Gertsamtkunstwerk

Nice judge, shame about the audit

Perusal of my referral stats reminds me that i haven't really blogged this series of Judge John Deed calm down, girls...

To be honest, I don't think it has been as good as previous series. Still, it's better than most telly, and Martin Shaw is unceasing eye-candy.

Perhaps part of my problem is that I have found the main storyline somewhat incredible. The one about the triple billing of defence contracts. A major defence contract that has gone over budget would definitely be examined by the National Audit Office - it really would not require allegations of bribery passed on by a High Court judge to spark an investigation.

The Public Accounts Committee section was wholly unconvincing. The chair of the PAC is by convention a senior - generally ex-Treasury minister - member of the Opposition party, not a lightweight maverick. The PAC simply would not have a hearing into such a case without investigations already having been carried out by the NAO, who would have provided a detailed brief for the chair and guidelines on questioning. And such a hearing, especially with the unconventional appearance of a minister (it's usually Permanent Secretaries that give evidence - that's why they're called Accounting Officers...), would not have been so sparsely attended by Press and public.

I am not suggesting that triple billing has never occurred, but I also know that such things can generally be identified by a trainee auditor or audit technician using relatively unsophisticated software, and such a test would have been run as part of routine financial audit. It may well be that the defence contractor triple-invoiced so sophisticatedly that such a test would have failed to pick it up. It is therefore unlikely that it would have been necessary to bribe the minister signing it off, who would have lacked the skills to identify irregularities without a briefing from the Finance Director. The FD would therefore also have to have been bribed, and, anyay, it is inappropriate for an FD to have hands-on detailed knowledge of individual transactions which would have been handled by a relatively junior accounts clerk. Therefore, you are talking widespread collusion or an utter waste of a bribe to the minister in question. I would have thought it better not to even mention it to the minister - bribery works so much better at contract awarding stage, whereas creative accounting is more important at invoicing stage.

I would also have thought - but perhaps I am betraying my naivety - that it would be foolish for a defence contractor to resort to bullyboy tactics, including murder and attempted murder. Defence contracts are so lucrative, one might as well play by the rules. It is unlikely that any company with a whiff of this sort of dodgy behaviour would get such contracts. But maybe I'm wrong.

Bunch of amateurs

Fox News.

What a shower.

I have been watching them on and off during the afternon because they are carrying live pictures of the Presidential inauguration.

Talk about second-rate shonky rubbish.

The presenters are barely capable of stringing sentences together. Actually, the show seems to be mainly about the presenters, all congratulating each other on the fact they've all changed their job titles today, discussing each other's millinery for previous inaugurations. It seems that the very biggest news story in DC is that some reporter suffered some superficial scratching when something fell on her.

Meanwhile, the Inauguration is 'watched by the entire world as a symbol of everything that God has blessed our nation with and is good so help me god the whole world is sitting and asking god to be blessed with all the equality and freedom that we in our great godblessed indivisible united under god equal god blessed nation is hallelujah the rest of the world is jealous so help me god hallelujah'

Well, apart from those in the rest of the world who are pissing themselves laughing at shonky amateurism. Also at how rubbish Fox News is.

You know, they have an 'expert commentator' doodah bloke who clearly knows less about Presidential Inaugurations than I do. I think he knows less about the USA than I do. Money for old rope.

Gissa job.

Wasn't it nice to see 42 and 44 together in the VIP enclosure?

Ethical debate

Lying in bed listening to 'Today'. They ran a feature on the 'World's Oldest Mother at 66' story. Not getting into it. Except to say that very many entirely unsuitable people become parents; many suitable people don't. It's always been the way of the world, always be. The world, and human beings, and their lives, don't fit into some neat ideal. Get over it.

Anyway, they decided to debate the ethics, and they had two guests. One was a Professor of some branch of medical science, another was the Bishop of Oxford. Now, this is not an attack on that particular postholder, because I happen to think that Richard Harries is a man of considerable integrity, compassion and humanity. I also know that he was invited because he is a member of the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority.

Nevertheless, the in-general thought struck me. Why did they invite a clergy person? There seems to be a predisposition to involving religious-type people in debates about ethics. It rankles with me.

In general, why is their point of view - and is only a point of view - more valid than, say, a taxi driver? Or a blogger. In the end, they are all more-or-less self appointed opinionators, with little accountability to the wider community. And why is a clergyman on the HFEA anyway?

I can only conclude that the Establishment believe that a religious input is vital to the ethical well-being of our society. Considering the tiny number of people who attend churches, and the even tinier number who live their lives according to religious doctrine, it is at best anachronistic. It is based on a false premise that religious people are, in general, 'moral', and, in my view, plain wrong.

Songs of Praise

Once a year, I try to watch this. In reality, it turns out to be once every two or three.

The Christmas one. Carols and readings from somewhere proper, in this case Ely Cathedral. Not a happy clapper in sight, except the born again triple jumper, whose trite naive truisms were surplus to requirements, but better exponentially than the gardening twatchmarsh.

During On Christmas night all Christians sing, I remarked that I cared little for that, and my favourites were It Came Upon the Midnight Clear and Hark the Herald Angels Sing. Immediately following, Jonathan Edwards announced a poll for the Nation's Favourite - to be announced on Christmas Day...next year.

Next up was It Came Upon the Midnight Clear, which I realised I hadn't heard in years. It combines every element necessary for a good Christmas carol - great tune, great words, intelligent and effective separating of male and female voices, often, although not here superb brass, and a stonking great organ part.

I find the third verse to be deeply profound.

Yet with the woes of sin and strife
The world has suffered long;
Beneath the angel-strain have rolled
Two thousand years of wrong;
And man, at war with man, hears not
The love song which they bring:
O hush the noise, ye men of strife,
And hear the angels sing.

Word association

I say Val Doonican

You say.......?

Futurology of the video

Ghosts in the machine

I think reports of the demise of the video are probably premature. I imagine eventually the video will go the way of the vinyl disc and record player. But have you seen all those catalogues that fall out of the Radio Times advertising stylishly retro record players that even play 78s.

I suspect that that is a brief comeback, as people wake up to the fact that they can relatively easily transfer vinyl to CD via their PCs. I can't be bothered, because almost all of my meagre vinyl collection is already on cassette.

Ah, cassette! I guess nobody ever buys pre-recorded cassettes these days - it's probably only garages that sell them. But stereos are generally sold with one, if not two, cassette decks.

I have about 150 cassettes in my collection. A few have been upgraded to CDs by spending money. I daresay in time more will be. Or maybe not.

But the video? I have hundreds of videos. A lot of football ones. Irreplacable. Not watched in years, of course. In the mid-Nineties I bought the Manchester United video 'magazine' every six weeks - news and goals, with lots of star features and interviews (and lots and lots of the very telegenic Lee Sharpe...)

Also in my video collection are my two, and my brother's one, appearances on Fifteen to One. I'm sure everybody has videos of themselves, or family, or friends on TV. The explosion of public participation shows coincided with the era of video.

Apparently the days of the DVD are also numbered. I would be surprised. I know all the companies are putting out opera DVDs, some dating from the 70s, at a rate of knots, and I suspect strongly that all other niche markets are doing likewise. Not to mention mainstream film and TV.

Hard disc storage is all very well, but my Sky+ box only stores 40 hours of TV. Sounds a lot, but that's just three operas, three films, and the transient 'timeshift' TV - okay, we record a lot for later watching because Jimmy goes to bed at eight, but even so...

The video has been around a long time. I personally didn't get one until 1990, but there were rich kids at school who had them in 1983 or 1984.

Lawless

Your Trevor Eve blogger reporting for duty...!

Still bearded, I'm afraid to say.

I have watched the first programme of this; the second sits on the Sky+ box awaiting attention.

I'm not really quite sure what to make of it. Drama-wise, it is not frightfully good. The plot is convoted and superficial, the characterisations are unconvincing. Much of the acting is second rate.

Still, it has Trevor Eve in it. He's a playing a policeman. Unfortunately, I keep thinking "Boyd wouldn't do that, I can't imagine Boyd behaving like that." Probably a bit of an artistic mistake for Trevor to take this part. But I guess actors, like the rest of us, take whatever's offered and pays sufficiently.

Venice

This programme has been on BBC2 for the past few weeks, on Saturday night, but is now finished. I am surprised that the BBC does not provide a website in support of it. Or perhaps I am not so surprised.

I had ringed it in the Radio Times. Jimmy was not enthusiastic, but joined me in watching it, for want of anything else. And he loved it as much as me. He had thought it was some tourist hard-sell programme.

Instead, it was a history of the city of Venice, focusing, of course, on srt and architecture, but also covering Venice's place in the world, the evolution of society, civil engineering.

The presenter, Francesco da Mosto, was a treasure. PErfect, but accented, English. A Venetian for a thousand years, he cared deeply about his city, yet managed to present in a non-chauvinist way.

I'm sure it will be repeated in due course, and if you didn't see it, I would recommend that you do.

It's that sort of programme that makes me love the BBC

Sky Sports commentators

Here is the text of a message I have just sent to [email protected].

Dear Sir or Madam

I am writing to complain, strongly, about an exchange between two commentators on Sky Sports 2 this evening. They were Andy Gray, and someone else (English, male). Sparta Prague brought on a substitute in the 82nd minute, and the commentator, whose name I don't know, made some reference to the fact that he is picking up his career after 10 months out with clinical depression. These two despicable men proceeded to make jokes about this.

I was astounded, shocked and disgusted. I do not know the statistics pertaining to Clinical Depression, but a great number of people in this country, and elsewhere, have suffered from it or do suffer from it. It is not a laughing matter, and it is certainly not caused by working with someone - as these stupid little idiots implied.

I cannot begin to imagine how much offence this has caused numerous of your viewers throughout the country. You. or someone in your organisation, might well have watched last week's Channel 4 documentary on Adam Ant which eloquently explained that Depression often has absolutely no relation to life circumstances, although, of course it often is caused by them. I am sure that you and othe rpeople in yourorganisation have many friends, relatives etc who have suffered this condition. Ialso assume that many of your employees have done so, or will do so. I will concede that it is unusual amongst footballers, but I do know that very many athletes (Roger Black springs to mind) have suffered from ME, which is often confused with or associated with Depression.

I expect an apology, on air, from these two fools during the Manchester City - Manchester United match, and during the next Champions League match featuring United. I also expect each of these characters to make a substantial donation to Mind, the mental health charity, and to an equivalent organisation in the Czech Republic, and to apologise personally to the player concerned.

I recall ITV sacked Ron Atkinson for offensive remarks.

I look forward to your substantive reply which will address the points I raise.

Name and address appended

Can I ask - urge - you to do similarly. My blood is still boiling at this. And I missed Ruud van Nistelrooy's fourth goal.

PS I forwarded it to the Guardian for information.

Moron TV

I have finally sussed it.

The reason for downmarket TV programmes on downmarket TV channels.

It's to laugh hysterically at people.

Particularly the smug self-satisfied 'I'm significantly richer than you are' small-minded middle Englanders.

Package Holiday Undercover. A couple, late forties to early fifties, booked a holiday to some tropical resort. To their horror they discovered they were right in the flight path to the airport. As soon as I saw it, I said "That's the one Joseph found on the plane-spotters photography website. And it soon proved to be correct. It was indeed St. Maarten - or St. Martin, as ITV called it.

Mr and Mrs Smug clearly felt that the objective of a holiday was to sit on the balcony of their all-exclusive bland hotel run by Global Capitalists. So they didn't bother checking their guide book; they didn't do their homework. They never bothered to venture out of their hotel. And they stated that this hotel was only suitable for the deaf or for plane-spotters. I bet you a pound to a penny that a Rough Guide or Lonely Planet would have said it was a mecca for plane-spotting photographers, and why. But Mr and Mrs "I'm smugger and richer than you are" knew better.

Ya boo sucks. I laugh at them.

The other side to this programme is nasty. A resort, don't know where, but I'm guessing Spain or a Spanish-speaking country. Go to three down-market ice-cream outlets and take samples, to be tested in the lab. The lab results come back - surprise surprise 55% of samples are riddled with unpleasant-nasty-lethal bacteria.

Sub-text - it's those nasty dirty foreigners taking our money and poisoning us. Without considering that, almost without a doubt, at least 55% of ice-cream samples taken from downmarket outlets in this country would also contain said bacteria. So ITV's target demographic would conclude that all 'foreign' is 'foreign muck' and not to be trusted, without giving a second thought to the British-American fast food crap with which they force feed their precious brats.

The 'reporter' returned to these outlets to report the findings. Rather than speaking in Spanish, or in plain, well-enunciated English, he put on a stupid accent and decided to chop random words out of his sentences. Because foreigners understand pidgin-English so much better than grammatically and syntactically correct English, right?

What an arsehole!

But I suppose ITV's intelligence-challenged demographic lap it all up and increase their ignorant, ill-informed, unconsidered xenophobia to the detriment of all.

Dodgy and not so dodgy telly

Oh we made a mistake of staying in this evening. There wasn't actually a great deal on tv. Something recorded from *five* on Thursday, about the Moorish influence in Andalucia - which we explored a little on a package holiday two years ago. It was just starting to get interesting when it ended.

We then watched Atlantic Britain, which actually just gets better and better, and is one of the highlight's of the week's viewing.

Then a film called Thirteen, about teenage angst, but confusingly, with an 18 certificate. The reviewer on IMdB sums it up fairly accurately, although the comments about the inter-racial relationship - that's obviously a reflection of the reviewer's screwed up attitude - it all looked perfectly normal and not very significant.

I think it should have a 12 or 12A certificate, because it actually tells a very good story for that age group, with a strong moral ending. It's not really an adult film, even though it has some slight sexual references, and some scenes involving drugs. The message is, don't be taken in by surface glamour. And do your homework.

Not any great psychology for adults. Sort of entertaining but in horror/car crash way. What really struck me was that not one character had anything interesting to say, at all, about anything.

Then we watched Parkinson. Oh dear. I like Lenny Henry but I do find it unnerving that he switches so eaily beetween goofy and socially aware modes. It's just not natural. Then Matthew Pinsent was on. I'm sorry, but these days, sporting heroes do not make good chat show guests. They are so single-mindedly focused on winning that they have no personality. I would say the same for Jonny Wilkinson. I admire and respect them both, and they seem nice guys, but boring and bland. Steve Redgrave only seems to have developed apersonality in the past couple of years. And I really like him. But he's bland and boring, too.

Then there were some dreadful lounge singers singing a bad cover version of 'Unbreak My Heart'. Toni Braxton's version is probably in my top fifty, definitely my top 100, but the insipid emotionless crooning from this bunch of pretty boys is almost enough to make one actually hate the song. They decided to sing it in a foreign language, but what language was anybody's guess. Well, I'm guessing it was Moldovan, because it was quite possibly a Latin language, and I think I would have recognised French, Italian, Spanish or even Portuguese, whereas I'm not so hot on Moldovan.

It makes perfect sense to appear on English TV and sing with no emotion in Moldovan a raw passionate song with meaningful English lyrics

Un-break my heart
Say you'll love me again
Undo this hurt you caused
When you walked out the door
And walked outta my life
Un-cry these tears
I cried so many nights
Un-break my heart
My heart

In fact, I'm not sure I would have recognised it if Parky hadn't spelt it out in Big Headlines as he introduced them.

Then it was 'after the break, Frank Skinner', so the TV was definitely going off. I used to think Frank Skinner was funny. But he wasn't actually. He was just a decent sidekick to David Baddiel.

Stupid people

We're both moping round the house. Dunno why, it doesn't especially matter. But you know when you're in that mood, you just watch crap TV.

Well, there's crap and crap. Watchdog isn't especially good - all rather lot of huffing and puffing over nothing a lot of the time. I understand they do right some obvious wrongs from time to time.

But it provides unintentional hilarity. They had a feature on people who bid for jewellery from something called Auction TV. This is not the Cubic Zircona from QVC beloved of Jasper Carrott. This is serious stuff.

Basically, this Auction TV displays an item, and you bid for it. They used an example of a watch for which Auction TV set a guide price of �16,000. And it's up to you to bid, much like a tradiitonal auction.

Hey guess what - they took the watch to the Birmingham Assay Centre and it's worth about �1650. There were other examples - people buying rings and so on. Three hundred and fifty people wrote to Watchdog to complain.

You know, I would be really embarrassed to admit to such a monumental mistake in public. Buying is a funny business. I'm a great believer in Caveat Emptor. Sure, I buy online, but the only time I've ever spent over a hundred pounds is with already established reasonably reputable businesses - supermarkets, Amazon, theatres, airline companies etc. If it goes pear-shaped I believe I have some right of redress. In general, the amounts involved are not large. The more I spend, the more careful I am. Online or in Meat Space.

These people have more money than sense. When I bought a watch - for two hundred pounds, with Christmas and birthday money - I looked quite widely places. Probably not an exhaustive search, but about half a dozen places. I tried it on. I had a look what it looked like against my small hands, against my skin colour. I then waited half an hour until the bracelet was adjusted to my size. Not difficult.

I don't know whether these people are greedy or flash. The irresistible lure of a bargain. Showing it off in public. Showing their lack of taste. Their lack of judgement. And then exposing themselves to ridicule by appearing on Watchdog. If it were me, I would have sat in the shadows and asked for my voice to be disguised. They bought jewellery, paying hundreds and thousands of pounds, without even seeing it first!

Bwhahahahahahaha!

Art history

I'm a Philistine when it comes to Fine Art. I sort of vaguely know what I vaguely like, but that's about as far as it goes. Jimmy is quite into Art but is no more knowledgeable than me.

This needs remedying. As it happens last week, on five consecutive nights Artsworld showed all nine episodes of Art of the Western World, a programme first aired back in the 1980s, hosted by Michael Wood - him of the tight trousers. I thought I'll tape and keep those and slowly we can educate ourselves.

We watched the first one yesterday. It covered the period of the Ancient Greeks and the Roman Empire. Quite a sweep, really. In a sense it was quite interesting, seeing how all those classical columns and pillars have influenced so much in the way of architecture more or less to the modern day. And they showed all these statues. Sure, they explained that they were probably originally coloured and the colours have faded over the millennia. But I just can't get excited about acres and acres of marble. About three years ago Mother dragged me off to the British Museum to look at the Elgin Marbles. I was bored shitless.

On this programme they showed the Pantheon in Rome. I remember going to Rome in 1992 with Mother. But actually, I don't remember a lot of it. Jimmy said, of the Pantheon, "You've been there?". My reply, a cautious "Probably...".

I don't think that Rome made a very big impact on me. And it wasn't like I was a child - I was a twenty four year old graduate and part-qualified accountant. Maybe I should return to Rome one day. But not before I have revisited Florence and visited Milano and Venice.

I don't even have a blog category for Art...

Tonight TV alert

At 1900 hours on Channel 4 - Atlantic Britain

I reckon he should have called his ship 'Dignity'*.

I don't have a clue about the quality of the programme, but it's an 8-part series of half hourers. It gets 'Choice' rating in the Radio Times, whose website says

The west coast of Britain is home to an inhospitable stretch of water that has put paid to the hopes - and hulls - of more than 3,000 boats.

"It's a coast that's generally avoided by amateur sailors," understates the narrator of this new series. Enter, with a foolhardy flourish, amateur sailor Adam Nicolson, who decides to embark upon a perilous 1,500-mile trip.

What follows is a delightfully old-fashioned adventure, with local characters and seafaring tales framing the odyssey of Adam (and friend George Fairhurst). Naturally, it's not all plain sailing.

Though Adam's pronouncements occasionally loiter on the wrong side of pretentious, this is an otherwise rollicking voyage through surprisingly unfamiliar waters.

I've set my video: David Beckham's taking us out for dinner tonight (a tenner at 8/1 to score first on Wednesday). Other half is backing Italy to win the Olympic Gold, but my instinct says Iraq. Whether I'm prepared to put my money where my mouth is is another matter...

*Lyrics below...

Award the BAFTAS...now!

Waking the Dead.

How do they do it? Week after week, they give us two hours of spell-binding, intelligent, stimulating drama. There is nothing I can fault. Tonight's was in a class of its own, but all the rest of the series has been better than any other drama on the TV.

The storyline is consistent from start to end, yet you never know until the last few minutes 'who dunnit' Each week they come up with a different, seemingly far-fetched, line, and each week it resolves into perfect logic. The main characters are three-dimensional, despite their almost lack of personal life (and I love that lack of personal life, I really do). Each of the five main actors* play their parts superbly. Understatement and nuance being far more important than melodrama.

The episodic characters are always believeable, and they've got a good ensemble of guest stars. Paul Kay was outstanding in this week's.

Everything about the production speaks class from the lighting and camera work to the music and forensics. I assume that the forensics are (more-or-less) accurate; I find them totally fascinating, to the point that they overlap into other viewing - eg I watched the first act of Tosca on Artsworld (Acts 2 and 3 have been taped) and when Scarpia was searching for Angelotti in the church and found the fan of the Marchesa Attavanti, I assumed they were going to test for DNA, or at least fingerprints (in Napoleonic times?).

I don't know if anybody noticed, but the closing scene when Boyd is writing on the perspex board, the music playing was clearly influenced by the sublime Benedictus from Karl Jenkins' Armed Man: A Mass for Peace. Kind of ironic that Karl Jenkins started his composing career writing music for TV that 'sounds like something familiar' and he is now being sampled in the same way. But what a fitting tribute...**

At the end, they had a screen saying "In Memory of Alexei de Keyser 1967-2004". He was Executive Producer. What a fine legacy he left...

Oh, and Trevor Eve is really quite delectable to the eye...

*/** see below

TV Gem

It's so easy to trash today's TV, say there's nothing on. Perhaps it has always been so. Perhaps we don't look hard enough.

Last night I caught a couple of half-hour programmes called Mediterranean Tales - Irma Kurtz recreating Mark Twain's travels from Innocents Abroad. It's programmes like this that make BBC4 a jewel in the crown. Shame that such a good programme is hidden away from peak viewing on a peak channel.

Although Irma Kurtz taught me at least half of evrything I know about sex, I don't really know much about her. She narrated an impressionistic view of Venice and Rome, but it never came over as 'Me, me, me'. She's laid back, but she cares. She adopts an intelligent and intellectual approach, but doesn't lecture.

The photography was self-consciously arty, at times almost achingly so. And the sound track was some of the most beautiful music ever written.

It's been shown before and no doubt it will be repeated in due course...

Waking the Dead

In the Pina Colada zone

Why do I keep reading reviews that say that Waking the Dead is insane and illogical?

Is it perhaps because it us unpredictable and unformulaic? May I venture to suggest that that makes it just a little bit like real life? And thus, credible.

You know I love it. I've barely missed an episode in the four or five years it's been showing. It kind of crept up and warmly embraced me.

And to this day, it remains, to my knowledge the only TV programme to acknowledge the existence of Central Government Auditors. Okay, that was the least believable part of the entire series, but, my god, we were talking about it for days afterwards.

And, like Second Sight (Clive Owen) and Judge John Deed (Martin Shaw), as well as being absorbing, entertaining drama, has the incidental added bonus of starring a genuine eye-candy hunk that can act (Trevor Eve).

Updatefurther musings from 16 August

BBC4

I have some thoughts, that apply equally, if differently to BBC3.

(For those that don't know, BBC3/4 are Digital Television channels available by satellite, cable or Freeview. Just over half of UK households have access to them now).

I find it frustrating that programme output doesn't start until 7pm. I find the empty hours a missed opportunity. I am not suggesting that the BBC makes special programmes especially for these channels, but I am not convinced that there is a high marginal cost involved in airing repeats.

Just take tonight's TV. As I am going to the Prom, I shall be taping Waking the Dead, the second part of what was shown last night. Therefore I won't be able to tape the second half of tonight's Prom, which is a shame. In my view, it would be good if a decent drama like Waking the Dead got a repeat the following afternoon. And, considering that the BBC is - correctly - spending considerable money on The Proms, a second showing ought to be in order.

I suppose Jimmy is relatively unusual in having a bedtime of 8pm. But far from unique. And there are plenty of intelligent people at home during the day who despair of there being any decent TV. Of course, if they were super-organised, they would tape the evening's highlights and watch the next day. But life doesn't work like that.

Quite a lot of BBC4's output is shown twice anyway - mid evening and late night. Couldn't some of it be shown in the afternoon or early evening. I know when Jimmy comes home from work, between two and four, depending on various factors, he likes to flop on the sofa, and channel surf. He'll watch the news, or maybe horse-racing or cricket, but would like a greater choice of intelligent programming.

In fact, I think that the BBC should televise every single Prom. To me it makes no sense that Tan Dun's Concerto for Water Percussion is not being televised.

What's the Fiction down In Brixton?

We've just been watching a bit of Balamory "What's the story in Balamory?"

We think there could be a version set in Brixton. We particularly like PC Plum who cycles around rescuing wildlife - I can see the Brixton equivalent now. I have to say I panicked when he returned Miss Hooley's handbag - I thought there had been a crime wave in Balamory (but worry not, she'd just lost it).

Rather than the brightly coloured houses, we could have the graffiti-daubed sink-estates. Rather than bright happy children turning up to nursery, we could have zombie children with Emotional and Behavioural Difficulties due to their appalling diet turning up to the Pupil Referral Unit.

What's The Fiction down in Brixton?

Britain's Best Buildings

It's the sort of programme you circle in the Radio Times, not so much as a 'must see' but a 'that would be nice if I'm in the mood'. Now time to change it to a 'must see'

A real treasure. Presented by the inimitable Dan Cruickshank, who oozes enthusiasm and respect for his subject. On Sunday we watched as he explained the Masonic significance of the Georgian layout of Bath. Tonight - repeated on Sunday - he showed us the design and engineering of the Forth Bridge. He also showed us the human sacrifice that lay behind its building and expressed his sadness that there is no memorial to the ordinary workers, especially the 57 who died, and his contempt that there is a memorial for the then Prince of Wales who hammered in the final, golden, rivet.

He described it as beautiful, in that every component fulfills its function perfectly. Reverence and awe.

IMHO, Dan Cruickshank is a real star of TV. I don't suppose we willread about him in the tabloids - thank god - but whilst there is Dan Cruickshank, there is a BBC to be proud of.

He murdered Josie Jump

I shouldn't laugh but I find it hilarious to read that the landlord of a hotel Balamory has been telling small children about how he has Josie Jump buried under the patio.

When we visited Tobermory last summer, the place was overrun by 3-7 year olds wearing pink and following in the footsteps of their heroes.

It's not really that sensible place to take kids of that age. We were chatting with one family, who were bored stupid because of the wind and rain and the treacherous single-track-road-with-passing-places leading out of the town.

Nice town to stay a few days, especially if you like eating and drinking. But I wouldn't take a small child there.

Your blogger spontaneously orgasms

Spitting Image plans TV comeback

Oh my god oh my god oh my god oh my god!!!!

Runs round and round and round in excitiement.

Please let it be the Spitting Image of the 80s, not of the 90s when it descended into toilet jokes.

Classic moments:

"And the vegetables?"
"They'll have the same!"

"The President's brain is missing!"

Kenneth Baker as slug

Norman Tebbitt

John and Norma Major filmed entirely in grey tone, except for the peas.

Bernard Manning's fart. The next day, Steph, usually sophisticated, composed and mature had the most stupendously unstoppable and infectious giggling fit at the remembrance of Bernard Manning's fart.

Spitting Image Spitting Image Spitting Image!!!!!

Calm me down calm me down calm me down

Classic classic telly.

Actually I've focused entirely on the political, but it wasn't just.

I so loved Eric Cantona's puppet.

Evening telly

It''s so typical - you go for weeks without there being anything particular on the TV, then in one night you have two programmes overlapping.

I began to watch Panorama, about a terrorist attack on London. It started promisingly, although I thought - explosion on northbound Victoria Line train at Vauxhall. Well, I'll be blown up. Then they said it was at half eight in the morning, so I thought - ha, I'd still be at home in my dressing gown. Hmm, the last thing my employer would need that day would be an auditor. So I'd stay home desperately surfing the internet whilst simultaneously channel hopping on the TV.

So I switched over to the South Bank Show, about the RSC's Othello. About Othello in general. Otello is one of my favourite operas, and in my typical ass backwards style I thought it was about time I got to know the play. Interesting programme, although I am not entirely sure it taught me anything I didn't already know. Which is pretty impressive, considering that I haven't ever actually seen the play.

Someone or other was talking about the fact that constantly there is this contrast drawn between the blackness of Othello and the whiteness of Desdemona, which acts as a juxtaposition to the ambiguities and contradictions in the characters and the actors. I remembered that that was something I love about Shakespeare - multiple levels of meaning can be read into what is a relatively simpe play.

Oh, and I have a ticket for this production. Bought yonks ago! I'm so looking forward! Anthony Sher is Iago. He's famous, innit?

There is so much drama in life, in politics, in football, in opera, in Shakespeare. Yet people rave about soaps, and C-list celebs, and Footballers Wives/Bad Girls. How dull! Give me life, politics, opera, and Shakespeare any day.

And blogging of course.

In the coming week I will read all my blog roll, and anyone else who fancies being a linkwhore in this comment box...!

Have I Got News For You

Is William Hague auditioning for a role as a National Treasure?

And is it just me, or is he just the teensy-weensiest tiny bit, you know, erm, cough, attractive...?

Have I Got News For You

Classic episode - if you missed it, it's on again tomorrow night 10.30 BBC2. Des Lynam was Des Lynam - smooth, urbane etc etc. But Robert Kilroy-Silk was amazing. He managed to come over as a petulant, dogmatic self-satisfied creep, who managed to unite Paul, Ian and the comedian bloke against him, and actually got Paul Merton to lose his temper in sheer frustration. Yes, that's correct, Paul Merton losing his temper...

It was sheer beauty when RKS decided to throw a wobbly over the suggestion that Kelvin McKenzie may have dressed up as an Arab. It turns out he did.

I just love it when these ugly little racists show themselves to be all-over stupid...

Doctor Who

I might break the habit of a lifetime and actualy watch Doctor Who just for the wonderful Chris Ecclestone.

Interesting fact - he first came to my attention in a main feature splash in the Manchester United magazine prior to the first series of Cracker, which I watched, and was impressed. And I've been a fan ever since.

Gosh, according to IMDB, he was Derek Bentley in Let Him Have It, so although I have never previously made the connection, I was impressed back then.

Good telly

I might just give my TV an extra piece of chocolate tonight. It's been a good boy today. Four and a half hours of jolly good stuff. And if I hadn't sold my soul to Rupert Murdoch, I would only have had one of those hours.  It's probably a good thing that I am off work sick, because how could I possibly fit four-and-a-half jolly good TV hours into a schoolday? I'm going to have to ask that nice French doctor for another month off, I think...

First off was Spanish Night with the Berlin Philharmonic from Waldbuhne. I've seen it before - The Performance Channel seems to have programmes on a three month rotation - but it's good fun, and repeated next week.

Bath and dinner were followed by Howard Goodall's Big Bangs about the invention of the stave , an event surely as important as, and preceding, the invention of double-entry book keeping (and the semi-colon). Or as Goodall posited, the printing press and, I would add, the steam engine.

Hot on the heels of this of this was The Genius of Mozart on BBC2. A bit patchy in places - interesting concept, having Leopold and Nannerl talking direct to camera, and at one stage I was confused thinking it was real archive footage of young Wolfgang walking in the woods with his father...However, it was fun to press the red button and get some extra narrative, plus a useful aide memoire to what was played as background music.  I actually burst into tears at Ave Verum Corpus, which is, frankly, a bit sappy of me, but then I realised that I haven't taken my happy pills and vitamins today.

This was followed on BBC4 by Mozart Uncovered, which was really interesting. Charles Hazlewood spent half an hour explaining the piano concerto, and then the next half an hour was a performance. I wasn't sure at first of the musical map - it seemed a bit Noddy, then I cottoned on, and it was interesting, especially in the performance to be able to anticpate the key changes, the introduction of a new theme, and elements such as the dialogue between the woodwind and the piano. This is how telly should be, and I've never before felt the benefit of the red button. The evening was rounded off by a short documentary on finding  - possibly - a forgotten Mozart manuscript in Huddersfield. Not a great programme but better than realitycelebritydietdecoratingrelocatingdating TV.

I'm going to have trouble taping all this next week when I'm away - and The Tales of Hoffman (which I've seen before, but it was 23 years ago and it marked the time I realised that opera wasn't just that boring stuff that the parents were into - my evil manipulative parents had also forced my sister and I to watch the star being interviewed on Parky on Christmas Day, the result being that we insisted on watching the live broadcast...!)

I then ran around the backroom like a headless chicken on acid trying to decide which of my much Mozart I should play, deciding that the only CD version I have of Ave Verum Corpus is actually blasphemous in that it is performed less-than-perfectly. And I now realise that the tape of Le Nozze di Figaro highlights is showing signs of overuse. I have a CD of the complete thing, and the vinyl is upstairs, but...

You know, the BBC so rocks!

Team Squirrel

Has anybody caught that programme, World Famous for Dicking Around? I saw it the other night on FTN channel, whatever that is. The basic premise is these young blokes (and, to be honest, it would have to be blokes...) living in a tiny village in a remote part of Scotland, where the only thing to look forward to is...DEATH...so they form a team that does stunts. Oh, you know, launching into space using only a traffic cone and some fireworks, and a tupperware bowl and swimming goggles for protection. Then there was the ski-jump - a piece of blue plastic laid down a fell, soaked with ten litres of washing up liquid, where the objective is to slide down on your bum.

Sort of thing that makes one proud to be British...

When good pets go bad

Another TV post, inspired by Scary and friends.

Christmas Day 2003. Absolutely nada on TV (We'd watched Meet the Parents, just three days before Jimmy's first visit to my mother's house...)

We fell onto Reality TV (241 on Sky). Oh, that channel is bad. No actors, no scripts no stunts. Cheap titillating TV. What got me was an imported programme called "When Good Pets Go Bad". You've Been Framed Animal Special. It wasn't enough that we should laugh at the man who lost his trousers whilst being attacked in a field by a bull, or watch the smallpox-infected monkeys make their break from the vivisection lab. Oh no, every five minutes we were told "There is no such thing as a bad animal, just bad humans who mistreat good animals."

It was particularly entertaining to see moralising mixed up with xenophobic cultural imperialism. Those naughty rodeos in the 'badlands' of Mexico THIS IS CRUELTY; those Koreans and their horse fights THIS IS BARBARIC; those Spaniards setting fire to bullls's horns BRUTAL EUROPEANS.

The longest strand was, fitingly, about Father Christmas. Or, rather, some good ol' boy who kept reindeer and dressed up as Father Christmas. Unfortunately, one day he had a horrible run-in with a reindeer, which took a very long time to maul him, and drag him round the paddock and blah blah blah, and there wasn't a lot the emergency services could do , and poor old Santa ended up in hospital with broken this and that. And the poor old reindeer had to be put down.

"But we staged this reconstruction so that you can see exactly what happened when a good pet went bad..."

Erm, excuse me! You made another reindeer maul and drag this bloke round the field, dressed as Father Christmas, merely to provide cheap TV footage, with not even the excuse of cultural tradition, and you dare to lecture the dreadful dirty foreigners about animal cruelty. It so got my goat (which proceeded to toss me on its horns round the living room, which just shows that there's no suchthing as a bad pet, just a good pet that has been hurt by the cruelty of humans).

Top drama

Jonathan Freedland, interviewing Stephen Poliakoff sings very highly the praises of Perfect Strangers. And quite rightly. It got me thinking - look, I was reading it in the Most Boring Accountancy Lecture ever.

People are for ever making lists of their top songs, top films, top sit-coms, top books. What about top TV drama serials - ones with a definite start and end, not of the Casualty/ER type.

I have six: Brideshead Revisited, To Serve Them All My Days, Jewel In the Crown, Boys From the Blackstuff, Our Friends In the North, Perfect Strangers and In A Land of Plenty.

The bfi has a list of the Top 100 British TV programmes of all time. For about 95, I can either say "Oh my!" or "You know, I've never seen that!"

Ooh and read Nancy on TV. A hearty hear-hear from me!