Love and Liberty

You’ll be familiar with “Shag, Marry, (Throw Off A) Cliff” and all its bowdlerised* variations. It doesn’t do a lot for me: it’s judgemental, it’s shallow, and you never get the exact number of people to pass your shallow judgement on.

As Richard drove us through the wilds of Cambridgeshire on Saturday on our return from holiday, I had an epiphany for something more interesting: Yaxley, Stilton, Ramsay.

We were listening to The News Quiz, and as usual groaning or heckling at all the usual tired bollocks. But how to freshen up your reaction to faux-lefty faux-comics with stale material? It’s radio, so you can’t judge which one you want to shag. With their material so tired in just half an hour’s worth, they’d never stay fresh for a marriage (besides, you can kill or shag any number of people – so I’ve heard – but I for one have more exacting standards than a Radio 4 panel to select a partner for life). So isn’t it more fun just to decide, not to punish yourself by inflicting them on you, but what new and exciting ways of punishment to throw at those you’re judging?

As if by magic, the road signs gliding by above our heads kept flashing inspiration:

“YAXLEY STILTON RAMSEY”
“YAXLEY STILTON RAMSEY”
“YAXLEY STILTON RAMSEY”
“YAXLEY STILTON RAMSEY”

Perfect!

Next time you find yourself listening to a terrible panel game, why not delight yourself with the much funnier idea of what to do with each of the most rotten participants?


Throw cheese at them!


(You know what Stilton is)


Throw a carnivorous time-pterodactyl at them!


(Ramsay the Vortisaur, itself a piece of political satire, features in Big Finish’s Doctor Who – Storm Warning and the following three stories starring Paul McGann)


Or, if they’re especially crapulent, throw a Death-Eater at them to curse them in all sorts of inventive ways!


(Yaxley the Death-Eater can be found being rather nasty in the later Harry Potter books and films)


It could be anyone. To take, oh, a random example, you might cry ‘Jeremy Hardavra Kedavra!’

Of course, you could just chuck the cheese and the vortisaur at him as well, to make sure. Up to you.



*But what does it say about the BBC’s attitude to marriage that it’s only as important as snoggage and hiding rather than sex and death, writes outraged of Tunbridge Wells? I demand the next series to be renamed ‘Snog, Date, Avoid’ and its post-watershed equivalent the serious ones. Well, I would, if I weren’t demanding a reformatting as ‘Yaxley, Stilton, Ramsay’ and my royalty payments.

Labels: BBC, Big Finish, Comedy, Harry Potter, Paul McGann, Radio, Top Tips

Radio 4 Extra is now rebroadcasting Michael Jayston’s superb reading of Geoffrey Household’s pre-World War II thriller Rogue Male (playing every weekday in half-hour slots, each episode four times daily and on iPlayer, so it’s easy to catch). The anti-hero spends the book on the run from sinister agents of a great power, each examining the moral questions of the ‘sporting’ event that opens the story… Stripped of all ambiguity, you might call the inciting incident ‘Let’s Kill Hitler’. Michael Jayston’s acting career includes, of course, Doctor Who’s Valeyard – there are spoilers, if you don’t know who he is…

Geoffrey Household’s original book was written in 1939, on the eve of the Second World War, and neither the British antihero nor the European dictator he takes a fancy to stalking like big game are named; the only significant character with a name is Major Quive-Smith, and while that’s certainly a name, it’s certainly not his. Michael Jayston’s unabridged reading was made for BBC7 (as was) in 2004, and was instantly so acclaimed that it’s been a feature of the station’s programming every year or two since (I praised it last four years ago).

Rogue Male is a compelling thriller, its first-person narrative ideal for a talking book, but it’s Mr Jayston that makes it. I’ve always thought he was a terrific actor, and his reading is brilliantly sardonic – the perfect note for a central character’s voice that we can’t hate, or the story wouldn’t work, but that it’s impossible to like. He’s been perfectly cast as both heroes and villains; this anti-hero’s pretty much dead-centre in between. One of his most memorable roles for me was A Bit of A Do’s Neville Badger, almost the archetypal Mr Nice Guy; the Rogue Male is about as far from a nice guy as you can get, and yet his pursuers are very much nastier. In reading the character as slightly distanced from the action, he almost seems to be taking you into his confidence, and succeeds in getting you on his side – no mean feat for a “gentleman” both of and very much outside the establishment who’s best-known as a big game hunter, and whose ambition for the ultimate game seems to have precipitated a reversal in which the hunter becomes the hunted. Though, of course, it may not be as straightforward as that…

I still hold with what I said in 2007, that I generally prefer my old-fashioned heroic adventures more tongue-in-cheek than this gritty ‘test of manhood’, and yet the way the story turns from rugged pursuit to philosophical introspection to near-feral survival instinct – and above all the layers of moral question and the layers the central character does or doesn’t reveal about himself – utterly draw me in. Decades ahead of its time, there are points when it anticipates The Day of the Jackal, with just as much tension but in many more shades of grey. So give it a go.

Incidentally, if you happen to know what the keening, mournful music is that sets the scene for each episode, could you let me know?

Michael Jayston and Rogue Male

Due to multitudes of ill health that it’s far too tedious to go into here, last weekend was the first time I managed to get to a Doctor Who convention for a full year. Two of them, in fact, and knackeringly (by the very reasonable Fantom Films people). The reason I swerve into this is that the biggest draw for me was special guest Michael Jayston, the weekend’s main Doctor. I jabbered excitedly about several of his roles as I got him to sign a bundle of DVD inserts, and regretted that there’s no CD of Rogue Male I could bring along to add to the pile. “Well, they’re always repeating it,” he suggested, with just a touch less enthusiasm than I might have expected, before moving on to ask if I’d heard the sequel, Rogue Justice; “I don’t think it’s nearly as good,” he commented. A bit of a relief, as I’m wary of telling people at signings which bits of their work aren’t so great, and though his performance was nearly as good when BBC7 got him in to record Rogue Justice in 2009, the novel really isn’t. A sequel written more than forty years later, abandoning the tension and claustrophobia of the original to leapfrog across different countries and this time blatantly pitting the main character against the Nazis, I told him I agreed: “It doesn’t have anything like the same intensity or ambiguity.” He nodded at that. But why the lack of enthusiasm for the original reading, when everyone I’ve talked to or read about it had loved it too?

Up on stage after he’d finished signing autographs, I had my answer. In a wide-ranging interview that only started at Doctor Who, Mr Jayston caught my eye in the audience and raised Rogue Male. At the time, he’d just spent two or three months doing audiobooks and was, as he said, “match fit”; they booked him for six days to record Rogue Male, and he did it in three, flying through that sort of work after a couple of months’ limbering up. So when it began broadcasting and friends in the business – directors, other actors – starting ringing him up to say how brilliant it was, he thought they were taking the piss. To him, it was just a job he’d galloped through with ease in three days, but because people rate it so highly and it’s frequently repeated, he feels mildly embarrassed at the attention it gets. The same is true of his Only Fools and Horses, again only a few days’ work, and the one drunks always recognise him for – he’ll go through most of his career, than say “I was the one who found the watch” last, and it’s always that.

Doctor Who and The Valeyard

Michael Jayston was the first actor to play James Bond on the radio in Britain, and (along with Patrick Mower and Anthony Hopkins) nearly got the big job in the ’70s; he’s the only actor to be both a partly apocryphal James Bond and a partly apocryphal Doctor. In 1986’s Doctor Who – The Trial of a Time Lord, he was the Valeyard, prosecuting counsel in the Doctor’s trial, and a title that’s said to mean ‘Doctor of Law’. In fact, it’s a wholly made-up word with a bogus definition as a hint: he’s really the Doctor’s future self, and has it in for himself in a big way, at least according to the orthodox interpretation – Millennium’s made a convincing case that he’s really the goodie. And asked if he’d like to return as the Valeyard – or simply Doctor – Mr Jayston was quite certain: yes.

“There’s no doubt about it – I am one of the Doctors.”

“I keep sending messages to Steven Moffat… He was a very young writer when I worked for him and I thought, he’s good, he’s going places.”

That was when he played a figure not entirely unlike the Doctor or John Steed in UneXpected, one of the stranger episodes of Steven Moffat’s first TV series, Press Gang – and viewers of The Trial of a Time Lord might find the Doctor’s evil other self or a story inspired by A Christmas Carol not entirely un-Moffated in Amy’s Choice or, indeed, A Christmas Carol. But let’s hope he comes round to re-using Michael Jayston, too. I have to admit, seeing the Valeyard himself act out the final scene of Terror of the Vervoids live on stage on Sunday was a particular highlight…

And did you know that he’s been a friend of Tom Baker’s since 1969, often exchanging unprintable emails with him and describing Tom as “as mad as ever”? Though it wasn’t Mr Jayston (Tsar Nicholas) who got Tom his major role in 1971’s film of Nicholas and Alexandra: Peter O’Toole (ironically also the lead in the film version of Rogue Male that no-one’s ever seen) was cast as Rasputin, but it took a while for them to put the film together – so his contract ran out and he put up two fingers to the producer. Laurence Olivier suggested out of work actor Tom Baker, because he was very talented. And they could get him for a pittance, which they did.

“‘He’s working on a building site,’ said Sir Larry. ‘I admire his dedication – it’s marvellous for building up the muscle tone for parts.’ ‘Bugger muscle tone,’ said Tom. ‘I need the fucking money.’”

Sorry, I’ve Got No Head

Meanwhile, as I type, I’m half-watching and laughing at another episode of mostly fabulous sketch show Sorry, I’ve Got No Head on BBC1. Now in its third season, if you’ve ignored it because it debuted on CBBC or because it goes out on weekday afternoons, don’t; like every sketch show, some bits are better than others, but the better bits are great. If you’ve seen it this before, there are twists in how the complete git parents have developed, or Marcus Brigstocke’s overgrown French exchange student who’s been there twenty years; David Armand’s Witchfinder General still has anyone who winds him up even slightly, usually in a queue, carried off as a witch (a curious mixture of evil witch-hunt and, er, consumer champion); and while I don’t think much of the new ‘mousetrap’ sketches, Mel Giedroyc looking for her big dog makes me laugh (and beat Wilfred to it), you can’t fail to be moved by a deadly serious study of the misery of addiction (involving a clown’s reaction to custard pies), and they’ve dropped the tedious computer game characters. The snowman’s still a frighteningly Daily Mail sort of sketch, though. If you’ve got something against kids’ shows, bear in mind that the cast’s pretty much the same as for, say, The Armstrong and Miller Show and That Mitchell and Webb Look, and some of James Bachman’s characters tend to bleed into Harry Biscuit, which is a bonus (cakes. Why did it have to be cakes?).

As far as I’m concerned, though, nothing can beat the increasingly postmodern and multi-layered (and that’s just their blouses) Jasmine and Prudith. Look, if you can’t work your home recording device of choice (maybe my bees can help?), it’s on iPlayer, too, and that costs nothing more than your internet connection.

Oh, here we go. Money. Filthy lucre. Nothing’s free these days! Internet connections – with the telephone wires on top, and fibre-optics paid by the strand. The sound doesn’t come cheap, either. Extra for each pixel, too, I shouldn’t wonder. And a special supplement on the TV licence for using your is when you play them. When all’s said and done, I shouldn’t think you’d get much change out of a thousand pounds!

What?

Oh, I should say about a thousand pounds. It’s what these things cost these days.

No, no, it doesn’t cost –

A thousand pounds! It’s too much, a thousand pounds!

Labels: Books, Colin Baker, Comedy, Doctor Who, Fandom, James Bond, Matt Smith, Michael Jayston, Radio, Reviews, Tom Baker

It’s an exciting day for sci-fi; you know’ll that Doctor Who returns tomorrow evening, and that tonight the final series of Ashes To Ashes begins. But there are also several other goodies on today which have had less of an advertising blitz. The three closest to my heart are on Radio 4 at 11 this morning – The Doctor and Douglas, celebrating Douglas Adams’ work on Doctor Who – and then competing for your attention at 1.30am on BBC2 and ITV1, the movies The Quatermass Experiment (five years to the day since BBC4’s later remake) and the fabulous Flash Gordon.

Douglas Adams and Doctor Who

Just as The Hitchhiker’s Guide To the Galaxy kicked off on radio in 1978, Douglas Adams finally had a Doctor Who script accepted for Tom Baker’s Doctor – The Pirate Planet, one of the finest stories in one of Doctor Who’s finest series, 1978-79’s The Key To Time. So impressive were his ideas, and so far undiscovered were Douglas’ unhappy relationships with deadlines, that he was offered the job of script editor on the show – a slightly less powerful and certainly less prestigious but in most ways identical job to the modern Russell T Davies and Steven Moffat ‘lead writer’ / Executive Producer. His year as script editor, Season 17, still splits Doctor Who fans to this day; cheap and silly, or witty and brilliant? It’s certainly cheap – late ’70s inflation had just inflicted the series’ biggest ever budget cuts – but I love it to bits (and I’m one of the very few fans who seems to love the 1980-81 right after Douglas left, in many ways a reaction against the season before, every bit as much. They tend to be a bit polarising).

When another of Doctor Who’s most wonderfully playful authors, David Fisher, wasn’t able to do the rewrites on one of his two scripts for Douglas’ time as script editor, Douglas and producer Graham Williams took over the redrafting, lending the resultant story a unique collaborative quality. Tom Baker and Lalla Ward are both effortlessly wonderful in it (or at least they seem to be; by all accounts they put the effort into rewriting large chunks of it in rehearsals, too), Julian Glover is a superb villain, the musical score is gorgeous, much of it is filmed in Paris – in Paris! – and it’s the only story of the year that looks like it’s had much money spent on it. Thanks to an ITV strike meaning it was on against nothing but BBC2 and the test card, it won the highest viewing figures in Doctor Who’s history. It’s called City of Death, and it’s still today one of the most highly-regarded of all Doctor Who stories (but can I be heretical and say that Douglas’ The Pirate Planet is even better?).

The Pirate Planet is available on DVD as part of the marvellous The Key To Time box set – recently reissued, so if you hadn’t got it already, you can now – and City of Death, too, is out on DVD (complete with opinion from Steven Moffat, who likes City of Death but thinks Douglas wasn’t a good script editor. In another strike of heresy, I disagree with the Grand Moff, but I don’t have time to go into why here, except to say, watch his stories and aren’t the scripts great?). Of the other stories Douglas script-edited, Destiny of the Daleks is already available on DVD, the extras including grand tales of Douglas’ drinking tours, while another was released just this very week in a box with two other stories. The latest Doctor Who DVD boxed set is titled Myths and Legends, and includes three stories which have in common that each was inspired by Greek myths and each is a bit rubbish not completely at the top end of my favourite Doctor Whos. It’s all a cunning plan to get you to watch them first, and so lower your impossibly high expectations of the new series, you see. The Horns of Nimon, however, is by far the most entertaining of the three for me, and while the budget may be showing and a few of the performances are a little de trop, it’s worth it for Lalla Ward’s blistering Romana, one of the few times the Doctor’s companion is essentially playing the Doctor (while he dosses about), and – as you might expect from rather good former script editor Anthony Read writing the script and Douglas Adams overseeing it – a strong underlying story and some very sharp lines.

Next month, The Creature From the Pit is to be released on DVD, possibly the most hated of all the stories Douglas had a hand in, regarded as terrible science fiction with an embarrassingly badly designed monster. While the eponymous ‘creature’ is indeed hilarious, he’s terribly well-characterised, while the Doctor, the principal villains and Geoffrey Bayldon’s supporting character are superb. It’s a terrific script from David Fisher, too, an intelligent fable about free trade – and you don’t get many of them to the pound – that deconstructs the ‘monster’ story. In short, buy it and make up your own mind, and I’m confident that you’ll find every other fan on Earth is wrong and I am right that is in fact brilliant. Yes, I’m coming out heretic all over today (and speaking of heretics, look out for one of Oolon Colluphid’s books turning up in one of Douglas’ stories, and find out for yourself how important Douglas turned out to be to Richard Dawkins). That just leaves the as-yet-unreleased Nightmare of Eden, which again doesn’t look terribly impressive but is rather a good story, and Shada.

You Can Look at the Lost Bits For Free…

Shada… Shada… Shada… That one went a bit wrong. Douglas’ six-part finale was only half-shot before a BBC strike called it off for ever. Ish. I have to say, it’s far from Douglas’ best script, but it has its moments, so there are two versions worth looking out for. BBC Video released the half of it that had been completed along with some linking narration from Tom Baker a couple of decades ago, and hopefully that, too, will one day emerge on DVD. Alternatively, the lovely people at Big Finish produced an audio adaptation a few years ago starring Paul McGann instead of Tom, and while it’s not nearly as much fun as the ‘original’, it’s not at all bad, and has the undeniable virtue of being finished. Best of all, you can watch their Shada for free on the BBC website, with some flash animation making it a jerky sort-of cartoon and a fabulous song from Lalla Vs Kylie (click “Full screen” if it doesn’t work immediately; if anyone can save it onto a DVD for me, I’d be terribly grateful)!

Douglas never novelised his Doctor Who scripts – in part because he was rather busy avoiding other publishers’ deadlines, in larger part because Target Books couldn’t quite come to terms with a multi-million-selling author’s advance – but, though you can’t technically read them, you can in some practical ways manage it. Douglas, an early practitioner of recycling, put large amounts of City of Death and much larger ones of Shada into some of his books, notably Dirk Gently, while a rejected Doctor Who script forms the basis of Life, the Universe and Everything (as I wrote yesterday). You can also read ebooks of his three Doctor Who stories and the only other two Twentieth-Century Who TV stories that were never released by Target, available as labours of love from New Zealand fan site TSV. They’re not a patch on Douglas’ writing, but some of them are by professional authors themselves, and they’re not bad (though steer clear of another fan adaptation of City of Death produced by Zerinza magazine; I read it once, and it was ghastly).

Anyway, 11 o’clock’s caught up with me, so turn on Radio 4 and you’ll hear Jon Culshaw probably going through all the same sort of things.

There’s newer Doctor Who on BBC3 tonight, of course – a double bill of David Tennant’s grand finale, The End of Time, to get us all ready for Matt Smith tomorrow – but if you want to go back to the week when David got the job, how about The Quatermass Experiment – and if you want to see Timothy Dalton being another aristocratic bastard, how about Flash Gordon…?

The Quatermass Experiment

The first ever BBC TV science fiction – in fact, the BBC’s first ever specially commissioned original drama serial – was written by another of the Twentieth Century’s most inspired authors, Nigel Kneale, back in 1953. Like Shada, though for different reasons, you can only see parts of the original, and yet there are remakes of this, too. The original series in fact went out live, television being in its infancy, and they only recorded the first third of it as it was broadcast (you can still see that much on the terrific DVD The Quatermass Collection, along with a pdf of the script).

If you’ve seen The Quatermass Experiment today, the chances are it was one of the two remakes: one a movie made in the mid-’50s by Hammer Films; the other a live broadcast that took place on BBC4 on 2nd April 2005. That was just days after news broke that Christopher Eccleston was to leave Doctor Who almost as soon as he’d started, and rumours abounded that David was to get the job. So, when his Dr Briscoe walks on to tend to a patient with a strange, alien infection in BBC4’s The Quatermass Experiment, Jason Flemyng’s Professor Quatermass very deliberately greets him not with the scripted “Hello, Gordon,” but with “Hello, Doctor.”

By one of those lovely quirks of TV scheduling, Hammer’s The Quatermass Xperiment is on tonight at 1.35am on BBC2. You can celebrate today’s Quatermass anniversary by making a double bill of them to see how they compare: the 2005 version is available to watch for free on MSN.

I’ve written about all four of the Quatermass serials before, and while the existing Quatermass II and Quatermass and the Pit are still among some of the best TV ever produced, I can’t help wondering what the rest of The Quatermass Experiment would have been like: the first episode is rather staid; the second suddenly leaps forward in pace and quality; what might the other four have done? But, instead, there are two complete (though both hugely abridged from the original) versions to judge. The film is often well-shot and atmospheric; it’s a thriller with a superbly played hunted man. But the star casting of Quatermass himself is a terrible mistake (Nigel Kneale’s views about actor Brian Donlevy were, on a good day, only just printable), while too much of the script becomes generic B-movie – not least the ending, which while exciting, entirely misses the point. The BBC4 version, on the other hand, is occasionally a little slow and worthy and, being a live production, it’s a little too obvious that most of it’s taking place in the same warehouse. It does, however, have an excellent cast – Jason Flemyng, David Tennant and Indira Varma, as well as a notably fine performance from Mark Gatiss – and the last ten minutes or so are absolutely gripping, remaining entirely true to the human spirit of the original script.

One day, I might watch the surviving two episodes of the 1953 serial, then the middle of the Hammer movie, then the climax of the BBC4 remake and see if that adds up to the best approximation of the story as written…

Flash Gordon

Hmm, well, this hasn’t gone in a flash, has it? I was dashing to write a few paragraphs before 11, and now I’ve listened to that Douglas programme – listen again on the BBC iPlayer if you missed it – which was just as I thought it would be, with a particularly fine set of interviewees and several opinions I disagreed with, while this article has grown from something crawling along my arm to the size of Westminster Abbey (if not the Tate Modern). But there was one more thing I was going to talk about for tonight. ITV1 is showing the 1980 Flash Gordon movie at 1.30am. I love Buster Crabbe and Charles Middleton; I sigh with disdain at macho later remakes; but this brightly coloured camp extravaganza is one of the most entertaining films ever made.

Peter Wyngarde steals it from behind a mask as the evil Klytus; Max von Sydow has the time of his life as the louchest emperor in the galaxy; the gorgeous red and gold design and Queen and Howard Blake’s score makes it sumptuous sensory treat. There are some lines you must know from the Queen title song that you can’t resist saying along, I know – put your hands on your hips to do the fabulous Kala:

“What do you mean, Flash Gordon approaching?”

And surely most people watching will fancy either Ornella Muti or Sam J Jones? Flash flashing those tiny leather shorts and that hairy chest. Mmmmm. Er… Where was I? While Star Wars was surely a better film, and a great modern legend, this film realised that it could do one thing better: never mind the purity of the Force, Flash Gordon positively drips with pervy sex, and yet never quite enough that could be complained about, so I could still be taken to the cinema to see it aged 8. Fabulous.

But best of all are three screen legends giving enormous and each differently entertaining performances: Topol’s Dr Zarkov, a performance more like Tom Baker’s Doctor than any other I can think of on the big screen; future Bond Timothy Dalton, who on being cast in the campest film of the year as a character in green tights, under the mistaken impression this would be something as gritty as the same director’s Get Carter, tries single-handedly to make the movie macho and serious, shouting random swear-words – in fact, all the film’s swear-words – such as “Freeeeeze! …You bloody bastards!” and as a result becomes more hilariously camp than the ones camping it up; and, of course, in the role he was born for, Brian Blessed. Oh, Brian Blessed. All together now:

“GORDON’S ALIVE?!?!”

Super fact: both Flash Gordon and The Horns of Nimon feature soon-to-be-Blue-Peter-presenters in scenes of deadly peril! Only one of them survives…

Doctor Who on BBC7

Oh, and tune in to BBC7 of an evening for more Doctor Who on the wireless, too. On Sunday at 6pm and 12am there’s the second part of former Doctor Who producer and writer Barry Letts’ memoir, Who and Me; on weeknights at 6.30pm and 12.30am Tom Baker reads Terrance Dicks’ novelisation of Tom’s first (and my first) story, Doctor Who and the Giant Robot.

Labels: Big Finish, Books, David Tennant, Doctor Who, Douglas Adams, James Bond, Julian Glover, Matt Smith, Quatermass, Radio, The Key To Time, Tom Baker

…How does Michael Howard have the bloody nerve to pose as the only person who’s ever opposed the BNP, when he ran the most anti-immigration General Election campaign by any major party for half a century? He’s even more responsible for legitimising the BNP by cashing in on their scapegoating bigotry than Labour’s disgusting race-baiting rhetoric and legislation. Who can forget Rory Bremner summarising the whole 2005 Tory banner under Mr Howard and his slyly deniable racism-pandering posters:

“Are you thinking what we’re thinking?”

“People have said my message is ‘Less tax, less blacks’. That’s quite wrong. It’s ‘Fewer blacks’.”

Michael Howard Is A Shameful Lying Hypocrite

Having a jolly Radio Four day of Doctor Who, even the lovely Shaun Ley (back with more Doctor Who of his own tomorrow afternoon) wasn’t able to stop today’s The World This Weekend leaving a bad taste in the mouth as he and the headlines uncritically picked up and swallowed Michael Howard’s odious self-serving hypocritical cant of an interview. He criticised every other party leader because, he said, only he had ever gone to Burnley and made a speech saying how nasty the BNP were. Big woop.

Michael Howard went to Burnley once, made a speech very few people heard, and in doing so gave himself the cloak of respectability for the racist campaign he ran every single day. Because of one day and one flying visit where he said, ‘They’re worse than me, so I must be nice’. What a shit. You do not defeat the BNP by saying how beastly they are one day a year, and agreeing with them in a slightly more polite way for the other 364 in order to hoover up racist votes.

It seems an appropriate time of year to remember that not being a bigot is not just for Christmas.

Not only was Mr Howard’s speech eye-wateringly cynical, but it didn’t cost him a thing. In Burnley, the Conservatives are the fourth party and had nothing to lose – whatever an hour or so’s faked-up moral platitudes, he was never going to go back there and do the hard slog of actually campaigning against the BNP. He was never going to really take them on so it would actually make a difference. That was left to the Liberal Democrats, who – instead of doing the political equivalent of ringing a bell and running away – knocked on doors week in, week out all year round until they defeated BNP councillors by persuading real people in Burnley, not a flown-in gaggle of Tory cheerleaders.

Some speeches are brave. Some make a difference. But very few – sadly, because I like making speeches, too – have the impact that the long hard slog of actual work on the ground does.

A Speech That Took A Real Risk – Because It Was Right

I can, though, remember one speech that was brave, and daring, and took on the sort of immigrant-bashing rhetoric on which the BNP thrives. Back in April 2000, during a hard-fought by-election campaign where the Liberal Democrats were striving to take Romsey, one of the safest Conservative seats in the country. The Liberal Democrat campaign could have played down our Liberalism, played it safe, stuck to ‘popular’ issues and only challenged the Tories where they were perceived as electorally ‘weak’. Instead, Charles Kennedy took the huge risk of facing down the Conservatives’ asylum policy, in a speech in Romsey, where conventional wisdom was that saying the right thing would lose us the seat. I’ve not found the speech itself online (how things change in a decade), but here’s what Charles wrote a few days later:

“The voters of Romsey were not beguiled by William Hague’s personal brand of politics – those based on fear and division. His is the Britain of the twitching curtain and the locked door, where every refugee is an economic migrant, every gay man a pervert waiting to prey on your children and every creak in the floorboards an intruder in your home. By concentrating on the negative, and pandering to the small-minded, he insulted the electorate.”

Like all those wards in Burnley which now elect Liberal Democrat councillors instead of BNP ones, Romsey still has a Liberal Democrat MP in place of a Conservative one to this day.

Labels: Bigotry, British Politics, Conservatives, History, Liberal Democrats, Radio

If you’ve not yet recovered from Christmas, you know the best cure – chocolate. So after posting this at the weekend, I’ve added plenty more, particularly about Thorntons. You can still catch up with Radio Four’s Doctor Who weekend on iPlayer, too: The Lost Episodes, On the Outside It Looked Like an Old-Fashioned Police Box and David Tennant’s Desert Island Discs. And if you saw the new Day of the Triffids, with beefed-up sauntering Eddie Izzard villainy and off-the-peg unresolved father-son tension and mysticism, why not see for free the closer-to-the-book 1981 adaptation, with a sexier lead and scarier plants? Both of them are more fun than Survivors, anyway, which is just the same story with nowhere near enough killer vegetation.

So, for a couple of days, this has travelled through time to midnight on the last day of the year before returning it to its original time and place. It’s Doctor Who, after all!


Having a replete Boxing Day? It’s a day for the most important things in life – TV and chocolate (and my beloved Richard). Richard’s chewed over last night’s Doctor Who, as have the lovely Jennie and Andy, and I’ve… scoffed many chocolates. So I’m sitting to watch Shakespeare, thinking of Christmas boxes. What are the best boxes from Thorntons? What’s the box set to buy for Doctor Who? What’s the most Christmassy box the BBC ever presented for us to wolf down? And are you looking out for Radio Four’s three Doctor Who programmes in the next day, starting tonight?

Of all this year’s Doctor Who DVD releases, look out in the sales for The Deadly Assassin (the greatest story of the lot, with the Master, Time Lords and Russell T Davies bigging it up on Confidential last night, as well he should), The War Games (another terrific story, also featured on the last Confidential, with the Time Lords – who are gits, and always have been – turning up at the end as the big bads to kill off the Doctor) and, especially if you can find the price knocked down a bit, The Key To Time boxed set. In Christmassy fashion, it’s a collection of six different stories, some of which may be more to your taste than others but which all form a delightful variety and I find quite delicious. In daytime TV style, as I’ve raved about The Key to Time before, I’ll turn to boxes of Thorntons later.

The Box of Delights

“If you will, there is something no other soul can do for me but you alone…”

Here’s an odd thing. The Key To Time boxed set was first released a couple of years ago as a limited edition, sold out fast and was deleted. At last re-released last month, perhaps because its semi-sequel The Black Guardian Trilogy came out this Summer, it’s one of the two best BBC DVD boxes I can think of to wrap for a Christmas present. So, obviously, the BBC’s now deleted the other ideal Christmas present – just in time for it’s twenty-fifth anniversary, The Box of Delights has been taken off the shelves. No, I don’t understand it either.

A quarter of a century ago this Christmas, the BBC made an adaptation of John Masefield’s children’s classic that was simply magical. Despite seven Doctor Who Christmas specials (most of them marvellous, and most of them made for Christmas), it’s delightfully old-fashioned and comforting, and still the most glorious piece of Christmas TV there’s ever been. In the 1930s, an old wandering magician entrusts a boy with his magical box to keep it safe against the wolfish minions of evil magic, and everyone makes the journeys along the way something very special.

At the time, it was the most expensive children’s TV the BBC had ever made, full of great actors, animation and special effects – a little symbolic in the penultimate episode, but only to save up for explosions, a salmon-leaping boat and demons at the last – and a fabulous score by Roger Limb (arranging Victor Hely-Hutchinson for the gorgeous theme music). Devin Stanfield grounds it as the surprisingly together young hero, James Grout is an entertaining police inspector, and Patricia Quinn is astounding as the campest thing on screen, teacher, witch, and utter ruin for her lover (“My golden idol. My graven image!”), the brilliantly named Sylvia Daisy Pouncer.

It’s most worth watching, though, for the wise old magician and Punch and Judy man (and sometime pagan and medieval philosopher), Cole Hawlings, and his deadly opponent, ambitious, evil warlock and posing clergyman Abner Brown. They’re the two best roles, with the two most compelling actors – former Doctor Patrick Troughton in one of his last great roles, and Robert Stephens promising

“One last… Great wickedness before I go!”

As at the moment it’s bizarrely not available to buy, have a look at it on YouTube. All six episodes are available, under a slightly disguised name (presumably to prevent seizure by copyright lawyers, even though if you want the DVD you can’t get it) and broken up into lots of little chunks. Just half a dozen minutes into the first episode, Patrick gives one of his most husky-voiced and mesmerising performances – while the part five’s stolen outrageously by Mr Stephens with the most scenery-chewing piece of acting I’ve ever seen that still absolutely grips you. To get you started, here’s the opening episode, in three parts.

Doctor Who On Radio Four (and David Tennant – and John Simm, of course – everywhere)

If you’ve had a Merry Christmas at home, perhaps you’re now sitting down with David Tennant’s jolly Hamlet. John Barrowman must be wondering what’s gone wrong, when it’s the other Doctor Who star who’s omnipresent this Christmas (and John Simm’s gone to rather extreme lengths to beat him). On top of Doctor Who, Hamlet, Never Mind the Moroks (wasn’t Bernard Cribbins genius?), QI and others on TV, he’s doing quite a few radio shows, among them one of Radio 4’s three – yes, it’s his turn for Desert Island Discs tomorrow at 11.15am.

The two to really look forward to, though, are on tonight at eight (tune in 3pm, Monday, for an edited repeat), exploring the “lost” Doctor Who stories the BBC made in the ’60s and then junked, and a welcome repeat for their celebration of the Target books of the ’70s and ’80s at 1.30 tomorrow. Radio 4’s top Who fan Shaun Ley investigates Archive on 4: Doctor Who – The Lost Episodes tonight, including interviews I saw him making at a convention a month or two back, while Mark Gatiss hosts tomorrow’s On the Outside It Looked Like an Old Fashioned Police Box, which intriguingly features readings from Doctor Who novelisations that BBC Audio has released on CD – but read by different actors to the CD versions. That’s the BBC internal market for you.

That last bit was quite wrong, of course; I was mixing up having heard the original broadcast in the Summer with the fabulous Target Books special feature on The War Games DVD at about the same time. That On Target – Malcolm Hulke focused on perhaps the most revered of Target adaptors, so it was a BBC DVD rather than a radio programme that had to use different actors doing the readings to those BBC Audio produce – Peter Miles ironically offering the reptile people’s point of view from Doctor Who and the Cave Monsters, for example, rather than Caroline John in the CDs. The radio programme, made with just as much love, does indeed use BBC Audio’s versions, albeit adding sound effects and music from the TV series that (confusingly) the DVDs use but BBC Audio appears not to lack the rights for. These tend to be from ’70s stories, and though the Target books ran right through the ’80s as well, the vast majority of Mr Gatiss’ attention is on the ’70s, back when he was a boy. His love for Jon Pertwee’s Doctor in particular shines through; I have my reservations about him, but his Target books, at least, are smashing. One of the top moments to listen out for, appropriately, is marvellous artist Chris Achilleos relating how Pertwee asked Target to get him to portray his nose as less of a double-barrelled shotgun than it was in life – another is fab companion and now reader Anneke Wills asking of the BBC’s trashing her old stories (yes, tying in with the Shaun Ley programme):

“You have to wonder if there was anybody intelligent in charge!”

Top marks for selecting several excerpts from Tom Baker’s reading of Doctor Who and the Pyramids of Mars, probably the best of the CDs for me, and bringing to life one of Terrance Dicks’ most thoroughly fleshed-out novels. Terrance himself provides entertaining, informative and often self-deprecating commentary on the novel series for which he wrote almost as many books as everyone else put together, while current Who script editor Gary Russell pays praise to Malcolm Hulke, the author who most got inside the characters’ heads. Mark Gatiss, though, should pay more attention to the ’80s: aside from his Sarah Jane Adventures novelisation, Invasion of the Bane, the most recently made Who story Terrance novelised was 1986’s The Trial of a Time Lord: The Mysterious Planet. And that, of course, is the one that begins with the line he loves but can’t place:

“It was a graveyard in space.”

Four Thorntons Boxes For Christmas…

Last week I wrote about pies and sandwiches. Tonight it’s time for the hard stuff.

With so many boxes of chocolates about – and Hotel Chocolat’s too numerous and expensive for me to sample them all (I’m not wild about their pralines, but their fruit creations are uniquely tart and rather fantastic) – I thought I’d zoom in on Thorntons’ selections.

If you’ve happened to saunter past a Thorntons on the high street and just popped in for a moment – and if you’re reading this, you probably have – you’ll know that they have quite a selection of, er, selection boxes. Their most famous, justifiably, is the Continental: it’s been around for decades, with occasional changes, and is still a fabulous mix of creations, mixing milk, white and dark, truffle, mousse and praline. For me, the Viennese Truffle wins every time with its buttery filling and delicately sugared light casing. You might try the Continental White Collection for variety, which is a particularly good relatively recent variation – the Continental Dark Collection’s good, too.

Heretically, though many of their individual milk chocolates are marvellous, their milk chocolate mix itself is a little bland and sickly for me – not a patch on Dairy Milk (unbeatable for pigging in large quantities). So I wouldn’t bother with a bar of it, but confections covered in it are fine. Other hardy perennials include the Mint Collection, which is fine, but with a smaller number of choices and some rather bitter (the ribbed diamonds always taste of nettles to me), there are never enough of the delicious long minty batons or the delightfully knobbly Luxury Double Cream Mints, my favourites. The box I wouldn’t buy for myself from Thorntons is the Classics – although it sells well and is marketed as “The familiar flavours you remember from childhood,” when you find the same shape and taste of fudge, strawberry, coffee creams and so on as in every other chocolate selection, it’s apparent that they started making this box because people were coming in saying, ‘all these creative flavours are all very well, but can’t you be the same as everyone else?’ So it’s not bad, as such, but not in any way interesting. Not that I wouldn’t eat them, mind…

However, there are four fairly new boxes you might not have sampled yet, and – purely in a spirit of selfless experiment – I’ve given each of them a try.

Winter Dessert Gallery

Just happening to pop into Thorntons one day last year – it was raining, and I wanted somewhere I could wipe my glasses – I came across this box, which unlike the others I’m reviewing isn’t new this season, but which I’ve tried again. A choice of seven chocolates, all modelled after well-known desserts, all looking very attractive in their (mostly milk chocolate) little cups. It’s a newer variation of their standard Dessert Gallery that’s been around for a few years; I have to admit, that’s the one I prefer. Some of the selection appear in both, but for the differences, the earlier box tends towards sharper flavours which are more to my taste (barring one that just isn’t me at all). It also has a stylish Art Deco box in white, while the Winter Dessert Gallery has a warm burgundy cover with no definite identity that’s appropriate to the comforting but slightly more forgettable chocolates within.

The Double Chocolate Mousse is the most intense, with a rich chocolate centre and plenty of little curls on top of a dark cup; at the other end of the scale, the Christmas Pudding is clearly the special Winter centrepiece, but tastes only vaguely of Christmas pudding, faintly of rum and brandy, though noticeably of raisin, and the white chocolate on top’s quite nice. Other survivors from the main Desert Gallery are worth tasting – the Tiramisu does taste a bit of tiramisu, with a whiff of coffee and brandy, while the Lemon Meringue’s my favourite, with the nearest you’ll find here to a bit of tartness in a deep well of lemon, with crunchy sweet meringue on top in a white cup – while the other new ones are all right, but not to the same standard. The Sherry Trifle is pretty good, with a custardy fondant, sticky jelly and tiny strips of chocolate on top that look pretty but are too small to taste; the Sticky Toffee Pudding sounds promising, but (small and sweet) simply doesn’t have enough toffee; and the Rhubarb Crumble… Well, I’m not a big rhubarb fan, but this is so vague you don’t taste it, or anything much bar the milk chocolate cup. None of these are unpleasant, but it’s difficult to overcome the impression that winter desserts are popular because they’re hot and comforting, so making them small and cold misses the point a bit.

Continental Paris Milk Collection

A new collection I noticed in Thorntons a month ago while taking a shortcut through it into a shopping centre, this starts off with the disadvantage that their milk chocolate’s a little bland, and the selection never really gets past that. As the name implies, they’re all French-inspired, mostly new, and quite delicate. It’s nice enough, though, and it has rather a pleasing look to the box – round, dusty blue, with a chocolate-brown lower half, rather like a hatbox.

You’ll not be altogether amazed to find that I loved the Mousse au Chocolat; it’s a light and rich mousse, exactly what it promises, and the best of them. The Caramel du Café’s pretty good, too – the coffee and caramel melt together very sweetly, both distinct, though (even if I don’t like coffee much) it could do with a bit more coffee to make it tart. The Praline Feuilletine, on the other hand, is very much the sort of confection that Hotel Chocolat often come up with. The praline’s so-so, but there are lovely crunchy feuilletine waffle pieces, and it’s an attractive design, long and large with dark patterning. The Hazelnut Croquant has another good crunch, but tastes basically just sweet and a bit chocolatey; the Ganache au Marc de Champagne is something all the top chocolatiers have been doing different versions of in the last few years, and it’s not tremendously distinctive – heavy milk chocolate, an aftertaste of champagne… I’d have said white chocolate would set the flavour off better. The most interesting of them is the Pain d’Épices, which doesn’t entirely work but gets your attention more than any of the others – there’s plenty of ginger overcoming the caramelised hazelnut pieces (though they have a good crunch). That leaves two that I suspect are intended as showpieces: the Parisian Truffle is rather good, a touch of brandy making it very Christmassy; Amour, on the other hand… A heart-shaped chocolate always looks promising, but this really depends on whether you like marzipan and orange liqueur – if you do, this is probably very nice. If not, it’s disgusting.

Continental Milan Dark Collection

The other new collection which I just happened to notice, accidentally buy and promptly consume purely to get out of the way when I nipped through a Thorntons last month has altogether more go to it. Based on Italian recipes, also mostly new, this set of eight are all in a much richer dark chocolate (far superior to their milk), again in a rather nice hatbox, this time with the top half in deep red. It looks great.

Now, I’ll confess that I really like a proper tart lemon, and the Lemon Mousse is easily the best here. Thorntons used to do a very similar chocolate in whole bags of them – sharp dark chocolate setting off a great tang of lemon in a light mousse. The Espresso is another strong flavour; again, I don’t even much like coffee, but this is dark and strong and very rich. The Amaretti, on the other hand, is a bit bland; I don’t care for amaretti, but if you do you’ll only get a hint of it here, and rather more honey. Similarly, the Milanese Truffle has a bit of liqueur, a bit of hazelnut and interesting textures, but you mainly just taste the chocolate. Fortunately, the others are more distinctive. The Tiramisu is excellent, with a soft filling and white chocolate top, beating the Dessert Collection’s recipe, the red-wrapped Crunchy Nougat Praline is rather fine (the tastiest bit of nougat I’ve had for years), and the Cannella is interesting, individual but not really a successful mix – another mousse, offering first a taste of lemon, lightly, then plunging into cinnamon, which is rather strange. It rounds off with a mild and creamy Panna Cotta that has quite a strong taste of vanilla, set off perfectly afterwards by the dark chocolate. Ironically, after both the dessert collections, this is the one that most instantly captures a childhood afters – it tastes remarkably like an old-style choc ice.

Metropolitan by Thorntons

I just popped into a Thorntons to ask the time a couple of weeks ago (you know that old saying: if you want to know the time, ask a chocolatier), and to make polite conversation chatted to the manager about chocolate. He said this was the best selection they’ve ever produced, and it’s rather fabulous, you know; it may not be quite their best ever, but it pips the Continental Milan Dark Collection for me as the best of this set. It’s got a lovely Art Nouveau box design, and – fond as I am of white chocolate – this works in just dark or milk. Better still, it’s a much fuller-flavoured milk than their standard mix, here taken from Ecuador, the dark from the Dominican Republic, building on their Single Origin collections. These come in multiples of squares, batons and swirled shells, with one exception…

Vanilla Heights is a square vanilla ganache, with almost a caramel flavour rather than vanilla; Cloudberry Hill is sweet but intriguing and faintly fruity, like the other square chocolate, the delightfully patterned Q Couture, another ganache with quince. The quince is slightly strange, but the dark chocolate stops it being too sweet (I’ll admit to not being too familiar with either quince or cloudberry, but they’re both worth trying). The Orange Garden baton may be based on a better-known fruit, but – flavoured with orange blossom – again it’s very sweet, more perfumy than ordinary orange, set off with quite a good sharp aftertaste. I prefer the other long chocolate, the crispy Praline Piazza, another light praline (a taste that rarely impresses me), but with a great texture of crunchy feuilletine waffle pieces. The two shells are both surprisingly solid: the Manhattan Melt is (rather good) milk chocolate through and through with a subtle aftertaste; Midnight Melt is rich and fruity and slightly bitter in its sweetness, an outstanding dark chocolate. Perhaps my favourite (though Richard didn’t care for it) is the odd one out, the Soho Caramel – sadly the smallest, with slight salt caramel in a thick dark chocolate sphere, it’s like a chocolate berry, oozing with flavour.

Bars, Baubles and Bags

Thorntons has also produced two new bars for Christmas, both milk chocolate and neither especially vibrant. Their Crème Brulee Bar is sugar-studded and coolly creamy (well, more milky) inside – nice, but you realise that it’s the crunch of hot, brittle caramel that makes a crème brulee, and the little strip of caramel-ish underlining isn’t good enough. I quite liked it, but you’re best off peeling off the wrapper and storing it somewhere so you forget the name: it’s absolutely not a patch on the proper dessert. The Winter Fruit Crumble Bar is less disappointing, but only because I expected less of it; the crumble pieces in the chocolate coating work, but the blackberry and blackcurrant (both fruits that really appeal to me) filling is very insipid. Despite proper bits of fruit, it’s more sickly than sharp. If you’re after their Continental-style bars, stick to the Sicilian Lemon and the Viennese Truffle, both of which are gorgeous.

They’ve probably sold out of their baubles to hang on the tree by now (like anyone’s going to wait… Oh, yeah, parents), but all three are rich and large enough to take a proper bite into. The Chocolate Truffle Bauble has a near-perfect filling, rich and sweet and strongly chocolatey, though it’s back to that rather bland milk chocolate outside. The Champagne Truffle Bauble works surprisingly well – you can feel the champagne at the back of your mouth. Then there’s the Praline Bauble, which is essentially their long-established Continental the Alpini, in a ball. It’s one of the few pralines I really rather like, with little crunchy pieces to it, too.

And so as not to miss out Hotel Chocolat altogether, one of their new chocolates that I’d recommend is the Eton Mess – soft strawberry mousse that would even get Peter Butterworth’s attention, bedded in milk chocolate and crunchy meringue, covered in thick white chocolate and topped with dried strawberry; a stunning mix of tastes and textures. You can get them in their own selector packs now: eat them by the bag.


So make that your New Year’s resolution. Pile up the chocolates, pile them into your mouth – er, I mean, offer them round your loved ones – and stick Doctor Who on the iPlayer, with a side order of Triffids (eat up your veg, or it will eat you!) and The Box of Delights for sweet. For a little nibble, though, there’s always the poor old Pet Shop Boys with their new EP: the ‘be careful what you wish for’ Christmas ghost-of-a-chance-of-getting-a-hit It Doesn’t Often Snow At Christmas. Not the best year to release that one, but give the other songs a listen – borrowing Madness, Tchiakovsky and Coldplay, each one of them sounds more like a single. Or there’s always fabulous Katie and December Will Be Mad As a Bucket of Frogs Again or, if you’re not a big fan of sparkly commercial Christmas, Timbuk 3 offer a first verse that’s got one of the best awful puns I’ve ever heard (needing an American accent, and with more than a bit of politics). You’ll have to buy Tom Robinson’s hilariously gloomy North By Northwest CD to get his Christmassy nuclear war epic Merrily Up On High, but I always stick mine on…


Update: and finally, the prize for most unlikely review of the year: Lawrence Miles. Given what he predicted for it (now vanished) before transmission – get it while it’s hot, as like most of his blog, it’s seasonal and goes off quickly!

Labels: BBC, Books, Chocolate, Christmas, David Tennant, Doctor Who, DVD, Fantasy, Food, Music, Patrick Troughton, Radio, Reviews, Style, The Key To Time, Top Tips, Triffids

Heard the one about the Labour MP telling snide porkies about the Liberal Democrats and using homophobic innuendo against the Tories on the radio? Or the Tory candidate so steeped in dirty tricks that she’s called herself a nasty name and blamed it on the Liberal Democrats? I know from back when I used to be a candidate that it can be frustrating when no-one’s talking about you, but I never stooped to making up coverage. So, stand up in the last week Caroline Righton, Conservative Liar in Cornwall and, from The Westminster Hour, Denis MacShane, Labour Liar for Rotherham.

Insults have always been a part of politics – and regular readers will know that I tend to be Mr Grumpy Sweary on here quite often, so I can’t really slag people off for using ‘strong language’. But still… When I was a candidate, I used rather less fruity language, partly because I was talking to a different audience and partly because I wanted to be respectable. But I’ve always taken responsibility for the words I’ve used, even when I’ve said completely the wrong thing – and I’ve only used a mildly rude word once on TV (it was after midnight, I wasn’t a candidate at the time… But my Mum was still horrified). Look, being rude can be fun, whether it’s being sweary or being insulting. It can make a point; it can be pithier than a reasonable argument; perhaps most tellingly, being nasty to your foes can cheer up your supporters. If you’re on the receiving end, the answer should usually be, ‘So what?’: you take it on the chin, and you just look daft if you whine about an ordinary insult – which is clearly why Denis MacShane’s upped the ante, because being rude is one thing, but telling lies about people is very different.

On the down side, even the ‘harmless fun’ sort of insult doesn’t half put people off. Many people find ‘bad language’ jarring – and not just people who don’t use it in everyday situations. If someone in authority swore at me, I’d be offended, even if I’d say the same sort of thing with people I know. Swearing can be much starker out of a familiar context – or even relatively mild language (as smearing lying Tory Caroline Righton clearly knows, by pretending a Liberal Democrat was foul-mouthed). But any insult, pejorative term or just shouting someone down can be off-putting; it doesn’t have to be language you can’t use in Sunday School. It can just be mean, or untrue. It may be satisfying if you’re doing it (boy, can it be satisfying to lay in to some git), but it’s also frequently very counterproductive. Go on – ask people what they think of the baying mob at Prime Minister’s Questions each week.

Caroline Righton – The Tory Who Calls Herself Names To Get Attention

Caroline Righton’s bizarre and pathetic attention-seeking behaviour has been much blogged-about in the last week since the story was broken by the lovely Matt Davies. In short, the just as lovely Stephen Gilbert hopes to become Liberal Democrat MP for the new Cornish seat of St. Austell and Newquay, and decided to go to a local regeneration meeting rather than a radio programme. Conservative candidate Caroline Righton, the attention-seeking behaviour being a bit of a clue here, decided on the press opportunity rather than the getting things done, so Steve reported this difference of views on Twitter, and not in Ms Righton’s favour. The Tory was understandably miffed, and told her supporters as much.

That’s where most political stories would have ended.

Unfortunately, Ms Righton decided this didn’t get her enough attention – so she made something up. And, in the way of bizarre attention-seeking fantasists everywhere, she decided that everyone had to be sorry for her and excoriate Steve because, oh woe, how terrible, she was the ‘victim’. One snag: no ‘victimising’. So she made it up. When she circulated Steve’s Tweet to her supporters, a word reported as “D***h***d!!!” was added to the end of it. ‘Look! That horrid Liberal Democrat said a beastly word about me! How uncouth!’ was the underlying message.

The trouble is, Twitter’s an easy to check public posting place, and the only place the “D***h***d!!!” appears is when Ms Righton republished Steve’s Tweet. And that wasn’t the only lie – she also claimed, explicitly, that she couldn’t read Stephen Gilbert’s Tweets:

“I was sent the comment below by a constituent who is privy to my opposition's Twitter emissions, which I am not. Apparently his asterisk'd comment is highly abusive.”

But surely, Ms Righton, you do have a Twitter account yourself, and Steve is one of only six people you’re following on it? So that was another proven and clumsy lie, wasn’t it?

Lots of politicians lie. Lots of them throw insults. But Ms Righton is the first I can remember hearing about that’s lied about being insulted because she’s so desperate for attention.

A week later, she’s still not apologised for smearing Steve with her own foul mouth – or perhaps I should say foul fingers. Nor has David Cameron, after Steve’s office wrote to him to confront him with the evidence of his candidate’s lying smear. What she has done, though, is got her staff to delete her Wikipedia page – twice – against Wikipedia rules, evidently petrified that this story will appear on it.

She makes things up… She’s desperate to get attention… She says, ‘it wasn’t me, it was him!’… She’s sticks her fingers in her ears and pretends nothing’s happened when she’s caught out… She tries to cover up facts about herself… Come on, Mums and Dads reading, this is familiar behaviour, isn’t it? Astoundingly, according to that Wikipedia entry that Ms Righton was so desperate to censor out of existence, she’s around 52 years old. I know Wikipedia’s not always reliable, so is it possible they’ve misplaced a decimal point?


Top posts to read on Ms Righton’s made-up woes have been recommended by Lib Dem Voice and particularly well-documented by Andrew Reeves (here, here, here and here) and Jeremy Rowe (here, with the rather brilliant comment, “That Righton’s a wrongun,” here and here). Or, if you want to do something positive, why not just get in touch with Steve Gilbert and offer to help, perhaps with a monthly donation like mine? Otherwise this lying fantasist might be elected purely because the Tories have vastly more money to pour in.

Denis MacShane – The Failed Former Minister Who’ll Make Up Any Nasty Horrible Thing

I saw on Lynne Featherstone’s blog earlier that she’s to be on Radio Four’s The Westminster Hour again tonight. Suddenly, I remembered and iPlayered (dash quickly, it’ll be gone soon) last week’s edition. The three political guests were Lib Dem Paul Holmes, Tory Roger Helmer and smug, hectoring, hypocritical, nasty git Denis MacShane.

Yes, that was an insult, but one based on factual observation. The sort of insult I try not to indulge in is nasty smears and lying (yes, I like making things up, but not misrepresenting people: if you see something preposterous on this blog in single quotation marks, ‘like this,’ I’m making it up, usually for comic effect. If you see something preposterous in double marks, “like this,” it’s a proper quotation). Mr MacShane, on the other hand, doesn’t summarise someone’s views in a way that makes them look silly, but just makes nasty, slimy accusations with no basis in fact.

Take last week’s The Westminster Hour. Women MPs are being discussed, and the BBC, with no sense of irony, have asked three male MPs to discuss them. A good political attack point is made by Mr MacShame; if David Cameron says he’ll have one-third women in Cabinet, why are there so few women in his Shadow Cabinet, when he has power to choose them, too? “The Conservative Party remains, I’m afraid, a Bullingdon boys’ own club,” he concludes, bringing in a bit of old-fashioned class hate (ironic, in his voice) and hypocritical faux-regret (watch for more) to finish his evidently pre-prepared ‘answer’. “Denis has been reading the briefing from Labour central office,” observes the Tory. “I used to write it,” Mr MacShameless concedes – then, realising he’s just given himself away, sneers:

“Today, David Cameron could promote women to senior positions in the Shadow Cabinet. He, I’m afraid, only likes boys.”

Roger Helmer was right to call that “an outrageous line”. Yep: caught out as a Labour spin-poisoner, Mr MacShame spits out a smear that translates as ‘they’re all public schoolboys, so they’re all bumming each other, and probably your kids’. Did he really get away with that? Yes he did. If it wasn’t a Labour git saying it in a desperate attempt at class war, but a Tory saying it when caught out, imagine the howls of “Homophobia!” from Labour. Well, I don’t have any reason to believe Mr MacShame’s genuinely homophobic – he’s probably just an opportunistic panderer to the bigot vote. Not better, is it?

Next up, Paul Holmes quotes Jo Swinson’s barnstorming speech a few years ago against all-women shortlists, and talks about Jo heading up a taskforce to help find and encourage people to stand. What does Mr MacSmear toss in from the back?

“Nobody wants to be a woman candidate in the Liberal Democrats. They’re a very anti-women party.”

Has it occurred to him that, on average, women may be even more put off than men by politics full of sneering, jeering arrested schoolboys saying pointless, malicious, lies about each other and screaming like a zoo in the House of Commons? Who would want to be part of all that?

Still, at least Paul got the better of him with a genuine suggestion rather than just the same old ‘Labour did things by rigid, control-freak top-down machinery, so everyone else must too’ – because after a dozen years of control-freakery, we’ve seen how well Labour doing everything by diktat has worked out – in pointing out that, as well as the Lib Dem internal measures to encourage and support candidates from the bottom up, the big changes in women’s representation have taken place in countries which have switched to proportional representation:

“When you’re selecting a panel of candidates rather than one, you don’t go for the safe, white, male stereotype – you go for a broader panel.”

Despite Paul hitting back with positive facts, I can’t believe Mr MacShame will stop. It wasn’t a one-off, you know; last week was just the most egregious example, but I’ve heard him at it again and again, the git. To pick a time when he wasn’t smearing a Lib Dem, did you hear him saying Gary McKinnon’s Asperger Syndrome was a sham (what, he’s a doctor now? Or just a knee-jerk smearing liar)? Mr McKinnon’s mother accused Mr MacShane of “gutter” tactics and “an absolutely awful, cheap shot”. They’re his speciality.

On tonight’s edition, as I said, Lynne Featherstone MP guests for the Liberal Democrats. I hope Mr MacShame is back on, and calls her ‘anti-men’.

And that Lynne pulls his lungs out.


In other news, the Governator has sworn at his Democratic opponents and tried to pretend he didn’t when caught out. Does he follow Caroline Righton on Twitter?


Update: I feel so guilty. I missed out the SNP’s smears. So here you go…

Labels: Blogs, British Politics, Conservatives, Labour, Liberal Democrats, Radio, The Golden Dozen

A Government position is newly vacant this evening: and for the first time, it’s explicit that only liars* need apply. For Labour Government Ministers, of course, the requirement to lie is only implicit.

This case is very simple. Chair of the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs Professor David Nutt told the truth, and was exasperated with Labour Government Ministers lying about their findings. The last Home Secretary said the carefully considered scientific evidence didn’t matter: cannabis was more harmful than tobacco and alcohol because, er, she said so, fingers in ears, lalala I am not listening to you.

Yesterday, Professor Nutt made it clear that she had not told the truth (and who’d have thought, when Jacqui Spliff was such a model of probity she, er, had to resign for being a crook and made the most grudging unpology about it?).

Today Alan Johnson, the current Home Secretary, sacked him (and who’d have thought that Alan Johnson would make a nakedly lying political point when he knows the evidence is completely against him?).

So, it’s official: under Labour, telling the truth is now a sackable offence.

It’s the obvious joke, but you know who the nuts are here.

Obsessive Ideology Over Evidence and Bossing Everyone About – the Labour Way

The evidence has piled up by the decade and the sackload. Cannabis does some harm; it does nothing like the harm it’s made out to; it does nothing like the harm legal drugs tobacco and alcohol do. But this Labour Government can’t even keep to the – brace yourself – lone liberal twitch by David Blunkett. They’re so desperate to sound ‘tough’ that their policies bear no relation at all to reality. Again and again. When Professor Nutt said that you’re more likely to die horse-riding than taking cannabis or ecstasy, to wails of horror from Labour hypocrites, he was simply looking at the facts of risk. Yet even that’s not really comparing like with like: unlike Professor Nutt, I support legalisation, which would enable proper quality checks (as well as destroying the criminal trade) – no-one gets on a horse, trots half-way along the path, then finds the ‘horse’ collapsing under them because they suddenly discover the beast is in fact half-gerbil.

One of my key memories about the harm caused by illegal drugs came about a decade ago. I left home one afternoon just after hysterical national news headlines about a single tragic death allegedly caused by ecstasy (whether the drug itself, or the impurities allowed in because it’s illegal and can’t be regulated)… And arrived at my Grandad’s a couple of hours later, to see a minor headline in his local paper that another single tragic death had come about because of an allergy to nuts (not to be confused with the Labour Government’s allergy to the truth, of which an inability to tolerate Nutts is merely a symptom). Guess which substance causes far, far more deaths, to an almost complete lack of media interest? Yep – the one you buy safely in the shops, not dangerously on street corners. Another win for prohibition.

On Radio 4’s PM programme tonight, Professor Nutt has just said that:

“This is about the difference between evidence and policy… Everything I’ve done has been evidence-based.
“…Gordon Brown made a series of irrational statements that cannabis is lethal, which of course it isn’t.”

Asked about the Labour Government refusing to take his former committee’s advice on cannabis and ecstasy, because they weren’t interested in any evidence, just in making a political point that he described as Luddism, the interviewer mouthed the meaningless tabloid platitude that these were the “controversial” drugs:

“They’re only controversial if you want them to be controversial – the Government’s views have, they’ve said, had nothing to do with science… I am not prepared to mislead the public about the harm caused by drugs.”

Good for him, and good luck to whoever next gets the job – it had better pay well, because by definition they’ll have to kiss their scientific reputation goodbye to take their position as official Labour Government Liar.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to calm down by eating a large amount of chocolate cake. Bad news: it doesn’t have any dope in it. Good news: it does have lots of chocolate in it. That was once banned as a dangerous, addictive drug by a nutty Westminster Government bent on scarifiying the populace too, you know.

If No-one Agrees With Alan Johnson, Will He Have To Sack the Whole Country?**

I’ve added rather more updates than usual below, as a lot of people seem to have something to say (none of them ‘The Home Secretary was right’). Even ultra-loyalist former Labour minister Lord Falconer said Mr Johnson was wrong on Any Questions.

Starting half an hour later: posts already popping up worth reading from Dr Mark Pack and Duncan Stott (who ironically shares a name with a drug enforcement officer from Doctor Who).

And yay for Liberal Democrat Shadow Secretary Chris Huhne in the 7 O’Clock headlines for calling the sacking “disgraceful”:

“What is the point of having independent scientific advice if you’re going to sack the person who’s giving it to you? You may as well have a committee of tabloid newspaper editors advising you on drugs policy.”

Incredibly, the Tories have gone along word for word with the Labour Government.

Continuing the next morning, Mr Mark Reckons has kindly linked to me in a thoughtful post which also has an interesting set of comments. He’s also called attention to the Tories’ ludicrous knee-jerk photocopy of Labour authoritarianism in a far more memorable way than I did above.

Liberal Vision has also linked to me, encapsulating the spirit of my post in a far more memorable headline. Again, I’m just not tabloidy enough. One of the British Medical Journal’s bloggers doesn’t link to me, but finishes on a particularly appropriate request from his friend Kate. You might also glance at Darrell, Jonathan and Jennie.



*Or pot-heads, ironically, as only someone with a distinctly loose grip on reality would believe in the Government’s policy.


**Fortunately for Mr Johnson, he does turn out to have the support of: the Conservative Party; spin-poisoner columnist Amanda Platell; and the Daily Mail, the paper that spits on much-loved dead people and refuses to apologise. And, er, that’s it.

Unfortunately, these are the handful of hate-filled obsessive ideologues who are running the country, whatever the sensible majority of us think.

Labels: Chocolate, Drugs, Labour, Meddling In Things That Are Nobody's Business But Your Own, Newspapers, Radio, Stupid Ideas

We may be barely mid-way through August, but I’m going to stick my neck out and say we’ve already had the winner of this year’s “Silly Season” news stories. If you were listening to Radio 4 at about a quarter to eight yesterday morning, the Today Programme had a feature on the epidemiology of zombie movies, revealing that a zombie infestation would lead to the collapse of civilisation unless terminated with extreme prejudice. You can still hear it on iPlayer, but be careful – it’s followed by Anne Atkins on Thought For the Day, and she will eat your brains.

Zombies On The Today Programme: How Could They Tell?

Apparently, research carried out at two universities in Ottawa using mathematical models of epidemiology warned that the only language zombies understand is to cut their goolies off chop their heads off at once, rather than pussyfoot around looking for a cure or containing the infectees. Although one of the UK’s leading swine flu advisers purported to dismiss the findings as “a little over-pessimistic,” expect our panicking Labour Government to issue swine flu warnings shortly involving guillotines, though with the saving grace of too long a waiting list to give many people the chop.

Of course, there is an ultra-violent alternative to this nasty ultraviolence. As any fule kno, sending that wet liberal Judge Dredd off in an armoured killer-truck to deliver a vaccine to the infected will work just as well, provided he can avoid such deadly perils as US Army vampire robots – of which more later, in case you thought they weren’t real – and the even more terrifying copyright lawyers for McDonalds, Burger King and the Jolly Green Giant (I have those issues, though if you own any of the graphic novel reprints, you’ll find four episodes curiously missing).

You’ll no doubt be aware that news programmes are infamous for sexing up their reports and distorting perfectly sensible and serious scientific works, so here’s a link to the full report, the sober and respectable When Zombies Attack!: Mathematical Modelling of an Outbreak of Zombie Infestation. One of the authors is Professor Robert Smith? – question mark included – which may help explain the erratic punctuation of the otherwise dull and unobjectionable title.

This morning’s Today Programme was much less interesting; I switched on shortly after half-six to hear Evan Davis exclaim “-anker,” and cheerily assumed he’d finally taken his mission as Today’s sole interviewer who tells it as it is to its logical conclusion. But instead of telling a Labour minister what he thought of them, it turned out to be an item about tragedies in Sri Lanka, meaning I started my morning with the burden of guilt over inappropriate levity.

US Army Discovers Sustainability At Cyber’s Diner

Naturally, zombie research is far from the only “Silly Season” news story calling out for attention, but having precipitately offered the award, I should explain why I’ve ruled out two other obvious front-runners.

You might think that the clear favourite “Silly Season” story over the past few weeks is the thought that Peter Mandelson might become Prime Minster, but while in itself it’s absurd – OK, so he’s just about the only Labour minister who’s not a/ incompetent and b/ terrified right now, but he’s in the Lords until at the very least the General Election, probably for ever, he’s sufficiently hated in enough of the Labour Party that he could never win a Leadership election, and even Labour MPs aren’t stupid enough to inflict another unelected Leader on their party after how the current one’s turned out – many would object that the Government, while certainly stupid, are too dangerous to be labelled “Silly”. With the zombie infestation “New Labour” still pushing us very close to “the collapse of civilisation,” comparing so vile a condition to something as harmless as a world-threatening undead epidemic is in poor taste.

My favourite story of the “Silly Season” also has to be ruled out of contention for the “Silly” prize by virtue of being truly quite scary. In answer to the twin conundrums of soldiers’ body bags and climate change, the US Army has commissioned a battlefield robot. You know that episode of The Simpsons in which Lisa encourages a bankrupt Mr Burns to discover the effectiveness of recycling, with lucrative but horrific results? Well, imagine something probably less lucrative – except for the weapons manufacturers, natch – but far more horrific.

Yes, the US Army is looking to bring into service an “Energetically Autonomous Tactical Robot,” or “EATR,” which can trundle around the battlefield killing people but, replacing soldiers, can’t be killed itself. And, to avoid wasteful fossil fuel use, it will run itself off organic matter that it finds lying about the battlefield.

Now, hands up at the back of the class anyone who can tell me a/ how likely it is to be able to distinguish civilians from combatants and b/ what the most prominent, juicily fuel-filled organic matter lying around any given battlefield will be? A clue to the latter: headlines like “Darpa’s Self-Feeding Sentry Robot Is Not A Man-Eater, Company Protests,” reminding me of nothing so much as Good King Yulfric the Wise the Third’s expostulation “The Evil Flesh-Eating Lord of Kraan is not a cannibal! I don’t know why everyone thinks he is!” from Hordes of the Things. The Guardian helpfully reported:

“‘We completely understand the public’s concern about futuristic robots feeding on the human population, but that is not our mission,’ said Harry Schoell, the chief executive of Cyberdyne Power Technologies, one of the companies behind the machine.”

“That is not our mission”?! And, apparently, the EATR can be programmed not to recognise human flesh as a top source of nutrients. Well, I’m reassured.


If you want a break from all this real-world undead horror, tonight at 11pm BBC4 is broadcasting Gods and Monsters, a rather lovely and barbedly witty film about the last days of James Whale, one of Hollywood’s foremost filmmakers and homosexualists. Ian McKellen stars as Mr Whale, with the lovely Brendan Fraser as his incredibly buff gardener. Both actors are superb, in a film that covers 1950s mores, Hollywood hypocrisy, being out as gay fifty years before your time, the trenches of the First World War and the making of probably the finest film of the Twentieth Century, Bride of Frankenstein. While perhaps the key scene is the tragic revelation of the stroke-reduced limits of Mr Whale’s talents, and what they mean for the characters, I still fondly remember the way we hooted with laughter at the death scene, and how everyone else in the cinema looked round and glared at us. That’s the peril of going to an arthouse cinema to see what, despite the po-faced patrons, is – like Bride of Frankenstein – a comedy about death.

Labels: Comics, Frankenstein, Health, Labour, Radio, Stupid Ideas, Technology, The Today Programme

Did you hear the return last week of the legendary I’m Sorry I Haven’t A Clue (Radio 4 again)? Broadcast for the first time without the legendary Chairman Humph, the fabulous Mr Stephen Fry is now in the chair. He seemed surprisingly ill-at-ease in last week’s edition, clearly wishing neither to adopt his benevolently rude brain-the-size-of-a-planet persona QI persona, nor impersonate the late Mr Lyttelton. By last night, however, he’d found his voice. After the topical rude joke about Mr Gladstone but before CSI Macclesfield and Victoria Wood with a Kalashnikov, Stephen made me laugh with a swipe at homeopathy:

“Famous institutions here in Westminster include the old Royal London Hospital, which was recently the subject of restoration work. However, disaster struck when the Homeopathic Wing collapsed – because they used scaffold poles which were just one-millionth the strength of proper scaffolding that actually worked.”

You can hear the second show again at noon on Sunday, or of course on the iPlayer’s Listen Again service, but entertaining as the rest of it was, there was something particularly satisfying when Mr Fry urbanely stilettoed those hope-cheating, money-grabbing, health-endangering quacks to whom too many others give a free ride. Looking at previous posts where I’ve touched on them – though I’d recommend Bad Science if you want to read a rigorous, regular and scientifically applied series of repeatable kickings – it seems that Radio 4 is a recurring theme across each of them, too, though I’m usually provoked by the Today Programme (a surprise, I know, dear reader) rather than cheering on such a serious and well-thought-out programme as I’m Sorry I Haven’t A Clue. I have in the past conflated them with David Cameron by suggesting that a “Liberal Conservative” was of a piece with being a Christian Satanist, a carnivorous vegetarian or a scientific alternative medical practitioner, but my favourite piece was after the Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency gobsmackingly decided to let homeopathic “remedies” label themselves like proper medicines, but without any of the actual tested evidence that any functional medicine requires:

“I think I have the solution. I’m perfectly happy for homeopathic ‘remedies’ to carry writing in which they boast of their effect. The text should just be strictly set at one-millionth the size of that on proper medicines. If the theory of homeopathy is true, that should make the advertising far more effective, and everyone will be happy.”

Labels: Comedy, Quackery, Radio, Stephen Fry, Stupid Ideas

Radio 4’s flagship is the Today Programme – the pips, the self-satisfied presenters, the ludicrous tangents, everything that makes anyone seriously interested in politics wake up shouting at the radio and want to throttle their wireless in the shower. But while today’s Today is being a prime example over the Speaker, there’s more to the station than that. Between 11 and 12 this morning, I’ll be listening to two quite different programmes: The Age of Ming, on the discrimination against Ming Campbell; and On the Outside, It Looked Like An Old-Fashioned Police Box, celebrating Target’s glorious Doctor Who book range.

Yesterday, I know everyone throughout the land was glued to the various forms of BBC news to find out who was going to be the new Speaker – well, a few dozen of us, anyway – and though the last round was in some ways less exciting than the others, an almighty sigh of relief already having gone up that ‘favourite’ Margaret Beckett had polled disastrously lower than predicted and was out of the running, I was still moderately pleased that John Bercow won. As I wrote yesterday, I’m not a big fan of the man… But, given that I was relatively pro three of the possible Speakers (the one I’d probably have voted for first, as predicted, bombed) and dead against six of the candidates, he at least was the one left in the middle that I was wary of but not implacably opposed to, so by default he’d have been my fourth choice.

For once, the aftermath of something in Parliament was more infuriating than the vote itself. Gordon Brown and Call-Me-Dave Cameron both made very House of Commons speeches: amusing in the way that after-dinner speakers who’ve never done it before are, lavishing praise and the odd barb (echoing each other in their nature, too), full of insincerity and the traditional Thing. Nick Clegg, I was relieved to hear, got a frostier reception by choosing not to be ‘a good House of Commons man’, instead focusing entirely not on appealing to MPs’ traditions or hurt feelings and instead on the need for reform – and how Speaker Bercow would have a fight on his hands, because the Commons isn’t naturally inclined that way.

But while the BBC’s online coverage included more from Nick from the other two – because it’s easier to quote something with a point than waffle – naturally the TV news had the other two… But not a word from him, because now they’re no longer bound by election laws of fair coverage, we don’t exist again. Still worse was Nick ‘Mate of Dave’ Robinson, who gave what was even for him an egregiously biased report straight from Conservative Central Office. It was all about how the poor Tories will have trouble with this ‘unknown’ Speaker and he’ll have to work hard to get them to like him. Not a word, as you may have expected, about the key difference between John Bercow and Sir George Young – about a reformer defeating a traditionalist, still less about him doing it by a reasonably large majority across all parties (a majority much bigger than anyone had predicted, suggesting quite a lot of Tories weren’t telling the truth about their votes). And if a Tory Government does come, an independent-minded Tory sounds a pretty good choice for Speaker, rather than a down-the-line well-behaved one, doesn’t it?

This morning’s Today Programme went one better. Not only was Nick ‘Mate of Dave’ Robinson giving it the same old schtick, but the programme’s prime slot just after 8.10 in the morning was given to Nadine Dorries. Nadine Dorries?! The minor Tory MP with a relentless drive for self-publicity, the one who’s always lying, cheating, being found guilty and then lying again that she’s been completely exonerated? The one colloquially known as “Mad Nad”? Yes, for some reason, the BBC thought she was the most important politician in the land this morning, spewing out the unrelenting and embittered poison of a very bad loser, and every time we heard her say “This is a factual statement,” the words ‘Honking great falsehood’ may as well have appeared in neon letters a metre high above our radio (hilariously, she called the election of an independent-minded member of her own party with a record of calling for change being elected instead of an anti-reform Etonian baronet who was deeply culpable in getting Parliament into that mess “sticking two fingers up at the British public”. Ms Dorries, l’État c’est ne pas toi). They didn’t even ask her whether her furious vitriol against Mr Bercow was anything to do with him being the main Tory speaker against her (losing) proposals to slash women’s abortion rights, which you might think would occur to a journalist doing their job. Then, for political balance, they had Alan Duncan – a Tory, half-defending a Tory, against a Tory. Good grief. Followed by Nick ‘Mate of Dave’ Robinson – a Tory, commenting from a Tory briefing on a Tory who was half-defending a Tory against a Tory.

It’s good to know the BBC represent views all across the political spectrums.

Hopefully, then, my faith in the channel will be rekindled at 11 this morning, when Robert Orchard is due to tell “the story of Sir Menzies Campbell’s battle to shake off media claims that he was too old for the job as leader of the Liberal Democrats. Robert asks how far it is acceptable for journalists to poke fun at someone on the grounds of age?” Well, better late than never, I suppose; apparently it takes about a year and a half to produce journalists’ crocodile tears (see the section “Leadership and the Media” in this piece from after the media forced Ming out, and try to ignore the rest). Actually, The Age of Ming might have me shouting at the radio as well…

Thank goodness, then, for something that should be really worth listening to. The Age of Ming is followed at 11.30am by On the Outside it Looked Like an Old Fashioned Police Box. Here’s what the Radio Times has to say:

“Back in the days before VHS, let alone DVD, the Doctor Who novelisations were the only way a fan could commit the Time Lord’s adventures to memory [mostly right, but have they not heard of nightmares?]. With a child’s big-budget imagination filling in for wobbly sets and monsters, the books became a bestselling phenomenon for publisher Target. Here, Mark Gatiss wallows in some paperback nostalgia as he pays tribute to such authors as Terrance Dicks, Malcolm Hulke and Philip Hinchcliffe [surely Ian Marter] - writers who taught many (thanks to the Who house style) the meaning of the words “capacious”, “crotchety” and “bohemian”, and ended up shaping a whole generation of young readers.”

I learned to read on Target Books, and have written reviews both of whole bunches at a time and individual stories, so I’ll certainly be glued to the set and hoping they don’t make a mess of it. As BBC Audiobooks have now started putting out complete readings on CD – among the best releases so far are Doctor Who and the Doomsday Weapon, Doctor Who and the Pyramids of Mars, Doctor Who and the Auton Invasion, Doctor Who and the Cave Monsters, Anneke Wills’ reading of my first ever book, and the rather lovely three-book boxed set Travels in Time and Space – I hope to hear clips of some of those readings coming up in the programme…


For your other viewing pleasure, you might like to try tuning in to ITV4 today at 10.50am – or 2.55 this afternoon, it’s the same episode – for The Prisoner in Dance of the Dead, arguably the best of the series. In some ways, it’s a good one for beginners; by our reckoning, despite always being broadcast eighth, in the running order that makes the most sense (key word: “most”) it’s the second one. On the other hand, it’s one of the barking mad ones, though some way from the most barking mad (key word…).

Patrick McGoohan is terrific in it, but the show’s stolen by Mary Morris, by a long way my favourite Number 2: small, elfin, but utterly dominant – one of the few who gives the impression she knows what’s actually going on rather than just being a jumped-up prisoner herself. You’ll get brain control, disillusioned spies, spooky cats, flirty maids and washed-up bodies on the beach… Then it gets stranger. The climax involves a change of identity for the body, Number 6 unwittingly adopting his own fancy dress, and a carnival that becomes a court staged as a cabaret, featuring a grotesque twist and ending in mob hysteria. It’s a surreal and high-concept episode, teetering on but not quite yet completely mad. That it’s played with such conviction by such superb actors makes it all rather threatening, and compelling fun. It’s even got music from The Tomb of the Cybermen in it, too.

Labels: Bigotry, Books, British Politics, Conservatives, Doctor Who, History, Nick Clegg, Radio, The Prisoner, The Today Programme