to be a moan or a gripe - simply being a member of one of the largest and most loyal radio audiences in the country is simply not good enough anymore.

And now this. How more utterly out of proportion will this get?

Brad and Fizz

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Originally uploaded by jules3000

Rare Elliott Smith Footage

Elliott Smith died 5 years ago on Tuesday. His friend Mary Lou Lord has posted a lot of previously unseen footage of him playing live in 1995. You can see it all here.

I Just Love Will Arnett

See more Will Arnett videos at Funny or Die

No Explainations

Originally uploaded by jules3000

That Sinking Feeling

On Sunday afternoon I went to see Righteous Kill. I had written a long post about how it’s an awful film, how director Jon Avnet should go get a job in a call-centre, how Pacino has fucking lost it (his ability to pick a decent script anyway) and how the filmmakers attempted to cheapen a great film like Heat by aping the climax. But I won’t post it. Instead I’ll focus on a much more positive cinematic experience on Sunday.

In the evening I went along to GFT’s Monorail Film Club screening of That Sinking Feeling. The 1980 film is the little seen forerunner to the much more popular Gregory’s Girl.

A comedy about unemployment and disillusionment in Glasgow it was much funnier than I remember it. There are a couple of scenes that displayed some misdirection worthy of The Simpsons at its best.

Sharp, witty and fun it shows Glasgow and its humour in a great light. It’s a film that they really don’t make anymore. Which is a great shame.

One of the film’s stars, Robert Buchanan, who was also in Gregory’s Girl, came along for a Q & A with Belle and Sebastian’s Stuart Murdoch afterwards. There was a great moment, when asked if he still kept in touch with any of the rest of the cast, two of them shouted from the back of the cinema. Eight minutes of the discussion are below.

Wasted is Oot!

I was through at Forbidden Planet in Edinburgh last weekend for the launch of Wasted, a new comic where pal of 'pish Iain Laurie and I have found a home for our strip Blackcape.

We had a great day. It was nice to see people giving a toss about something we had been involved in and it was nice to see all the different folk who had contributed to the comic, including head honcho Alan Grant and big names like Frank Quitely and Jamie Grant, thrusting aside their gazillions of awards to hang out with us little guys. Many fun hours were spent in the pub but my favourite bit was sharing a fish tea with Jamie Grant, Frank Quitely, Alan Kerr and Iain in the City Cafe. It's the first time I've seen the house red ordered in a greasy spoon style chip shop.

The comic itself looks great and reads well for an anthology which tend usually to be editorially fuzzy and massively variable in terms of the quality of strips inside. Its not a loftily ambitious collection of course, its purely looking for laughs but I think it hits the mark more often than not.

It's available now for £3.25 and you should be able to get it from Forbidden Planet (certainly the Edinburgh store had loads and on checking, the Glasgow FP has copies as well) or direct from our distributor here. You can also get it here.

I notice that you can order it from Amazon as well now.

If you can't find it, gimme a shout and I'll get a copy to you. It may also be worth mentioning that if you subscribe (4 quarterly issues for £17.50 - print off the slip, fill it out and just sent it in - your money covers your comics and your P&P) you'll get an exclusive t-shirt by Simon Bisley, who's also been signed up for the cover for #3.

Here's a nice review we got from The List.

David Simon at the GFT

I had intended to blog this a couple of weeks ago, but I waited until the GFT had it online. Fraser and I went to see David Simon, creator of The Wire at the GFT a few weeks ago.

The sold out evening began with a screening of episode two of the fifth and final season. This caused a few murmurs of complaints from people in the crowd who a) Didn't expect an episode they hadn't seen and b) Didn't like the fact it was episode two and not episode one. It was a great episode though and has a brilliantly dramatic ending.

The talk itself was alternatively amazing and annoying. The Sunday Herald sponsored the event and their journalist Alan Taylor was the man in the chair to interview Simon. He gave off the air of a guy who had speed-watched a couple of seasons on DVD. He wasn't quite sure what character was who and wasted Mr. Simon's time and ours with inane chatter like asking if Avon Barksdale was named after 'Avon calling.' He also made jokey references to Taggart. All of this going straight over David Simon's head as he had no frame of reference.

The questions were the usual mix of quite good and timewasting clowns mistaking a public Q & A for a chance meeting at a party. When the man was allowed to talk he was very entertaining. An interesting and intelligent guy who gave us a lot of the background as to how the show came about, the writing process and of the real life people the characters on the show are based on.

Seven minutes of the talk are down below.

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

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

Paul Newman 1925-2008

This is the way I found out Paul Newman had died.

I'm at a party. We're playing a game where you pick out a name that's been written on a piece of paper, then you describe who the person is so your team-mates can guess their name.

Party Goer 1: Actor. Dead Actor.

Party Goer 2: Paul Newman!

Party Goer 1: Right!

Party Goer 3: Paul Newman's not dead.

Party Goer 4: He is. He died yesterday.

The Room: What? Aaaaaaaaw.

Paul Newman was always one of my favourite actors. In my room at my mum's I've had a framed picture of him at the Actors' Studio on the wall for the last 15 years.

He's been great in so many great pictures. Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, Hud, The Hustler, Cool Hand Luke, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, The Sting and his Oscar winning turn in The Color of Money.

Two of his later films stand up alongside the greats in my opinion. Nobody's Fool, which landed him another Oscar nomination in 1994 is Newman at his best. Twilight (directed like Nobody's Fool by Robert Benton) made four years later is a completely underrated picture that sees Newman play a private detctive dying from cancer opposite Gene Hackman and Susan Sarandon.

Here's a tribute to him from The Independent, which coincidentially agrees with me over those last two films. The Stamford Advocate runs down his best work on film.

Down below is the first part of his appearance on Inside the Actors' Studio.

Keegan's Departure

Kevin Keegan's departure from Newcastle has got some of the fans in a right state.

Stanley Kubrick's Boxes

I missed this when it was on TV a few months ago, but I read about it in Jon Ronson's book 'Out of the Ordinary'.

Face to Face with Billy Connolly

More from YouTube. This in several parts an interview with Billy Connolly from 1994.

Brando Auditioning For Rebel Without A Cause

On Sunday The Observer printed 50 great entertainment clips to be found on YouTube. I thought I would post some of them here over the next week or so, along with some of my own faves. I might include some sport too.

The first one up is the 23-year-old Marlon Brando auditioning for Rebel Without A Cause.

Demetri Martin's Flipcharts

Magic Glue Photos

Below are some photographs from The Magic Glue's rehearsals and the show at The Stand in July. All of them were taken by Heidi Kuisma. Go hire her for all your photographic needs.

End of the Festival

With the Edinburgh Festival having come to a close I thought I'd briefly riound up the shows I've been to see in the last couple of weeks.

Angry Puppy was a solid all-female sketch show. The cast and sketches were all of a high quality.

Limmy's Show didn't have the atmosphere of his Oran Mor shows in March, but it was still top drawer stuff. Any show featuring me trying to climb a fence must be funny.

Scott Cappuro had a lot of 5 star reviews and according to each one a lot of walk outs. On the night I saw him no one walked out, but that's not to say he toned it down that night. The vast number of comedians who think that they're edgy really ought to go see Cappuro to see how it's really done. This was boundary-pushing stand-up at its best. He even managed to squeeze in some mild masturbation during the hour.

Easily the worst show I saw at the festival was Paul Foot's. Quite how this guy has a career is a mystery to me. He stretched about 6 minutes of material into an hour. When one of your audience says "You're actually humping me now," your show's taking a wrong turning somewhere.

The sketch show Two Episodes of MASH had some mixed reviews over the three weeks. I enjoyed it for the most part. There were some good, quirky ideas, like the super-hero who had given it all up to teach road safety (Road Safety - It's Not Just For Arseholes) and the human cannonball who had overshot, meaning he couldn't get his timesheets signed. There was a good running gag about their sponsorship deal with a scaffolding firm. The whole thing though was only 45 minutes long.

Wisecrackin' Mindsqueezin' Behemoth was another sketch show written and performed by JL Roberts and Nadia Kamil. They had done a show called Staggered Spaces that I saw a couple of years ago. They are both likable and engaging performers. The show was a bit shambolic but all the more fun for it.

Global Warming is Gay featured Glue's very own Dazza. Despite a few really awful lines it wasn't a bad show. However for my mind you may as well have written a show replacing global warming with collecting football programmes, such as I didn't really buy that these folk were spending £30,000 to combat global warming.

Edinburgh was rounded off this year for me with Doug Stanhope last night. Shambling through the crowd in the small bar he looked as ridiculous as I've ever seen him. A skip cap perched on his mulleted head, his jacket looked like something he'd stolen off a drunken sailor and his baggy shorts looked like he'd slept in them the last couple of nights. Oh aye that's right, he had.

He began by riffing with the crowd, by the time he'd had his third beer he was really on form. He did have to deal with idiotic attention seeking hecklers, but all in all he delivered a first class show.

Here's an interview with him about Edinburgh from last week's Metro.

So that's it for Edinburgh for me as a punter this year. Saw some decent shows and ate some good pies out of Piemaker. Spent too much money that's for sure.

Woody Allen Interviewed

Here's a hilarious interview with Woody Allen from 1971. He's taking the piss all the way. It's played completely deadpan, but the interviewer tittering at several points gives it away. It comes in four parts.

Interviewer: "I rather enjoyed it."
Woody Allen: "Yes, but you're mistaken."

More From Edinburgh

I saw a couple of shows from the Free Fringe/Festival in the middle of last week. Scott Agnew is there with his show Big Boy. He's on a bit of a tour with it, as it's playing in various venues throughout the run. I also went along to see Tartan Special in Meridan at the bottom of Leith Walk.

On Friday I saw Morgan Murphy at The GRV. Murphy is a well known and respected comic in the US, appearing on the Comedians of Comedy tour as well as late night chat shows. Here though she drew an audience of six. She turned in an excellent performance, but I couldn't help but feel it would have been more enjoyable with a bigger crowd in the room. I guess it says something about Edinburgh, she could be playing clubs in the US to decent crowds and earning cash, but instead she's in Scotland playing to a handful of folk each night. Well worth going to see though.

Later on I went to see Glenn Wool in the Underbelly. As I've said here before Wool is easily one of the best comics working in Britain. His delivery is just first class. His show deals with his divorce and it was interesting to see how much of it had changed since he performed part of it in Glasgow in March.

I should also maybe mention that John Gordillo, who struggled when I saw him on the first preview night, received a five star review from Chortle.

Down below there's some Morgan Murphy.