Monday, December 08, 2008
Cheers!
My sexy, charismatic, wise (well, after a few shorts, anyway) friend Mr Costigan Quist writes today of the Labour Government’s latest puritanical sallies back into the progressive-conservative don’t-do-what-you-want-it’s-not-good-for-you brigades of a century ago. Occasional drinking is, they suggest, exactly on a par with helpless drug addiction, and it’s just as harmful for your child to see you with a glass of wine in your hand once a week as it is a glass syringe once an hour. Is it bollocks. Good timing, though, with debates raging on how libertarian Liberals should be, and at the seventy-fifth anniversary of prohibition’s scrapping.
If you saunter over to Mr Quist’s Himmelgarten Café this morning for a tipple, then, you’ll find something rather hard to swallow: Costigan thoroughly fisks a report for the Department for Children, Schools and Families (shortly to be renamed the Department for All-Purpose Reasons to Boss You About) that takes a pathological approach to any drinking at all, attacking any views other than their own in increasingly hysterical terms.
New Labour was born with a streak of bossiness. I remember back in 1995 calling Mr Blair a “Social and Christian Democrat” and predicting that, as they’d given up on socialist pretensions to muck about with the economy, their controlling instincts would now turn to bossing people about in their personal lives. For several years, this tendency fought with what, in retrospect, now look like a few more liberal instincts – though the moralising forbidders were almost always on top. These days, as they’re trying to rediscover the joy of ordering the economy about (but not actually sure what to do with it), most of the Labour Government’s day-to-day initiatives remain an ever-increasingly shrill and ambitious wish-list of control over people’s everyday lives and choices, even when everyone involved is consenting, simply because they think a couple of people in government know better than 60-odd million other people I could mention if I tripped over another discarded Labour Government data stick in the street.
The Labour Government often tries to hide its bossiness, whether as a health measure or a ‘crackdown’ (because those are always bound to be good), and while I used to think they were just pathetically desperate to cuddle the Daily Mail (a ‘disgust reaction’ is of course a very bad reason to oppose anything in politics but, well, Eeewww), after more than a decade it’s quite obvious that they mean it. Mr Brown sincerely believes that anyone not in (Labour Government-approved) work is a moral degenerate and so naturally punishes the old, the sick, the parents or the increasing army of those who can’t find jobs after he’s trashed the economy; many of his underlings betray similarly fanatical zealotry against many ways in which people consentingly enjoy themselves, but try to bring in harshly bossy legislation in stages and recruit armies of form-fillers and curtain-twitchers, so they don’t have to defend their outright prohibitionist instincts.
We won’t actually completely ban smoking, say the Labour Government… But we know it’ll be good for you if we stop you doing it in as many particular places as we can think of, even if everyone there consents. We won’t actually completely ban prostitution, say the Labour Government… But we know it’ll be good for you if we conflate utterly different statistics to justify making it virtually illegal for any man to pay for sex with a woman (because all prostitutes are women and all clients are men, at least in Labour Government Ministers’ reality-detached minds)… We won’t actually completely ban alcohol, say the Labour Government… But we know it’ll be good for you if we found ways to manage it slice by salami slice. And so on.
The fact that many of the newly invented ‘crimes’ that Labour use the law to crusade against as gross moral turpitude are introduced in an incremental fashion so that each stage can be spun as reasonable, or that many of them are only indulged in by a minority – or that only a minority will admit to them – and that they can whip up tabloid hysteria against Nasty Things (Except On Our Pages) means that Liberal politicians are too hesitant to oppose them with the resounding “Fuck right off!” that they deserve. It’s sadly true that the Liberal Democrats have a sizeable minority of ‘ban nasty things for people’s own good’ mentality, but certainly much more unfortunately true that a large body of Liberal Democrats have no interest in banning things, say live and let live, but aren’t willing to stick their necks out for something that isn’t very important, doesn’t affect many people, and is very unpopular anyway.
I’ve said for a long time now, and feel much more free to say out now I’m no longer on the Federal Policy Committee, that the Liberal Democrats should announce a presumption against any new bans on anything, and make a much bigger noise each time the Labour Government gets bossy. I know we do it on occasion, and sometimes very well, including making a start on what nonsenses we’d repeal in a Freedom Law, but it’s far from an across-the-board line. It’s certainly never a campaigning issue, except on rare occasions where we can say it’s about money – such as ID cards – or doing something nasty to ‘nice’ people – such as holding the DNA of innocent people and kids because, hell, they’re bound to be guilty eventually. People ought to know, instinctively, that the Liberal Democrats are against people being bossed about, and for people being able to do what they want as long as they don’t harm others, whether people are nice or nasty. At the moment, I doubt a lot of even our elected representatives know that, and I’d be hard-put to point out solid policies to make it clear (when we were all writing the 2001 Manifesto, for example, it was fairly straightforward to come up with a ‘Green Action’ point on every page, but there were big arguments on coming up with even the most anodyne points to fill equivalent freedom boxes – partly because our policies were so threadbare on freedom directly, and partly because people disagreed with delivering it).
One example of the party’s occasionally mind-boggling timidity that remains close to my heart was when, some years ago, I wrote a letter to a newspaper expressing my frustration and disbelief at the media hagiography of Tony Martin. I pointed out that calling him a “hero” for shooting an unarmed man who was running away in the back was not a definition of “hero” I would be comfortable ever teaching a child, and that just because he was found sufficiently mentally disturbed that he wasn’t legally a murderer wouldn’t have stopped what he did being a murder if he’d been in full possession of his faculties. I signed myself as Vice-Chair of the Liberal Democrat Federal Policy Committee, which indeed I was. I was called into Cowley Street and read the riot act, and told in no uncertain times that I was not to mention I was Vice-Chair of the Policy Committee if I wanted to say anything so wildly contentious, and that people had been ringing up and threatening to resign their memberships because of me (and to think a decade earlier that was only happening because I wanted to legalise drugs and abolish the Queen, rather than say something really radical like ‘murder is bad’). I know, I know, I’m against bans and all that, but – on the one hand this, on the other hand that – I do draw the line at murder, which I know makes me a dangerous Liberal to many insane frothing right-wing bigots, as long as it’s the wrong kind of murder. As I’ve said so often before, the law should focus on whether actions are right or wrong and what harm is done by them, not on making moral judgments about whether people are nice people or nasty people.
Liberals must stand up against the Labour Government / Daily Mail axis of bossiness. The Liberal Democrats should shout that we will stop government meddling in things that are nobody’s business but your own. That it’s government’s place to stop bullying, not to be the biggest bully of the lot. That the government and that hysterical, reactionary rags do not know best for you; that you know what’s best for you, because everyone’s best is different. We should state as a policy principle that people can do whatever they like, as long as they don’t hurt others, and as long as they give their informed consent. So, naturally, all sorts of things should have to wait until you’re an adult and can make an informed decision – but it’s not the job of one set of adults with power to order all the adults in the country to conform to their whims. The very idea of ‘victimless crime’ should be an abhorrence: if there’s no victim, there shouldn’t be a sodding crime. And rather than running piecemeal to paper over each of the Labour Government’s insane bits of bossiness, depending on what time of day it is and what our own spokesperson’s whim is, we should leave people in no doubt what our presumption is.
Years ago, I suggested the slogan “Liberal Democrats: the party that says sex is all right”; I came up with it again last week during a lively debate on expressing what the Liberal Democrats stand for in a sentence. I then suggested, again slightly tongue-in-cheek but still getting the point over better than most of the others, “Liberal Democrats. For people and things the Daily Mail doesn’t like” or “For government by the Daily Mail, vote for the other two. To tell the Daily Mail to f*** off, vote Lib Dem.” It may not cover everything but, perhaps tellingly, people seemed much more energised by that than by my (completely ignored) attempt to put ‘freedom to live your own life’ into on-the-doorstep language.
Of course, politicians who claim to be progressives but who are in fact deeply socially conservative have been here before, always under the rallying cry of ‘We will improve you, because we know best for you’. Most infamously, a huge coalition of ‘progressives’ and social conservatives, with plenty of religion – though, as ever, they arranged both for people they didn’t like to be victimised and for the law to have a socking great get-out for religion itself, just like modern churches’ vicious bigotry and discrimination while wailing that anyone who hurts their feet when they kick them is persecuting them – and ‘we know what’s best for working people’ stirred in for good measure, managed to get prohibition of alcohol into the Eighteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution.
It was a disaster of epic proportions.
Last Friday, then, was the seventy-fifth anniversary of the repeal of prohibition through yet another amendment to the US Constitution, after all the people who charged into it were forced shame-facedly to admit that it had been utterly counter-productive. Those amendments are incredibly hard to deliver, but the fact that prohibition incredibly made it to the heart of US federal law tells you a lot about how bans can work. The letter of them passes because, although a large minority of people may be criminalised, and the majority may well not give a damn, moralising political and media hysteria can bully so many people into silence that opposition is too intimidated to stop it. But then the ban is a disaster in practice, because otherwise law-abiding people find ways round it – which means a jackpot for gangsters, no quality control, and that such a patently absurd law brings the whole of the Rule of Law into disrepute. Just because you can browbeat people into acquiescence, that’s not a good basis for law (and note that I’m not even going into one about how the law shouldn’t be used by genuine majorities to bash minorities, or I’d be here all day).
Prohibition is the criminals’ best friend. And the more popular the thing that’s prohibited is, the better. Governments can get away with banning small, little-practiced activities that they have no business banning; but if they ban something that a large section of the population does, prohibition is shown up as the massive absurdity that it is. Let me count just a few of the ways. From the government side, they have to expend massive extra law enforcement resources, at exactly the same time as people lose faith in a crazy law and the government loses its tax revenues, too. If the argument for banning something was that it’s associated with health problems, then that’s a disaster, too. Doing something illegal means people are far less likely to seek medical advice. Doing something illegal that most people know to be relatively harmless means that they’re much less likely to take seriously government warnings about something that may be much more harmful. And, while legal substances or activities can be subject to government quality control and health and safety inspection, the more illegal it is, the more slipshod and dangerous it can be with impunity. And, best of all, prohibition takes something that would be practised with a degree of openness and safety and gives every penny of the money to crooks who have it in their interests to keep it hidden and have very little interest in safety. Prohibition gets ordinary, law-abiding people into contact with crooks, undermines respect for the law, stops them being safe, and lets international and local gangsters all laugh all the way to the bank. It’s the biggest boost for crime on the entire planet.
Still, it’s a good job that we all learnt our lessons from the United States seventy-five years ago and that, say, no drugs less harmful and addictive than alcohol are massive money-spinners now for international crime.
Oh.
And, at last, back to the drinks table where I started. Though I’ll drink a lot more of the non-alcoholic stuff to fuel a colossal series of raids on the buffet, I’m happy to have a glass of champagne at a wedding, wine at a do, or embarrass friends hideously by asking for a chocolate liqueur instead of something butch in a bar… But, those aside, I rarely drink. I never have, despite worrying my parents as a child when a report came back to them from a Sunday School class in which all the kids were asked what their favourite food and drink were: I answered “wine and cheese,” despite not particularly liking cheese and not being in any position to tell whether I liked wine. The odd thing is, when the other kids were saying things like chocolate, chips, burgers or beans on toast (all of which I still prefer to wine or cheese to this day, admittedly), I was the only one who was impeccably Biblical – King David had cheese, you know, and he never did anything dodgy, did he (not that was mentioned in Sunday School, anyway), and the Bible’s tanked up with wine from end to end. But, no, I was the one who got it in the neck. I suspect it wasn’t about the cheese. Thank goodness they were strict Baptists rather than Methodists, or they’d have chucked me out many years earlier than they actually did. So why this particular eccentricity? Well, because I was reading Doctor Who and the Day of the Daleks, in which the Doctor binges on both at taxpayers’ expense and hypocritically has a go at a leading diplomat for keeping a well-stocked larder, as he empties it. So, with the Doctor a more vivid role model to me even than that bloke who arranged to have the husband of the woman he fancied cut to pieces or that bloke who turns non-alcoholic party beverages into highly intoxicating ones, each of whom Sunday School tried to persuade me was better, it was only natural that I should testify out of allegiance rather than taste. If I’d been five or so years older and seen the story on TV, of course, I might have seen the two lead characters and been put off by their whine and cheesiness.
I suspect I never got into the habit of drinking much in part because I once helped ‘serve’ drinks at my Dad’s office party, sometime before the age of ten, was fascinated by all the buttons to push, pushed them (being an experimentative child) and made myself very ill. It’ll also be because I didn’t like the taste of much of it when all my friends were throwing surreptitious parties in their parents’ absence, and was sufficiently non-conformist that I didn’t see the point in either pretending to enjoy it or in ‘acquiring’ the taste. Oh, and because I was gay and – difficult as it is to believe now – was wary enough of betraying that secret that I didn’t want to lose control. If they’d done alcopops back then and I’d had a boyfriend (sniff), maybe I’d have done more than experimented with getting drunk a couple of times and not thinking much of it.
Hmm, something I’ve not thought about for about eighteen years: when I was at Sixth Form, I’m sure I went away for the weekend with some sort of temperance society. I don’t remember much of it, except that it was pretty countryside, and I viewed it very much as weekend away with a friend of mine, with all the temperance propaganda washing straight over me. It certainly didn’t turn my friend Tom into a raging campaigner: I’m fairly sure he only got the non-alcoholic freebie because it came through the religious studies people, and he was their mate. It absolutely wasn’t because he was a total abstainer. He picked me to come along partly as a mate and partly because I tended not to drink and could therefore attend the freebie with a straighter face than he could, and possibly act as cover if he sidled off to the pub. I often found myself in that position: because I couldn’t be arsed about drinking, friends would get me to go down the offy and buy them whatever they wanted. It wasn’t that I looked older, particularly, but that I didn’t care, so I didn’t give off those waves of teenage desperation. Well, not about booze, anyway.
I did once land a friend in trouble when being the presentable, non-drinking one; he’d been knocking it back at a church youth social (yes, all right, two different churches every Sunday and Catholic comps meant masses of religion in my misspent youth), so I was prodded forward in the early hours as a demonstration of sobriety to impress the ferocious aunt he was staying with while he lurked biliously behind me. “Hello!” I cried cheerily. “This is your early warning make-up call.” And just because I tripped over my words ever so slightly, she wouldn’t believe I was sober. Life can be so unfair to teenagers. On the other hand, she looked terribly disappointed when she cruelly cooked a massive fry-up for us in the morning, and I brightly asked for seconds. I like fry-ups. Her nephew couldn’t manage his, for some reason…
At this stage, it would of course undermine Mr Quist’s case as a moderate drinker were I to mention I was at his stag do, so I’ll stop there.
If you saunter over to Mr Quist’s Himmelgarten Café this morning for a tipple, then, you’ll find something rather hard to swallow: Costigan thoroughly fisks a report for the Department for Children, Schools and Families (shortly to be renamed the Department for All-Purpose Reasons to Boss You About) that takes a pathological approach to any drinking at all, attacking any views other than their own in increasingly hysterical terms.
Labour – The Party That Likes To Say ‘Don’t Do That’
New Labour was born with a streak of bossiness. I remember back in 1995 calling Mr Blair a “Social and Christian Democrat” and predicting that, as they’d given up on socialist pretensions to muck about with the economy, their controlling instincts would now turn to bossing people about in their personal lives. For several years, this tendency fought with what, in retrospect, now look like a few more liberal instincts – though the moralising forbidders were almost always on top. These days, as they’re trying to rediscover the joy of ordering the economy about (but not actually sure what to do with it), most of the Labour Government’s day-to-day initiatives remain an ever-increasingly shrill and ambitious wish-list of control over people’s everyday lives and choices, even when everyone involved is consenting, simply because they think a couple of people in government know better than 60-odd million other people I could mention if I tripped over another discarded Labour Government data stick in the street.
The Labour Government often tries to hide its bossiness, whether as a health measure or a ‘crackdown’ (because those are always bound to be good), and while I used to think they were just pathetically desperate to cuddle the Daily Mail (a ‘disgust reaction’ is of course a very bad reason to oppose anything in politics but, well, Eeewww), after more than a decade it’s quite obvious that they mean it. Mr Brown sincerely believes that anyone not in (Labour Government-approved) work is a moral degenerate and so naturally punishes the old, the sick, the parents or the increasing army of those who can’t find jobs after he’s trashed the economy; many of his underlings betray similarly fanatical zealotry against many ways in which people consentingly enjoy themselves, but try to bring in harshly bossy legislation in stages and recruit armies of form-fillers and curtain-twitchers, so they don’t have to defend their outright prohibitionist instincts.
We won’t actually completely ban smoking, say the Labour Government… But we know it’ll be good for you if we stop you doing it in as many particular places as we can think of, even if everyone there consents. We won’t actually completely ban prostitution, say the Labour Government… But we know it’ll be good for you if we conflate utterly different statistics to justify making it virtually illegal for any man to pay for sex with a woman (because all prostitutes are women and all clients are men, at least in Labour Government Ministers’ reality-detached minds)… We won’t actually completely ban alcohol, say the Labour Government… But we know it’ll be good for you if we found ways to manage it slice by salami slice. And so on.
Liberals Say “Fuck Off To the Daily Mail”
The fact that many of the newly invented ‘crimes’ that Labour use the law to crusade against as gross moral turpitude are introduced in an incremental fashion so that each stage can be spun as reasonable, or that many of them are only indulged in by a minority – or that only a minority will admit to them – and that they can whip up tabloid hysteria against Nasty Things (Except On Our Pages) means that Liberal politicians are too hesitant to oppose them with the resounding “Fuck right off!” that they deserve. It’s sadly true that the Liberal Democrats have a sizeable minority of ‘ban nasty things for people’s own good’ mentality, but certainly much more unfortunately true that a large body of Liberal Democrats have no interest in banning things, say live and let live, but aren’t willing to stick their necks out for something that isn’t very important, doesn’t affect many people, and is very unpopular anyway.
I’ve said for a long time now, and feel much more free to say out now I’m no longer on the Federal Policy Committee, that the Liberal Democrats should announce a presumption against any new bans on anything, and make a much bigger noise each time the Labour Government gets bossy. I know we do it on occasion, and sometimes very well, including making a start on what nonsenses we’d repeal in a Freedom Law, but it’s far from an across-the-board line. It’s certainly never a campaigning issue, except on rare occasions where we can say it’s about money – such as ID cards – or doing something nasty to ‘nice’ people – such as holding the DNA of innocent people and kids because, hell, they’re bound to be guilty eventually. People ought to know, instinctively, that the Liberal Democrats are against people being bossed about, and for people being able to do what they want as long as they don’t harm others, whether people are nice or nasty. At the moment, I doubt a lot of even our elected representatives know that, and I’d be hard-put to point out solid policies to make it clear (when we were all writing the 2001 Manifesto, for example, it was fairly straightforward to come up with a ‘Green Action’ point on every page, but there were big arguments on coming up with even the most anodyne points to fill equivalent freedom boxes – partly because our policies were so threadbare on freedom directly, and partly because people disagreed with delivering it).
One example of the party’s occasionally mind-boggling timidity that remains close to my heart was when, some years ago, I wrote a letter to a newspaper expressing my frustration and disbelief at the media hagiography of Tony Martin. I pointed out that calling him a “hero” for shooting an unarmed man who was running away in the back was not a definition of “hero” I would be comfortable ever teaching a child, and that just because he was found sufficiently mentally disturbed that he wasn’t legally a murderer wouldn’t have stopped what he did being a murder if he’d been in full possession of his faculties. I signed myself as Vice-Chair of the Liberal Democrat Federal Policy Committee, which indeed I was. I was called into Cowley Street and read the riot act, and told in no uncertain times that I was not to mention I was Vice-Chair of the Policy Committee if I wanted to say anything so wildly contentious, and that people had been ringing up and threatening to resign their memberships because of me (and to think a decade earlier that was only happening because I wanted to legalise drugs and abolish the Queen, rather than say something really radical like ‘murder is bad’). I know, I know, I’m against bans and all that, but – on the one hand this, on the other hand that – I do draw the line at murder, which I know makes me a dangerous Liberal to many insane frothing right-wing bigots, as long as it’s the wrong kind of murder. As I’ve said so often before, the law should focus on whether actions are right or wrong and what harm is done by them, not on making moral judgments about whether people are nice people or nasty people.
Liberals must stand up against the Labour Government / Daily Mail axis of bossiness. The Liberal Democrats should shout that we will stop government meddling in things that are nobody’s business but your own. That it’s government’s place to stop bullying, not to be the biggest bully of the lot. That the government and that hysterical, reactionary rags do not know best for you; that you know what’s best for you, because everyone’s best is different. We should state as a policy principle that people can do whatever they like, as long as they don’t hurt others, and as long as they give their informed consent. So, naturally, all sorts of things should have to wait until you’re an adult and can make an informed decision – but it’s not the job of one set of adults with power to order all the adults in the country to conform to their whims. The very idea of ‘victimless crime’ should be an abhorrence: if there’s no victim, there shouldn’t be a sodding crime. And rather than running piecemeal to paper over each of the Labour Government’s insane bits of bossiness, depending on what time of day it is and what our own spokesperson’s whim is, we should leave people in no doubt what our presumption is.
Years ago, I suggested the slogan “Liberal Democrats: the party that says sex is all right”; I came up with it again last week during a lively debate on expressing what the Liberal Democrats stand for in a sentence. I then suggested, again slightly tongue-in-cheek but still getting the point over better than most of the others, “Liberal Democrats. For people and things the Daily Mail doesn’t like” or “For government by the Daily Mail, vote for the other two. To tell the Daily Mail to f*** off, vote Lib Dem.” It may not cover everything but, perhaps tellingly, people seemed much more energised by that than by my (completely ignored) attempt to put ‘freedom to live your own life’ into on-the-doorstep language.
Because Prohibition Went So Well Last Time
Of course, politicians who claim to be progressives but who are in fact deeply socially conservative have been here before, always under the rallying cry of ‘We will improve you, because we know best for you’. Most infamously, a huge coalition of ‘progressives’ and social conservatives, with plenty of religion – though, as ever, they arranged both for people they didn’t like to be victimised and for the law to have a socking great get-out for religion itself, just like modern churches’ vicious bigotry and discrimination while wailing that anyone who hurts their feet when they kick them is persecuting them – and ‘we know what’s best for working people’ stirred in for good measure, managed to get prohibition of alcohol into the Eighteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution.
It was a disaster of epic proportions.
Last Friday, then, was the seventy-fifth anniversary of the repeal of prohibition through yet another amendment to the US Constitution, after all the people who charged into it were forced shame-facedly to admit that it had been utterly counter-productive. Those amendments are incredibly hard to deliver, but the fact that prohibition incredibly made it to the heart of US federal law tells you a lot about how bans can work. The letter of them passes because, although a large minority of people may be criminalised, and the majority may well not give a damn, moralising political and media hysteria can bully so many people into silence that opposition is too intimidated to stop it. But then the ban is a disaster in practice, because otherwise law-abiding people find ways round it – which means a jackpot for gangsters, no quality control, and that such a patently absurd law brings the whole of the Rule of Law into disrepute. Just because you can browbeat people into acquiescence, that’s not a good basis for law (and note that I’m not even going into one about how the law shouldn’t be used by genuine majorities to bash minorities, or I’d be here all day).
Prohibition is the criminals’ best friend. And the more popular the thing that’s prohibited is, the better. Governments can get away with banning small, little-practiced activities that they have no business banning; but if they ban something that a large section of the population does, prohibition is shown up as the massive absurdity that it is. Let me count just a few of the ways. From the government side, they have to expend massive extra law enforcement resources, at exactly the same time as people lose faith in a crazy law and the government loses its tax revenues, too. If the argument for banning something was that it’s associated with health problems, then that’s a disaster, too. Doing something illegal means people are far less likely to seek medical advice. Doing something illegal that most people know to be relatively harmless means that they’re much less likely to take seriously government warnings about something that may be much more harmful. And, while legal substances or activities can be subject to government quality control and health and safety inspection, the more illegal it is, the more slipshod and dangerous it can be with impunity. And, best of all, prohibition takes something that would be practised with a degree of openness and safety and gives every penny of the money to crooks who have it in their interests to keep it hidden and have very little interest in safety. Prohibition gets ordinary, law-abiding people into contact with crooks, undermines respect for the law, stops them being safe, and lets international and local gangsters all laugh all the way to the bank. It’s the biggest boost for crime on the entire planet.
Still, it’s a good job that we all learnt our lessons from the United States seventy-five years ago and that, say, no drugs less harmful and addictive than alcohol are massive money-spinners now for international crime.
Oh.
In Which Alex Meanders Down Memory Lane, Surprisingly Without the Aid of Getting Off His Face
And, at last, back to the drinks table where I started. Though I’ll drink a lot more of the non-alcoholic stuff to fuel a colossal series of raids on the buffet, I’m happy to have a glass of champagne at a wedding, wine at a do, or embarrass friends hideously by asking for a chocolate liqueur instead of something butch in a bar… But, those aside, I rarely drink. I never have, despite worrying my parents as a child when a report came back to them from a Sunday School class in which all the kids were asked what their favourite food and drink were: I answered “wine and cheese,” despite not particularly liking cheese and not being in any position to tell whether I liked wine. The odd thing is, when the other kids were saying things like chocolate, chips, burgers or beans on toast (all of which I still prefer to wine or cheese to this day, admittedly), I was the only one who was impeccably Biblical – King David had cheese, you know, and he never did anything dodgy, did he (not that was mentioned in Sunday School, anyway), and the Bible’s tanked up with wine from end to end. But, no, I was the one who got it in the neck. I suspect it wasn’t about the cheese. Thank goodness they were strict Baptists rather than Methodists, or they’d have chucked me out many years earlier than they actually did. So why this particular eccentricity? Well, because I was reading Doctor Who and the Day of the Daleks, in which the Doctor binges on both at taxpayers’ expense and hypocritically has a go at a leading diplomat for keeping a well-stocked larder, as he empties it. So, with the Doctor a more vivid role model to me even than that bloke who arranged to have the husband of the woman he fancied cut to pieces or that bloke who turns non-alcoholic party beverages into highly intoxicating ones, each of whom Sunday School tried to persuade me was better, it was only natural that I should testify out of allegiance rather than taste. If I’d been five or so years older and seen the story on TV, of course, I might have seen the two lead characters and been put off by their whine and cheesiness.
I suspect I never got into the habit of drinking much in part because I once helped ‘serve’ drinks at my Dad’s office party, sometime before the age of ten, was fascinated by all the buttons to push, pushed them (being an experimentative child) and made myself very ill. It’ll also be because I didn’t like the taste of much of it when all my friends were throwing surreptitious parties in their parents’ absence, and was sufficiently non-conformist that I didn’t see the point in either pretending to enjoy it or in ‘acquiring’ the taste. Oh, and because I was gay and – difficult as it is to believe now – was wary enough of betraying that secret that I didn’t want to lose control. If they’d done alcopops back then and I’d had a boyfriend (sniff), maybe I’d have done more than experimented with getting drunk a couple of times and not thinking much of it.
Hmm, something I’ve not thought about for about eighteen years: when I was at Sixth Form, I’m sure I went away for the weekend with some sort of temperance society. I don’t remember much of it, except that it was pretty countryside, and I viewed it very much as weekend away with a friend of mine, with all the temperance propaganda washing straight over me. It certainly didn’t turn my friend Tom into a raging campaigner: I’m fairly sure he only got the non-alcoholic freebie because it came through the religious studies people, and he was their mate. It absolutely wasn’t because he was a total abstainer. He picked me to come along partly as a mate and partly because I tended not to drink and could therefore attend the freebie with a straighter face than he could, and possibly act as cover if he sidled off to the pub. I often found myself in that position: because I couldn’t be arsed about drinking, friends would get me to go down the offy and buy them whatever they wanted. It wasn’t that I looked older, particularly, but that I didn’t care, so I didn’t give off those waves of teenage desperation. Well, not about booze, anyway.
I did once land a friend in trouble when being the presentable, non-drinking one; he’d been knocking it back at a church youth social (yes, all right, two different churches every Sunday and Catholic comps meant masses of religion in my misspent youth), so I was prodded forward in the early hours as a demonstration of sobriety to impress the ferocious aunt he was staying with while he lurked biliously behind me. “Hello!” I cried cheerily. “This is your early warning make-up call.” And just because I tripped over my words ever so slightly, she wouldn’t believe I was sober. Life can be so unfair to teenagers. On the other hand, she looked terribly disappointed when she cruelly cooked a massive fry-up for us in the morning, and I brightly asked for seconds. I like fry-ups. Her nephew couldn’t manage his, for some reason…
At this stage, it would of course undermine Mr Quist’s case as a moderate drinker were I to mention I was at his stag do, so I’ll stop there.
Labels: British Politics, Drugs, FPC, History, Jon Pertwee, Labour, Liberal Democrats, Liberalism, Meddling In Things That Are Nobody's Business But Your Own, Personal, Religion, Sex, Stupid Ideas, Utopia
Friday, December 05, 2008
The (New) Avengers – The Midas Touch / How To Succeed… At Murder
Crawling from my pit after six days of stomach virus, with Richard recovered too (I generously infected him, though he skipped what he called my “full Exorcist” – not the best way to lose half a stone over a weekend), I notice there’s a double bill of The New Avengers and The Avengers on BBC4 late tonight, after ‘Charlie Brooker Does That-Russell-T-Davies-Book’. They’re ideal if you’re not well: one features a killer who carries every infection known to humanity; the other’ll make you nauseous. Yes, it’s a pretty good New Avengers paired with the Avengers episode kept in the attic. I’m taking a look at them, then, to test if I’m almost back to my normal level of ill health, and put off the scary number of Doctor Who and politics pieces I feel I should be catching up with.
This is scheduled to start at 12.35 tonight, followed at 1.30am by the Avengers episode – assuming, of course, that BBC4 doesn’t go the way of BBC1 last night and replace its line-up with ‘Let’s All Be the Daily Mail: Extended Hand-Rubbing Over “Evil” Chavs’ so-called documentaries. So what’s good about this episode? Well, there’s a great mix of ideas, some original, many nicked, but mostly rather fun. The Masque of the Red Death gets stirred in with a wild ’70s party scene – Cornelltoppingday’s “Porno Funk Music Factor” review category was born for moments like this – that’s both memorable and rather icky, and though practically every review of this ever written uses the quote I’ve used above from the doctor checking out the aftermath of the party, there’s no doubt it’s the line that above all others springs to mind. David Swift from Drop the Dead Donkey plays the main villain, who it would be unkind (but not in any way unfair) to call a cheap knock-off of Goldfinger, but he has great fun doing it, responsible for a plot that appears inspired by Survivors – the first time round.
There’s a particularly striking ‘assassination’ at Heathrow, too – and, yes, even what I said above about losing half a stone unpleasantly in three days was relevant. Here, someone slims even more quickly. All you need to do is get shot and leak gold dust, and the pounds just fall away. Of course, the character who gets shot is supposed to be Chinese, and (the series again not quite knowing what it wants to be) there’s a Chinese actor cast as the spymaster, but the distinctly Caucasian Ronald Lacey is wasted as her agent, neither looking nor sounding remotely Chinese (it makes you realise just how much effort the BBC, by contrast, was putting into The Talons of Weng-Chiang – more on that story later – at about the same time). A more successful human chameleon is John Carson, good in almost every part he plays but almost unrecognisable as every different character, here an old agent turned alcoholic tramp and desperate for redemption. And then there’s an eye-bogglingly villainous Prime Minister of a vaguely foreign state, who’s after the perfect way to end the royal line and take control; he is, admittedly, evil, but as the last surviving princess’s accomplishments apparently amount to a nice frock, a nice smile and no lines, the script does leave you wondering if he may actually have a point that he’s rather better-qualified. Even for a bit of a mix of an episode, you feel that leaving you thinking the fascist coup leader may be onto something could be something of a misjudgement.
One of my favourite flourishes here is to take two of the most ostentatiously butch clichés that always pop up as action sequences, the how-fast-and-macho-can-you-go army assault course and squealing-tired car chase (“the one that goes on about half the episode,” some have observed, but it’s really very well done, and is borrowed for most of the ‘temporary’ titles sequence) and, while making the visuals for each of them every bit as exciting as they’re meant to be, utterly subvert them both through the dialogue and the presence of Joanna Lumley. During each of these testosterone-fuelled stretches, she’s not just keeping up with the boys, not just clearly finding it all too easy, but nonchalantly chatting away throughout, which more than any other one thing makes this fine Avengers material. It’s a thrillingly executed car chase, I have to admit, but you’ve seen a lot of those. It’s not the chase you remember; it’s the excellent use of a practical orange, and Gambit and Purdey arguing about who directed The Treasure of the Sierra Madre as they drive (if you’ve not seen the film, you’ve probably seen it pastiched in one of the finest Simpsons episodes). I love watching Walter Huston – he runs away with one of my favourite films, All That Money Can Buy – but I still can’t see his name without hearing Joanna Lumley breathe in my ear, “it was his son, John.” As well as David Swift, she does some of that breathing to another super sit-com star to be, this one in a small part as the young guard who perves over Purdey. Well, everyone perves over Purdey, particularly here…
The thing is, Purdey is both the best and the worst thing about The New Avengers, and the reasons why are particularly keenly on display here. What’s best is that Joanna Lumley is fantastic. She looks stunning, she’s amazing at the action sequences, but most of all she just blazes intelligence and charisma. The trouble is, she has a much more uphill struggle than any of the three main Avengers women – all terrific, too – in the Sixties. The Avengers women were strong, capable and independent, and the marvellous Patrick Macnee was very happy to stand back and let them do the rough stuff. Not only were they unique on television before the mainstream rise of feminism, they were the sort of powerful role models that helped get it running. The New Avengers, though, was filmed in the middle of ‘Women’s Lib’, where it was no longer new, no longer groundbreaking, and was even kicking against the sort of roles for women that had made The Avengers so different, the series no longer changing things a little in the real world that it strove to ignore but trying more to fit in with the real world instead. This series adds Gareth Hunt’s Gambit, perfectly decent on his own, but a macho, martial-arts man who’s always trying crassly to get his end away with Purdey, which means both that she becomes a bit more prim and that she gets far less of the action, while the older Steed does most of the intellectual work. So, astoundingly, a version of The Avengers is suddenly pushing the woman back behind the men again. While everyone just accepted the bizarre superhumanity of a woman in leather throwing men over her shoulders in the Sixties, here Purdey keeps being given clumsy ‘let’s have the argument about Women’s Lib’ lines to try and ‘justify’ herself. And there’s a really unpleasant recurring motif of male characters not so much fancying Purdey as drooling over her with a threat of sexual violence. With that set-up, it’s a tribute to Ms Lumley that she’s still so eccentric and energetic, and constantly steals the show.
Still regarding Purdey, another unbelievable decision for The New Avengers was that the Avengers woman now needed to be put in diaphanous skirts to make her look more ‘feminine’ – as if the others had never been sex symbols! – and to make sure she’ll trip up more often, flash her knickers going over a fence, and leave still more of the action to Gambit. In this episode, there’s a breakneck chase on foot through a derelict factory – or, in Purdey’s case, in heels. She’s still faster than Gareth Hunt. Fine, you can imagine Joanna Lumley saying, I’ll be dainty and demure and traditionally feminine for you. Whoops! Oh, I’m so sorry, I appear to have accidentally cut off all my hair. Look at the opening titles, made up of footage from some of the early episodes while they were waiting for the swish ‘proper’ titles to be ready (when those turn up in a few weeks, gasp at the massively expensive, ground-breaking, time-consuming three-colour hand-cranked 1976 computer animation), and you can see some test film of Purdey with long hair, but just as they were about to start filming the full episodes, Joanna had her hair cut into a short bob that became famous, and made the producer so furious she was nearly sacked for it. She’s fantastic.
This is the episode, of all of them, after which you’re most likely to find yourself staring muzzily around at half-two in the morning, saying to yourself, ‘Oh, dear, I meant to watch The Avengers but I fell asleep and had such a rubbish dream’. To be fair, it isn’t entirely rubbish; some of the broad comedy murders are fun, the actors are good and it’s shot rather well, and incidental details like the perfume Leap Into My Fervid Arms are as diverting as ever. But the problem is, not only is the central story rather weak, it feels just plain wrong. The Avengers ‘got away with’ its uniquely strong leading women simply by making them superhumanly capable and ignoring anything that anyone might say about how odd that might be. Except here.
This is The Avengers Versus The Monstrous Regiment of Women. Oh, the number of times Doctor Who nearly did the ‘imagine how frightful it would be if the girlies were in charge?’ story and managed to pull back at the last minute… What a narrow escape! Everything did it in the Sixties and Seventies to show the little women why they should stay in their place, but if there was any series that you’d thing would know better, it’s this one. It’s only the presence of Patrick Macnee and Diana Rigg that make it clear this isn’t a dumb spoof of The Avengers by some men who think the concept that a woman could be as good as a man riotously funny and set out to show how rib-tickling it is. Complete with Steed tickling the ribs of and spanking the miscreant uppity females who want to take over. “Ruination to all men!” indeed.
I’m torn between wishing that the plot was better and being glad that it’s pretty weak even without the silly sexism, as that robs it of any excuses. It’s by a long way the least impressive of this season of the show, an unsettling mixture of broad comedy, chauvinist ‘social comment’ and trying to be affecting over a lost love. Goodness knows what it thought it was doing. Still, the talent involved means even this remains watchable, if you turn your brain off, with some entertaining cameos, exciting fights (“I’d have brought my ray-gun”) and, look, help me, I’m clutching at straws here, the wafer-thin defence that the idea that the rise of women means the destruction of men is revealed to be nothing but a male fantasy at the end. Oh, just watch it for Christopher Benjamin’s outrageous camp innuendos.
“Yes, Mr Gambit, they died of everything.”The New Avengers is a strange beast. In 1976, more than half a decade after the last Avengers episode, the producers decided to make some more. Due to legal wrangles, they had the rights to almost everything except the title, which they had to change a bit. And they wanted it to be just the same, with suave, fey Steed and a capable woman, but also different, with a new pairing of a traditionally macho man and the woman, who now has to spend half her time pushing him away with a stick. So they did both. It never quite decided what it wanted to be, but occasionally it worked, and tonight’s episode is one of those where it works pretty well – in part because, despite being coarser and dumber in parts than it ever needs to be, this one rather wants to be The Avengers, and when Patrick Macnee is Steed, Brian Clemens is writing and the fabulous pop-art imagination of Robert Fuest is directing, if they all want to be The Avengers then it will be, damn it, even this far out of the Sixties.
The New Avengers – The Midas Touch
This is scheduled to start at 12.35 tonight, followed at 1.30am by the Avengers episode – assuming, of course, that BBC4 doesn’t go the way of BBC1 last night and replace its line-up with ‘Let’s All Be the Daily Mail: Extended Hand-Rubbing Over “Evil” Chavs’ so-called documentaries. So what’s good about this episode? Well, there’s a great mix of ideas, some original, many nicked, but mostly rather fun. The Masque of the Red Death gets stirred in with a wild ’70s party scene – Cornelltoppingday’s “Porno Funk Music Factor” review category was born for moments like this – that’s both memorable and rather icky, and though practically every review of this ever written uses the quote I’ve used above from the doctor checking out the aftermath of the party, there’s no doubt it’s the line that above all others springs to mind. David Swift from Drop the Dead Donkey plays the main villain, who it would be unkind (but not in any way unfair) to call a cheap knock-off of Goldfinger, but he has great fun doing it, responsible for a plot that appears inspired by Survivors – the first time round.
There’s a particularly striking ‘assassination’ at Heathrow, too – and, yes, even what I said above about losing half a stone unpleasantly in three days was relevant. Here, someone slims even more quickly. All you need to do is get shot and leak gold dust, and the pounds just fall away. Of course, the character who gets shot is supposed to be Chinese, and (the series again not quite knowing what it wants to be) there’s a Chinese actor cast as the spymaster, but the distinctly Caucasian Ronald Lacey is wasted as her agent, neither looking nor sounding remotely Chinese (it makes you realise just how much effort the BBC, by contrast, was putting into The Talons of Weng-Chiang – more on that story later – at about the same time). A more successful human chameleon is John Carson, good in almost every part he plays but almost unrecognisable as every different character, here an old agent turned alcoholic tramp and desperate for redemption. And then there’s an eye-bogglingly villainous Prime Minister of a vaguely foreign state, who’s after the perfect way to end the royal line and take control; he is, admittedly, evil, but as the last surviving princess’s accomplishments apparently amount to a nice frock, a nice smile and no lines, the script does leave you wondering if he may actually have a point that he’s rather better-qualified. Even for a bit of a mix of an episode, you feel that leaving you thinking the fascist coup leader may be onto something could be something of a misjudgement.
One of my favourite flourishes here is to take two of the most ostentatiously butch clichés that always pop up as action sequences, the how-fast-and-macho-can-you-go army assault course and squealing-tired car chase (“the one that goes on about half the episode,” some have observed, but it’s really very well done, and is borrowed for most of the ‘temporary’ titles sequence) and, while making the visuals for each of them every bit as exciting as they’re meant to be, utterly subvert them both through the dialogue and the presence of Joanna Lumley. During each of these testosterone-fuelled stretches, she’s not just keeping up with the boys, not just clearly finding it all too easy, but nonchalantly chatting away throughout, which more than any other one thing makes this fine Avengers material. It’s a thrillingly executed car chase, I have to admit, but you’ve seen a lot of those. It’s not the chase you remember; it’s the excellent use of a practical orange, and Gambit and Purdey arguing about who directed The Treasure of the Sierra Madre as they drive (if you’ve not seen the film, you’ve probably seen it pastiched in one of the finest Simpsons episodes). I love watching Walter Huston – he runs away with one of my favourite films, All That Money Can Buy – but I still can’t see his name without hearing Joanna Lumley breathe in my ear, “it was his son, John.” As well as David Swift, she does some of that breathing to another super sit-com star to be, this one in a small part as the young guard who perves over Purdey. Well, everyone perves over Purdey, particularly here…
Purdey and The New Avengers’ Problem
The thing is, Purdey is both the best and the worst thing about The New Avengers, and the reasons why are particularly keenly on display here. What’s best is that Joanna Lumley is fantastic. She looks stunning, she’s amazing at the action sequences, but most of all she just blazes intelligence and charisma. The trouble is, she has a much more uphill struggle than any of the three main Avengers women – all terrific, too – in the Sixties. The Avengers women were strong, capable and independent, and the marvellous Patrick Macnee was very happy to stand back and let them do the rough stuff. Not only were they unique on television before the mainstream rise of feminism, they were the sort of powerful role models that helped get it running. The New Avengers, though, was filmed in the middle of ‘Women’s Lib’, where it was no longer new, no longer groundbreaking, and was even kicking against the sort of roles for women that had made The Avengers so different, the series no longer changing things a little in the real world that it strove to ignore but trying more to fit in with the real world instead. This series adds Gareth Hunt’s Gambit, perfectly decent on his own, but a macho, martial-arts man who’s always trying crassly to get his end away with Purdey, which means both that she becomes a bit more prim and that she gets far less of the action, while the older Steed does most of the intellectual work. So, astoundingly, a version of The Avengers is suddenly pushing the woman back behind the men again. While everyone just accepted the bizarre superhumanity of a woman in leather throwing men over her shoulders in the Sixties, here Purdey keeps being given clumsy ‘let’s have the argument about Women’s Lib’ lines to try and ‘justify’ herself. And there’s a really unpleasant recurring motif of male characters not so much fancying Purdey as drooling over her with a threat of sexual violence. With that set-up, it’s a tribute to Ms Lumley that she’s still so eccentric and energetic, and constantly steals the show.
Still regarding Purdey, another unbelievable decision for The New Avengers was that the Avengers woman now needed to be put in diaphanous skirts to make her look more ‘feminine’ – as if the others had never been sex symbols! – and to make sure she’ll trip up more often, flash her knickers going over a fence, and leave still more of the action to Gambit. In this episode, there’s a breakneck chase on foot through a derelict factory – or, in Purdey’s case, in heels. She’s still faster than Gareth Hunt. Fine, you can imagine Joanna Lumley saying, I’ll be dainty and demure and traditionally feminine for you. Whoops! Oh, I’m so sorry, I appear to have accidentally cut off all my hair. Look at the opening titles, made up of footage from some of the early episodes while they were waiting for the swish ‘proper’ titles to be ready (when those turn up in a few weeks, gasp at the massively expensive, ground-breaking, time-consuming three-colour hand-cranked 1976 computer animation), and you can see some test film of Purdey with long hair, but just as they were about to start filming the full episodes, Joanna had her hair cut into a short bob that became famous, and made the producer so furious she was nearly sacked for it. She’s fantastic.
How To Succeed… At Murder (but not at The Avengers)
Steed becomes a perfect boss – Emma goes seeking charmAfter my reservations about The New Avengers suddenly discovering sexism in the Seventies when the Sixties series cruised by with hardly a flash of it, then, it must be a relief to get back to 1966, an episode from arguably the finest season of The Avengers, with – in another crossover with The Talons of Weng-Chiang – a breathtaking performance by Christopher Benjamin’s magnificent Hooter (as well as an eerie doll). It has much better outfits, and moody black and white photography… It has a chartered accountant, the always marvellously slimy Jerome Willis… It even has Steed and Emma interlocked on the sofa. What could possibly go wrong?
This is the episode, of all of them, after which you’re most likely to find yourself staring muzzily around at half-two in the morning, saying to yourself, ‘Oh, dear, I meant to watch The Avengers but I fell asleep and had such a rubbish dream’. To be fair, it isn’t entirely rubbish; some of the broad comedy murders are fun, the actors are good and it’s shot rather well, and incidental details like the perfume Leap Into My Fervid Arms are as diverting as ever. But the problem is, not only is the central story rather weak, it feels just plain wrong. The Avengers ‘got away with’ its uniquely strong leading women simply by making them superhumanly capable and ignoring anything that anyone might say about how odd that might be. Except here.
This is The Avengers Versus The Monstrous Regiment of Women. Oh, the number of times Doctor Who nearly did the ‘imagine how frightful it would be if the girlies were in charge?’ story and managed to pull back at the last minute… What a narrow escape! Everything did it in the Sixties and Seventies to show the little women why they should stay in their place, but if there was any series that you’d thing would know better, it’s this one. It’s only the presence of Patrick Macnee and Diana Rigg that make it clear this isn’t a dumb spoof of The Avengers by some men who think the concept that a woman could be as good as a man riotously funny and set out to show how rib-tickling it is. Complete with Steed tickling the ribs of and spanking the miscreant uppity females who want to take over. “Ruination to all men!” indeed.
I’m torn between wishing that the plot was better and being glad that it’s pretty weak even without the silly sexism, as that robs it of any excuses. It’s by a long way the least impressive of this season of the show, an unsettling mixture of broad comedy, chauvinist ‘social comment’ and trying to be affecting over a lost love. Goodness knows what it thought it was doing. Still, the talent involved means even this remains watchable, if you turn your brain off, with some entertaining cameos, exciting fights (“I’d have brought my ray-gun”) and, look, help me, I’m clutching at straws here, the wafer-thin defence that the idea that the rise of women means the destruction of men is revealed to be nothing but a male fantasy at the end. Oh, just watch it for Christopher Benjamin’s outrageous camp innuendos.
“There you see the splendid beast, naked before you!”
Labels: Bigotry, Health, Joanna Lumley, Personal, Reviews, The Avengers, The Avengers Season 4, The New Avengers
Sunday, November 30, 2008
Lib Dem Blogs In Time Travel Horror
Not a terribly good night, but on feeling marginally less ill this morning I managed to ring NHS Direct, which seems more concerned with checking my personal details in triplicate than making a diagnosis. And they say New Labour’s dead! I lack the energy for writing Doctor Who celebrations right now, but looking at Lib Dem Blogs Aggregated I find that it’s gone back to the 1970s for me. Apparently, it was last updated on Thursday 1st January 1970, which has a few disadvantages. There aren’t any blogs, and it’s not the ideal time period in which to be stranded.
I’ve just missed the ’60s, and I might bump into Jon Pertwee. The horror! There are at least three Liberal revivals to get excited about and then fizzle away dishearteningly without us getting in again, the music’s going downhill, I’ve got half a decade to wait for Tom Baker, racist jokes are ‘funny’ and as for being openly gay… It’s even a couple of years before I can go find myself as a baby and see if chucking my tiny chin can cause everything to explode.
Leave Life On Mars, thank you very much. I’d rather have life in 2008.
Switching on the colour television and seeing Andrew Marr, I’m momentarily reassured. But then I notice he’s talking to Ken Clarke, who appears to be wearing… Tom Good’s nettle suit from 1977. Oh no! It’s spreading!
I’ve just missed the ’60s, and I might bump into Jon Pertwee. The horror! There are at least three Liberal revivals to get excited about and then fizzle away dishearteningly without us getting in again, the music’s going downhill, I’ve got half a decade to wait for Tom Baker, racist jokes are ‘funny’ and as for being openly gay… It’s even a couple of years before I can go find myself as a baby and see if chucking my tiny chin can cause everything to explode.
Leave Life On Mars, thank you very much. I’d rather have life in 2008.
Switching on the colour television and seeing Andrew Marr, I’m momentarily reassured. But then I notice he’s talking to Ken Clarke, who appears to be wearing… Tom Good’s nettle suit from 1977. Oh no! It’s spreading!
Labels: Blogs, Doctor Who, Health, History, Life On Mars
Saturday, November 29, 2008
Ian Blair Is Blinkered To the Last; Tories Deplore Mrs Thatcher
Some days, you’re spoilt for choice on where to put the boot in. When Labour lickspittle Ian Blair sobs about Boris Johnson, who do you hate more? When a senior Tory (well, Damian Green, anyway) is arrested under Tory laws, do you laugh, or condemn a police state? Well, there’s an easy way for Liberals to work out the rights and wrongs here. It’s the centuries-old founding Liberal principle of the Rule of Law. Police should enforce the law, not the Government’s whim; and we should defend the rights of evil shits just as assiduously as we do ‘nice people’. Because equality before the law doesn’t allow you to exempt or pick on people you don’t like.
So, farewell, then, Ian Blair. And good riddance. Of course he was good at some bits of his job. So what? He spoke in favour of partisan Labour Government laws such as ID cards and draconian terror legislation, and ordered his officers to do the same. He was the Labour Government’s shameless attack dog, both in public relations and in partial enforcement of the law. And that’s not even bringing in the shooting of Jean Charles de Menezes, for which he not only failed to take responsibility but lied, covered up and ignored court verdicts. If a senior police officer had a brilliant track record, but decided to reward himself by nicking a bit on the side, he’d be just another crook. Ian Blair’s had an erratic track record, and by making the Metropolitan Police an arm of the Labour Party, he did far more to undermine confidence in the police force and to undermine the Rule of Law itself than a minor bit of venality. He’s a disgrace to his uniform.
Just look at the laughable hypocrisy of his self-pitying whine yesterday. It’s not fair, he cried. The law has to be changed, mummy, to stop a hatchet man for one party being forced out just because someone from another party gets elected and for some weird reason doesn’t trust the other party’s hatchet man. Politicians shouldn’t have the power to hire and fire police chiefs, he whinged, except of course for the Home Secretary who’s my mate and represents a seat in the Midlands, who therefore should have far more control over London’s policing than anyone the people of London elected.
And, with brilliant timing, Mr Blair was wailing aloud that the nasty Tories were picking on him and it shouldn’t be allowed, on exactly the same day that the police force he orders about on behalf of the Labour Party arrested a Tory politician on dodgy grounds in what looks to all the world like a five-minutes-to-midnight bit of revenge. We already knew the man had no shame. Now it’s evidence that he doesn’t have the self-awareness of a well-socialised five-year-old either.
I don’t like Boris Johnson. I don’t think he’s up to the job. I’m appalled by all the pettily vindictive cuts he’s been making to any programme that concerns poor people in London. But he was elected by London’s voters, and in a democratic set-up where the Mayor is London’s prime politician, with the biggest personal mandate in Britain, it’s plainly absurd that a national politician should have the power of oversight on London’s police that a local police authority has in the rest of the country. Like Mayorwatch, again no great fan of the current Mayor, I can separate out dislike of the incumbent from knowing what’s right in a democracy – that unelected public servants can’t be the lapdogs of one political party, and that where there are decisions to be taken by politicians, the decisions should be taken by politicians elected for the area concerned. No-one in London can chuck out Jacqui Smith.
We’ve been enjoying The Devil’s Whore on Channel 4 (blimey, doesn’t Harry Lloyd look shaggable in that wig? Ahem), and what smashing timing that, a mere few days after a dramatisation of the 1642 Commons Speaker famously refusing to help the King arrest Members of Parliament he was after for political reasons, the 2008 Speaker apparently points to a Member of Parliament and says, ‘There he is! It was him! He’s guilty as sin and no mistake!’ I guess we know which side of the British Civil Wars Speaker Martin would have tacked to, then. No, MPs can’t be above the law; no-one should (even though the draconian laws under which Damian Green was arrested shouldn’t be the law anyway). But to hold the Government to account, Members of Parliament need to be able to use any information they get their hands on to ask questions without fear of arrest, and to represent their constituents, their correspondence should be confidential.
And, come on, not only did Labour ruthlessly exploit leaks a decade ago to destroy the previous Tory Government, but they leak all over the place today (‘Whoops, I appear to have accidentally left my pre-Budget report in the in-trays of every political journalist in the country. I can’t think how that happened, Inspector’). If there’s nothing political about the arrest of Damian Green, then how exactly is it that most of the Parliamentary Labour Party from the Prime Minister down hasn’t long since been locked up?
Of course it’s tempting to indulge in a bit of Schadenfreude over Mr Green being banged up, just as it’s tempting to use Ian Blair’s forced resignation as a stick to hit Boris Johnson with. Similarly, it’s tempting to back Mr Green just because you hate the Labour Government, or to agree with Mr Johnson just because you’re disgusted with Mr Blair. You know that point in a Ray Harryhausen movie when two great big monsters start savaging each other, and though both are ‘evil monsters’, you find yourself rooting for one over the other on the basis of which looks cooler? It’s a little like that, though with the disadvantage that neither Mr Blair nor Mr Green are lookers in any sense, least of all the exciting Ray Harryhausen sense (though you could make a case that both are monsters, and certainly that both want to stop motion).
Well, as I said above, when it comes to the Rule of Law, Liberals don’t pick favourites. OK, so Jennie can find several silver linings in this:
Damian Green is an odious Tory who’s been leaking in order to stir up anti-immigrant bigotry to boost Conservative Party votes on the back of racism and make it more likely that more innocent people coming into this country will be locked up for longer and in shocking conditions. It’s loathsome hypocrisy that he now complains that it should happen to him. But I’m rather proud that from the moment the news broke, a huge number of Liberal Democrats at every level have risen up in outrage. MPs and bloggers have all swallowed their distaste for Mr Green to say, no, this is wrong, and it doesn’t matter how repellent the man is or how vile his reasons for leaking – the law is being abused.
Expanding on his comments of yesterday, Nick Clegg has a very strong article in today’s Torygraph that sets out just why this arrest was wrong (hat-tip to Darrell Goodliffe):
So, this individual case is wrong. But, as I’m not basing my judgement over that on how much I like or dislike Damian Green, Ian Blair or any of the other unappetising figures involved – unlike rather a lot of Tories, who only bleat when it happens to one of ‘their own’, as you’re about to see – the answer isn’t just to champion Mr Green’s case, but to change a rotten law.
It’s shocking that there’s no public interest defence to the Official Secrets Act, the law under which Damian Green was arrested. So what would the parties do about it? Well, the Liberal Democrats would specifically introduce a public interest defence as part of our Freedom Law, so we can defend Mr Green with a clear conscience. Labour? Well, they’re the people responsible for current Freedom From Information laws, and are very happy locking up any sort of dissenter as a terrorist, so it makes it rather hypocritical that when the public interest defence was removed from the Official Secrets Act in 1989, when they weren’t in lovely, lovely power, they voted to retain it. 1989? Who could possibly have been in Government then?
Oh! It appears it was the Conservative Party. It was Margaret Thatcher’s Government that removed the public interest defence from the Official Secrets Act, allowing the likes of Damian Green to be banged up for two years and bankrupted with an unlimited fine even if there’s no evidence that his leakings caused actual harm. And, of course, not only did several of today’s leading Tories actually vote for that change, but the Conservative Party has never, ever said they disagree with it, until right now. Must be an oversight!
Uncannily, every Tory spokesperson who’s commented on this has said it’s all some vindictive conspiracy by the Labour Government and isn’t it oh so shocking that such a thing could be allowed… Without ever mentioning that it was they themselves that are responsible, and that not one Tory spokesperson in the last nineteen years has ever opposed Mrs Thatcher’s attack on whistleblowers. Not, that is, until a) they hope everyone’s forgotten their fingerprints are all over it and b) it’s been done to one of their own, dash it all, not one of those oiks, pinkos and liberals it was aimed at, just like if (perish the thought) a Tory was done for cocaine abuse rather than only poor people being locked up for drugs, as intended. It’s an outrage (very suddenly)!
It’s all making me feel about sixteen again, standing in the school playground with my copy of Spycatcher and reading out the dullest and least secret bits, just so that everyone listening was breaking the Official Secrets Act too by hearing the most utterly tedious rubbish and whingeing about the author’s pension. That was picking out the most boring bits of one of the most boring books I’ve ever read. And, come to think of it, that was while the public interest defence was still in place.
In other news (sigh), a crook who once gave money to the Lib Dems and lots of charities and got nothing in return has been found guilty of being a crook. Many people in other parties are calling for political parties to have far more intrusive and untrammelled Stasi-like powers as a result. It took months and months of police investigation to turn up anything dodgy in that case; all those people who think any political party, rather than just making all the checks it’s legal to, should have the power to do that to investigate their donors are, simply, stark staring mad. Read what I’ve written above if you can’t see why.
Sunday update: As Matt below and Paul Walter have pointed out, despite some reports, Damian Green wasn’t actually charged under the Official Secrets Act. So, on the technicalities, quite a bit of what I write above was bollocks. On the principles, though, I reckon I’ve still got a point. The Labour Government is very happy for the police to harass pretty much anyone (except their own) under pretty much any powers, and they’ve showered still more powers even when old ones would do.
So whether Mr Green was arrested using 18th Century legislation, 1989 legislation or new Labour legislation is an interesting question to lawyers, but I suspect they all have pretty much the same effect where most observers are concerned, and (perhaps more to the point) that the police could use most of them pretty interchangeably. What’s worrying isn’t the precise power used, but that there are so many of them that can be employed, and that increasingly they’re being employed against ‘criminals’ that a few years ago it would have been inconceivable to see a goon squad you’d expect to be aimed at terrorists sent out for.
And the questions for the Conservative Party remain: do you think there should be a public interest defence for leaks and whistleblowers, under whichever law? Or just a defence for Tory MPs? And, with all these powers sloshing around, which would you remove, and which would you restrict? Or would you only remove or restrict their application to Tory MPs?
Ian Blair – A Man Without Self-Awareness
So, farewell, then, Ian Blair. And good riddance. Of course he was good at some bits of his job. So what? He spoke in favour of partisan Labour Government laws such as ID cards and draconian terror legislation, and ordered his officers to do the same. He was the Labour Government’s shameless attack dog, both in public relations and in partial enforcement of the law. And that’s not even bringing in the shooting of Jean Charles de Menezes, for which he not only failed to take responsibility but lied, covered up and ignored court verdicts. If a senior police officer had a brilliant track record, but decided to reward himself by nicking a bit on the side, he’d be just another crook. Ian Blair’s had an erratic track record, and by making the Metropolitan Police an arm of the Labour Party, he did far more to undermine confidence in the police force and to undermine the Rule of Law itself than a minor bit of venality. He’s a disgrace to his uniform.
Just look at the laughable hypocrisy of his self-pitying whine yesterday. It’s not fair, he cried. The law has to be changed, mummy, to stop a hatchet man for one party being forced out just because someone from another party gets elected and for some weird reason doesn’t trust the other party’s hatchet man. Politicians shouldn’t have the power to hire and fire police chiefs, he whinged, except of course for the Home Secretary who’s my mate and represents a seat in the Midlands, who therefore should have far more control over London’s policing than anyone the people of London elected.
And, with brilliant timing, Mr Blair was wailing aloud that the nasty Tories were picking on him and it shouldn’t be allowed, on exactly the same day that the police force he orders about on behalf of the Labour Party arrested a Tory politician on dodgy grounds in what looks to all the world like a five-minutes-to-midnight bit of revenge. We already knew the man had no shame. Now it’s evidence that he doesn’t have the self-awareness of a well-socialised five-year-old either.
I don’t like Boris Johnson. I don’t think he’s up to the job. I’m appalled by all the pettily vindictive cuts he’s been making to any programme that concerns poor people in London. But he was elected by London’s voters, and in a democratic set-up where the Mayor is London’s prime politician, with the biggest personal mandate in Britain, it’s plainly absurd that a national politician should have the power of oversight on London’s police that a local police authority has in the rest of the country. Like Mayorwatch, again no great fan of the current Mayor, I can separate out dislike of the incumbent from knowing what’s right in a democracy – that unelected public servants can’t be the lapdogs of one political party, and that where there are decisions to be taken by politicians, the decisions should be taken by politicians elected for the area concerned. No-one in London can chuck out Jacqui Smith.
Damian – A Bad Omen?
We’ve been enjoying The Devil’s Whore on Channel 4 (blimey, doesn’t Harry Lloyd look shaggable in that wig? Ahem), and what smashing timing that, a mere few days after a dramatisation of the 1642 Commons Speaker famously refusing to help the King arrest Members of Parliament he was after for political reasons, the 2008 Speaker apparently points to a Member of Parliament and says, ‘There he is! It was him! He’s guilty as sin and no mistake!’ I guess we know which side of the British Civil Wars Speaker Martin would have tacked to, then. No, MPs can’t be above the law; no-one should (even though the draconian laws under which Damian Green was arrested shouldn’t be the law anyway). But to hold the Government to account, Members of Parliament need to be able to use any information they get their hands on to ask questions without fear of arrest, and to represent their constituents, their correspondence should be confidential.
And, come on, not only did Labour ruthlessly exploit leaks a decade ago to destroy the previous Tory Government, but they leak all over the place today (‘Whoops, I appear to have accidentally left my pre-Budget report in the in-trays of every political journalist in the country. I can’t think how that happened, Inspector’). If there’s nothing political about the arrest of Damian Green, then how exactly is it that most of the Parliamentary Labour Party from the Prime Minister down hasn’t long since been locked up?
Of course it’s tempting to indulge in a bit of Schadenfreude over Mr Green being banged up, just as it’s tempting to use Ian Blair’s forced resignation as a stick to hit Boris Johnson with. Similarly, it’s tempting to back Mr Green just because you hate the Labour Government, or to agree with Mr Johnson just because you’re disgusted with Mr Blair. You know that point in a Ray Harryhausen movie when two great big monsters start savaging each other, and though both are ‘evil monsters’, you find yourself rooting for one over the other on the basis of which looks cooler? It’s a little like that, though with the disadvantage that neither Mr Blair nor Mr Green are lookers in any sense, least of all the exciting Ray Harryhausen sense (though you could make a case that both are monsters, and certainly that both want to stop motion).
Well, as I said above, when it comes to the Rule of Law, Liberals don’t pick favourites. OK, so Jennie can find several silver linings in this:
“I might be being a heartless bitch here, but the Tory Immigration Spokesman has had a little taste of the chokey he wants to subject immigrants to, and a bloody great hole has been blasted in the government's assurances that anti-terror stuff will only be used against terrorists - unless anyone is seriously suggesting that Mr Green is a terrorist? No, thought not - so what is there about this situation that is not win?”…And, I admit it, I’m offended by the circumstances of this arrest in part because this time I can’t point and laugh at a Tory in prison, like the good old days of venal, lying crooks such as Jonathan Aitken and Jeffrey Archer. But there are more reasons to be upset by this arrest than just the spoiling our fun at how crooked the Tories are.
Damian Green is an odious Tory who’s been leaking in order to stir up anti-immigrant bigotry to boost Conservative Party votes on the back of racism and make it more likely that more innocent people coming into this country will be locked up for longer and in shocking conditions. It’s loathsome hypocrisy that he now complains that it should happen to him. But I’m rather proud that from the moment the news broke, a huge number of Liberal Democrats at every level have risen up in outrage. MPs and bloggers have all swallowed their distaste for Mr Green to say, no, this is wrong, and it doesn’t matter how repellent the man is or how vile his reasons for leaking – the law is being abused.
Expanding on his comments of yesterday, Nick Clegg has a very strong article in today’s Torygraph that sets out just why this arrest was wrong (hat-tip to Darrell Goodliffe):
“When did it become a crime to hold the Government to account?”
“We are made no safer by this arrest and the country will not be run any better.”
“The Metropolitan Police says that neither the search nor the arrest were conducted under the provisions of anti-terrorism legislation. Yet nine counter-terrorism officers were required to carry out the arrest of a middle-aged Conservative MP.
“The Government has dismissed concerns that counter-terrorism laws can be misused. But time and again we have seen examples of powers that were rushed through Parliament being misused against people for crimes such as heckling Labour ministers at conferences or freezing Icelandic bank accounts.
“Even if these laws were not invoked this time, the sight of anti-terrorist police enforcing laws unrelated to terrorism will only confuse the public further.”
They’ve Got Form, Yer Honner
So, this individual case is wrong. But, as I’m not basing my judgement over that on how much I like or dislike Damian Green, Ian Blair or any of the other unappetising figures involved – unlike rather a lot of Tories, who only bleat when it happens to one of ‘their own’, as you’re about to see – the answer isn’t just to champion Mr Green’s case, but to change a rotten law.
It’s shocking that there’s no public interest defence to the Official Secrets Act, the law under which Damian Green was arrested. So what would the parties do about it? Well, the Liberal Democrats would specifically introduce a public interest defence as part of our Freedom Law, so we can defend Mr Green with a clear conscience. Labour? Well, they’re the people responsible for current Freedom From Information laws, and are very happy locking up any sort of dissenter as a terrorist, so it makes it rather hypocritical that when the public interest defence was removed from the Official Secrets Act in 1989, when they weren’t in lovely, lovely power, they voted to retain it. 1989? Who could possibly have been in Government then?
Oh! It appears it was the Conservative Party. It was Margaret Thatcher’s Government that removed the public interest defence from the Official Secrets Act, allowing the likes of Damian Green to be banged up for two years and bankrupted with an unlimited fine even if there’s no evidence that his leakings caused actual harm. And, of course, not only did several of today’s leading Tories actually vote for that change, but the Conservative Party has never, ever said they disagree with it, until right now. Must be an oversight!
Uncannily, every Tory spokesperson who’s commented on this has said it’s all some vindictive conspiracy by the Labour Government and isn’t it oh so shocking that such a thing could be allowed… Without ever mentioning that it was they themselves that are responsible, and that not one Tory spokesperson in the last nineteen years has ever opposed Mrs Thatcher’s attack on whistleblowers. Not, that is, until a) they hope everyone’s forgotten their fingerprints are all over it and b) it’s been done to one of their own, dash it all, not one of those oiks, pinkos and liberals it was aimed at, just like if (perish the thought) a Tory was done for cocaine abuse rather than only poor people being locked up for drugs, as intended. It’s an outrage (very suddenly)!
It’s all making me feel about sixteen again, standing in the school playground with my copy of Spycatcher and reading out the dullest and least secret bits, just so that everyone listening was breaking the Official Secrets Act too by hearing the most utterly tedious rubbish and whingeing about the author’s pension. That was picking out the most boring bits of one of the most boring books I’ve ever read. And, come to think of it, that was while the public interest defence was still in place.
In other news (sigh), a crook who once gave money to the Lib Dems and lots of charities and got nothing in return has been found guilty of being a crook. Many people in other parties are calling for political parties to have far more intrusive and untrammelled Stasi-like powers as a result. It took months and months of police investigation to turn up anything dodgy in that case; all those people who think any political party, rather than just making all the checks it’s legal to, should have the power to do that to investigate their donors are, simply, stark staring mad. Read what I’ve written above if you can’t see why.
Sunday update: As Matt below and Paul Walter have pointed out, despite some reports, Damian Green wasn’t actually charged under the Official Secrets Act. So, on the technicalities, quite a bit of what I write above was bollocks. On the principles, though, I reckon I’ve still got a point. The Labour Government is very happy for the police to harass pretty much anyone (except their own) under pretty much any powers, and they’ve showered still more powers even when old ones would do.
So whether Mr Green was arrested using 18th Century legislation, 1989 legislation or new Labour legislation is an interesting question to lawyers, but I suspect they all have pretty much the same effect where most observers are concerned, and (perhaps more to the point) that the police could use most of them pretty interchangeably. What’s worrying isn’t the precise power used, but that there are so many of them that can be employed, and that increasingly they’re being employed against ‘criminals’ that a few years ago it would have been inconceivable to see a goon squad you’d expect to be aimed at terrorists sent out for.
And the questions for the Conservative Party remain: do you think there should be a public interest defence for leaks and whistleblowers, under whichever law? Or just a defence for Tory MPs? And, with all these powers sloshing around, which would you remove, and which would you restrict? Or would you only remove or restrict their application to Tory MPs?
Labels: British Politics, Conservatives, Corruption, History, Labour, Liberalism, London, Nick Clegg, The Golden Dozen
Doctor Who 45th Anniversary – Why Was 1976 Brilliant?
Twisted religion and black comedy suffuse a stunning year, transforming body horror into battles for the mind and rich colours into darkness as writer Robert Holmes and producer Philip Hinchcliffe (masters of kiddie-scaring) reach their peak, while Terrance Dicks’ new The Making of Doctor Who inspires every guidebook written since. From The Brain of Morbius’ funny fascist Frankenstein to The Hand of Fear’s crawling eeriness, all the stories are marvellous, and the greatest of them all begets not just Time Lord mythology but even The Matrix movies…
There’s no DVD yet, though you may have seen clips from and discussion of it on Doctor Who Confidential 4.10, the one after Midnight. In the meantime you should look for second-hand copies of the novel or the VHS: if you can track down WH Smith’s The Time Lord Collection, that includes videos of not only this story, but also The War Games and The Three Doctors; on the other hand, the original VHS release has the most gorgeous cover painting in the range… And back on its original transmission, the Radio Times trailed the story with one of its most shiver-down-the-spine lines:
The Deadly Assassin
“I am the creator here, Doctor. This is my world.”Exploding with ideas for both story and storytelling, this starts as film noir political satire, then swerves into virtual reality and gritty surrealism. Superb cliffhangers, visuals, dialogue; the Master stripped to his essentials… It’s my favourite story, and Mary Whitehouse’s biggest complaint. An unbeatable recommendation!
“The Master’s consumed with hatred. It’s his one great weakness.”
“Weakness, Doctor? Hate is strength.”
“Not in your case. You’d delay an execution to pull the wings off a fly.”
There’s no DVD yet, though you may have seen clips from and discussion of it on Doctor Who Confidential 4.10, the one after Midnight. In the meantime you should look for second-hand copies of the novel or the VHS: if you can track down WH Smith’s The Time Lord Collection, that includes videos of not only this story, but also The War Games and The Three Doctors; on the other hand, the original VHS release has the most gorgeous cover painting in the range… And back on its original transmission, the Radio Times trailed the story with one of its most shiver-down-the-spine lines:
“Death strikes in the dark cloisters of the Time Lord Capitol. The Doctor, alone now, is a hunted fugitive in a city that was once his home…”
Labels: American Politics, Books, British Politics, Doctor Who, Film Noir, Ideas, Mary Whitehouse, Personal, Philip Madoc, Religion, Reviews, Style, The Master, Tom Baker, Why Is Doctor Who Brilliant?
Friday, November 28, 2008
Doctor Who 45th Anniversary – Why Was 1975 Brilliant?
Packed with great stories, this is possibly Doctor Who’s most brilliant year: three-year-old me starts watching with Tom Baker’s debut story, Robot; The Ark In Space and The Sontaran Experiment give me wonderful far-future nightmares; Terror of the Zygons brings the best-ever one-off monster; deep space Planet of Evil and historical Pyramids of Mars pleasurably terrify me; even The Doctor Who Monster Book is published. And some say the Time War starts with:
The most-repeated, most-released Doctor Who story of all, it’s not hard to track this one down, whether it’s second-hand copies of the several editions of the VHS, the book, the script book or the 60-minute audio version I played constantly on LP, then cassette, now CD (did anyone record the 90-minute edit they showed in the ’80s? I’d like to see that) – and, of course, the DVD, two discs filled with documentary goodies. It’s one of the best ones to buy, either on its own or in the Davros Collection.
Genesis of the Daleks
“Yes… I would do it. That power would set me up above the gods! And through the Daleks, I shall have that power!”A superbly filmed and scored war story, peppered with enthralling speeches. Perhaps the Doctor’s sharpest moral dilemma is whether to destroy the Daleks at their birth, but this is essentially the story of Davros, a fascist with depth and intelligence, who engineers his own destruction.
The most-repeated, most-released Doctor Who story of all, it’s not hard to track this one down, whether it’s second-hand copies of the several editions of the VHS, the book, the script book or the 60-minute audio version I played constantly on LP, then cassette, now CD (did anyone record the 90-minute edit they showed in the ’80s? I’d like to see that) – and, of course, the DVD, two discs filled with documentary goodies. It’s one of the best ones to buy, either on its own or in the Davros Collection.
Labels: Bigotry, Daleks, Doctor Who, DVD, Music, Personal, Reviews, Sarah Jane Smith, Speeches, The Brigadier, The Today Programme, Tom Baker, Why Is Doctor Who Brilliant?
Thursday, November 27, 2008
Doctor Who 45th Anniversary – Why Was 1974 Brilliant?
A year of huge changes. It begins with Sarah Jane; the last few days of 1974 bring Tom Baker as the Doctor and introduce the series’ most spellbinding title sequence. There’s a recurring motif that golden ages aren’t to be trusted, and an awesome final confrontation for Jon Pertwee in Planet of the Spiders. Off the screen, new Target novelisations of the show include some of the best of the lot: The Doomsday Weapon; The Cave Monsters; and the first…
Though you’re best looking out for second-hand copies of this book, you can now buy a talking book of it on CD read by Caroline John, Liz Shaw herself. And, of course, in a reversal of my usual advice, you can buy the DVD of the original TV story, named Spearhead From Space rather than The Auton Invasion – it’s so splendid that it’s almost as good as the book!
Doctor Who and the Auton Invasion
“This body is merely a container, Hibbert. You should know that. You made me.”Terrance Dicks’ first novel incredibly makes the series’ most memorable action scenes more powerful still. It’s full of well-drawn characters (and well-drawn illustrations), superbly rethinks details for the page and adds deft touches of horror, but it’s the gripping extended invasion sequence that’s the highlight.
Though you’re best looking out for second-hand copies of this book, you can now buy a talking book of it on CD read by Caroline John, Liz Shaw herself. And, of course, in a reversal of my usual advice, you can buy the DVD of the original TV story, named Spearhead From Space rather than The Auton Invasion – it’s so splendid that it’s almost as good as the book!
Labels: Books, Doctor Who, Jon Pertwee, Reviews, Sarah Jane Smith, The Brigadier, Tom Baker, Why Is Doctor Who Brilliant?
Wednesday, November 26, 2008
Doctor Who 45th Anniversary – Why Was 1973 Brilliant?
At last, the Doctor is free, so every story in 1973 is back to travels in time and space: alien worlds, medieval England and even the series’ own past as William Hartnell and Patrick Troughton return for The Three Doctors. Then UNIT goes somewhere excitingly new for The Green Death… Wales! At the very end of the year, The Time Warrior introduces Sarah Jane Smith and the Sontarans, but before then Doctor Who climbs inside the TV itself:
One to buy on DVD, though it’s worth looking out for the excellent book and, for once, the VHS as well. The video has extended episodes with extra scenes cut in, which are presented separately on the DVD (it’s a shame the tape’s one of the few copy-protected ones, so I can’t back up our old copy of these edits). Terrance Dicks’ novelisation swaps scenes around too, and adds lots of little polishes; it’s clearer, if less vivid, and uses the word “liberal” to mean good and “authoritarian” bad, so it’s appealed to me from a very young age, along with the memorable tagline on the back:
Carnival of Monsters
“One has no wish to be devoured by alien monstrosities, Kalik – even in the cause of political progress.”An entertaining satire of television, with quite a bit of politics and characters including a dodgy Polari-speaking showman (I remember not understanding him; I can now) and grey-faced plotting Tories, the story keeps channel-hopping to 1926 British caricatures and huge, screaming dragons, the Drashigs. Bona!
One to buy on DVD, though it’s worth looking out for the excellent book and, for once, the VHS as well. The video has extended episodes with extra scenes cut in, which are presented separately on the DVD (it’s a shame the tape’s one of the few copy-protected ones, so I can’t back up our old copy of these edits). Terrance Dicks’ novelisation swaps scenes around too, and adds lots of little polishes; it’s clearer, if less vivid, and uses the word “liberal” to mean good and “authoritarian” bad, so it’s appealed to me from a very young age, along with the memorable tagline on the back:
“The Doctor and Jo land on a cargo ship crossing the Indian Ocean in the year 1926.
“Or so they think.”
Labels: Books, British Politics, Comedy, Doctor Who, DVD, Jon Pertwee, Patrick Troughton, Reviews, Sarah Jane Smith, Why Is Doctor Who Brilliant?, William Hartnell
Tuesday, November 25, 2008
Alan Johnson Is Maddeningly Smug
As Labour ministers go, I’ve often found Alan Johnson one of the more tolerable ones. He can come across as a human being, and even on occasion answers the question. So in many ways I’d rather not have heard his interview with Eddie Mair on PM earlier, where Mr Johnson was an unspeakably smug shit, far more interested in partisan point-scoring than in helping people with mental health problems. He patently just didn’t give a toss about mental health, smug, dismissive and bringing up an issue which has been shamefully ignored by Labour only to attack hapless Tory Andrew Lansley.
You may have heard that Tory health spokesperson Mr Lansley’s made a ‘gaffe’, which is the term for when a politician opens their mind and their mouth at the same time. In a piece he wrote about the probable mental health effects of a deep recession, he made an aside to the effect that some people might become physically more healthy, as they can less afford to drink, smoke and eat rich food. On the one hand, you can understand what he means; think of all those programmes about how healthy people were during rationing. On the other hand, what about people who because they can’t afford to eat well just get any old cheap crap, or people who are so depressed that they drink or smoke more to cope? I know that, stuck at home, unwell and getting little exercise, I’ve been Mr Comfort-eating and have put on masses of weight this year. But if Mr Lansley was dimly not considering all the effects, at least his main focus was on real health problems that the Labour Government’s done fuck all about, and if he was offensive and didn’t put enough thought in… Well, he may be a lot less bright than Sir Keith Joseph, but at least he’s far less offensive.
The reaction, of course, has been predictable. Labour has screamed that this callous, vicious Tory is so out of touch he’s preaching that the recession can be good for you. The BBC news page has ignored that most of what he wrote was about mental health. And the Tory Party has made him apologise and take down his article. While I think Mr Lansley was a bit out of touch and didn’t think through his point, I feel a lot more sympathy with him than with some of his attackers, particularly when mental health is something Labour has spent so many years underfunding and ignoring, presumably because mental health patients don’t look so good in a sympathetic photo-opportunity. It’s something Nick Clegg in particular has been banging on about for ages – in speeches as Leader, in his Leadership campaign last year, repeatedly in Prime Minister’s Questions – and so hearing Mr Johnson’s crocodile tears on PM today just drove me up the wall.
The BBC went quite some way towards atoning for their online story with an intelligent and searching interview from Eddie Mair on PM tonight. The Tories wouldn’t put anyone up (though someone dragged out Edwina Currie). And Alan Johnson was detestable. After years of being so desperate to sound and act exactly like Tories, Labour are now gagging to refight the 1980s with a cry of ‘We might be crap, but the Tories are eeevil and they just love unemployment’ – yes, I can see how they want to damage Mr Cameron’s ‘caring’ brand, but the ’80s went so well for them, didn’t they?
Mr Johnson did the job he’s employed for – not speaking for the interests of sick people, that would be absurd, but laying into the Tories. He said he was trying to be kind to Mr Lansley, as he was sure he was a decent human being… But he’s proof that the Tories are eeevil and they just love unemployment (I paraphrase, but not by much). In a hammily ‘more in sorrow than anger’ tone, he ignored the question about physical health, talking about the terrible consequences of an economic downturn on mental health, then also ignored the point that Mr Lansley had raised that before he did when it was rightly put to him by Eddie Mair.
My stomach was already turning through all this, but that point at which I really became furious was when, after Mr Mair pressed him on the fact that there are huge waiting lists to see any sort of counsellor and that more people with mental health problems are just shoved full of anti-depressants, Mr Johnson became loathsomely smug. He boasted that, far from there being any problem with mental health provision, Labour was recruiting an extra 3,000 mental health professionals (though of what kind, and at what charge to patients, and whether full- or part-time, he didn’t say). Well, that’s good news, and it’s only taken them eleven years to notice the problem. But, hang on… I noticed, and I’m glad that Mr Mair did too, that Mr Johnson was boasting that the Labour Government had already planned for and started hiring these people.
Eddie Mair asked Alan Johnson, flat out, how the system would possibly cope if they were only just hiring people to cope with the crisis in mental health provision that already exists, but the recession’s just about to create a surge of people with mental health problems. We’ll have enough people, said Mr Johnson, bored now, we’ve planned for it. In a tone of incredulity, Mr Mair asked, “So you factored in the effect of the recession before you knew there’d be one?” But Mr Johnson just brushed it aside in the most bored, complacent, utterly smug answer I’ve heard even from a Labour Minister in a long time, just repeating languidly “Yes, of course” that there would be enough people to cope. When he evidently doesn’t have a clue, and doesn’t give a toss, the unspeakable shit. He may as well just have held up a sign saying, ‘Look, bored now, I don’t really give a toss about this issue, can’t we get back to the main topic which is that Tories are eeevil and never mind the small print?’
This, on the same day that Health Minister – oh, look – Alan Johnson has decided that, rather than doctors issuing sick notes to say how ill someone is, because their professional training is to make diagnosis of health problems, they must from now on issue “Fit Notes” to say what people can work at. Because, obviously, making doctors benefits enforcers is in no way a conflict of interest that might get in the way of them helping people to get better, and GPs are in no way busy, and have nothing better to do than be amateur work counsellors writing out long lists of possibilities. Presumably it’ll let Labour cut the jobs of people who are actually skilled in working out what work people can do, though, so they’ll see this eye-boggling stupidity as an efficiency gain.
This latest piece of authoritarian drivel from a Labour Government intent on turning every organ of the state into a petty, prying, suspicious boss that orders us into what it thinks is good for us is all of a piece with what’s been Gordon Brown’s big idea since he first became Chancellor, and which is now exploding more out of control than ever before. He sincerely believes in the morally improving nature of work. So, it follows, everyone not in work is immoral. Look at the stigmatisation of benefits and the beneficence of tax credits, twisting people through every possible hoop to spoon out a pittance to working people and not the sick or the unemployed or the otherwise undeserving poor (choosing your own life? Pah!).
It’s Labour’s rule that you must work, or you must be Frowned at. The Tories simply hate the poor; Labour hate the ‘undeserving’ poor. With such a choice, it’s difficult not to hate both of those parties, isn’t it?
I didn’t write about it at the time, but the last Labour Minister interview that really infuriated me was with James Purnell, on the Today Programme towards the end of last week; of course, that was with John Humphrys, so it had the added difficulty that the interviewer was offensively smug and stupid as well. This one was about the Labour Government cracking down on people so evil as to be on benefits, forcing them to find work or have their already poverty-line benefits cut by 40% (40% below the minimum for survival!) if they were ill, or parents, or other such unproductive malingerers. The Labour Government’s own advisers had just told them that, in a recession when unemployment is spiralling, enforcing their moral views on parents was a luxury that no-one could afford, would cause more poverty and made no sense, so why not put it off so that people desperate for jobs can compete in the crapulent job market – a close friend of mine, for example, had a business that went under earlier this year after a decade of trading, and despite hundreds of applications still hasn’t managed to find a job – while parents who want to look after their kids can actually do that, which is also something positive for society? No, said Mr Purnell, he was having none of it; people really wanted jobs, and the Labour Government would help them attain that wish they didn’t know they had on pain of death. But what about there being no jobs, because unemployment’s spiralling? No, said Mr Purnell, people want to work, it won’t be put off (it didn’t help that Mr Humphrys said that, of course, no reasonable person could disagree with these proposals in better times, a statement so breathtakingly offensive that it had me wanting to hit the radio so hard that it might knock some sense into him). But what about parents who were concerned that their kids would grow up better if someone was there to look after them, and didn’t want to be forced away from their kids and into work? No, said Mr Purnell, people want to work, it won’t be put off. But what about there being less than a hundredth the childcare places needed with so many more children unable to be looked after at home? No, said Mr Purnell, people want to work, it won’t be put off. Seriously, it was like there was a string in his back.
And all because Gordon Brown, moralising workaholic that he is, demands that only people in work have any virtue, that scrubbing a loo in McDonalds is infinitely more rewarding than making your child smile. If there wasn’t such a shortage of mental health professionals, I’d suggest he gets his head examined.
Andrew Lansley Puts His Foot In It Again
You may have heard that Tory health spokesperson Mr Lansley’s made a ‘gaffe’, which is the term for when a politician opens their mind and their mouth at the same time. In a piece he wrote about the probable mental health effects of a deep recession, he made an aside to the effect that some people might become physically more healthy, as they can less afford to drink, smoke and eat rich food. On the one hand, you can understand what he means; think of all those programmes about how healthy people were during rationing. On the other hand, what about people who because they can’t afford to eat well just get any old cheap crap, or people who are so depressed that they drink or smoke more to cope? I know that, stuck at home, unwell and getting little exercise, I’ve been Mr Comfort-eating and have put on masses of weight this year. But if Mr Lansley was dimly not considering all the effects, at least his main focus was on real health problems that the Labour Government’s done fuck all about, and if he was offensive and didn’t put enough thought in… Well, he may be a lot less bright than Sir Keith Joseph, but at least he’s far less offensive.
The reaction, of course, has been predictable. Labour has screamed that this callous, vicious Tory is so out of touch he’s preaching that the recession can be good for you. The BBC news page has ignored that most of what he wrote was about mental health. And the Tory Party has made him apologise and take down his article. While I think Mr Lansley was a bit out of touch and didn’t think through his point, I feel a lot more sympathy with him than with some of his attackers, particularly when mental health is something Labour has spent so many years underfunding and ignoring, presumably because mental health patients don’t look so good in a sympathetic photo-opportunity. It’s something Nick Clegg in particular has been banging on about for ages – in speeches as Leader, in his Leadership campaign last year, repeatedly in Prime Minister’s Questions – and so hearing Mr Johnson’s crocodile tears on PM today just drove me up the wall.
Alan Johnson and Labour Hypocrisy
The BBC went quite some way towards atoning for their online story with an intelligent and searching interview from Eddie Mair on PM tonight. The Tories wouldn’t put anyone up (though someone dragged out Edwina Currie). And Alan Johnson was detestable. After years of being so desperate to sound and act exactly like Tories, Labour are now gagging to refight the 1980s with a cry of ‘We might be crap, but the Tories are eeevil and they just love unemployment’ – yes, I can see how they want to damage Mr Cameron’s ‘caring’ brand, but the ’80s went so well for them, didn’t they?
Mr Johnson did the job he’s employed for – not speaking for the interests of sick people, that would be absurd, but laying into the Tories. He said he was trying to be kind to Mr Lansley, as he was sure he was a decent human being… But he’s proof that the Tories are eeevil and they just love unemployment (I paraphrase, but not by much). In a hammily ‘more in sorrow than anger’ tone, he ignored the question about physical health, talking about the terrible consequences of an economic downturn on mental health, then also ignored the point that Mr Lansley had raised that before he did when it was rightly put to him by Eddie Mair.
My stomach was already turning through all this, but that point at which I really became furious was when, after Mr Mair pressed him on the fact that there are huge waiting lists to see any sort of counsellor and that more people with mental health problems are just shoved full of anti-depressants, Mr Johnson became loathsomely smug. He boasted that, far from there being any problem with mental health provision, Labour was recruiting an extra 3,000 mental health professionals (though of what kind, and at what charge to patients, and whether full- or part-time, he didn’t say). Well, that’s good news, and it’s only taken them eleven years to notice the problem. But, hang on… I noticed, and I’m glad that Mr Mair did too, that Mr Johnson was boasting that the Labour Government had already planned for and started hiring these people.
Eddie Mair asked Alan Johnson, flat out, how the system would possibly cope if they were only just hiring people to cope with the crisis in mental health provision that already exists, but the recession’s just about to create a surge of people with mental health problems. We’ll have enough people, said Mr Johnson, bored now, we’ve planned for it. In a tone of incredulity, Mr Mair asked, “So you factored in the effect of the recession before you knew there’d be one?” But Mr Johnson just brushed it aside in the most bored, complacent, utterly smug answer I’ve heard even from a Labour Minister in a long time, just repeating languidly “Yes, of course” that there would be enough people to cope. When he evidently doesn’t have a clue, and doesn’t give a toss, the unspeakable shit. He may as well just have held up a sign saying, ‘Look, bored now, I don’t really give a toss about this issue, can’t we get back to the main topic which is that Tories are eeevil and never mind the small print?’
This, on the same day that Health Minister – oh, look – Alan Johnson has decided that, rather than doctors issuing sick notes to say how ill someone is, because their professional training is to make diagnosis of health problems, they must from now on issue “Fit Notes” to say what people can work at. Because, obviously, making doctors benefits enforcers is in no way a conflict of interest that might get in the way of them helping people to get better, and GPs are in no way busy, and have nothing better to do than be amateur work counsellors writing out long lists of possibilities. Presumably it’ll let Labour cut the jobs of people who are actually skilled in working out what work people can do, though, so they’ll see this eye-boggling stupidity as an efficiency gain.
Work To Rule
This latest piece of authoritarian drivel from a Labour Government intent on turning every organ of the state into a petty, prying, suspicious boss that orders us into what it thinks is good for us is all of a piece with what’s been Gordon Brown’s big idea since he first became Chancellor, and which is now exploding more out of control than ever before. He sincerely believes in the morally improving nature of work. So, it follows, everyone not in work is immoral. Look at the stigmatisation of benefits and the beneficence of tax credits, twisting people through every possible hoop to spoon out a pittance to working people and not the sick or the unemployed or the otherwise undeserving poor (choosing your own life? Pah!).
It’s Labour’s rule that you must work, or you must be Frowned at. The Tories simply hate the poor; Labour hate the ‘undeserving’ poor. With such a choice, it’s difficult not to hate both of those parties, isn’t it?
I didn’t write about it at the time, but the last Labour Minister interview that really infuriated me was with James Purnell, on the Today Programme towards the end of last week; of course, that was with John Humphrys, so it had the added difficulty that the interviewer was offensively smug and stupid as well. This one was about the Labour Government cracking down on people so evil as to be on benefits, forcing them to find work or have their already poverty-line benefits cut by 40% (40% below the minimum for survival!) if they were ill, or parents, or other such unproductive malingerers. The Labour Government’s own advisers had just told them that, in a recession when unemployment is spiralling, enforcing their moral views on parents was a luxury that no-one could afford, would cause more poverty and made no sense, so why not put it off so that people desperate for jobs can compete in the crapulent job market – a close friend of mine, for example, had a business that went under earlier this year after a decade of trading, and despite hundreds of applications still hasn’t managed to find a job – while parents who want to look after their kids can actually do that, which is also something positive for society? No, said Mr Purnell, he was having none of it; people really wanted jobs, and the Labour Government would help them attain that wish they didn’t know they had on pain of death. But what about there being no jobs, because unemployment’s spiralling? No, said Mr Purnell, people want to work, it won’t be put off (it didn’t help that Mr Humphrys said that, of course, no reasonable person could disagree with these proposals in better times, a statement so breathtakingly offensive that it had me wanting to hit the radio so hard that it might knock some sense into him). But what about parents who were concerned that their kids would grow up better if someone was there to look after them, and didn’t want to be forced away from their kids and into work? No, said Mr Purnell, people want to work, it won’t be put off. But what about there being less than a hundredth the childcare places needed with so many more children unable to be looked after at home? No, said Mr Purnell, people want to work, it won’t be put off. Seriously, it was like there was a string in his back.
And all because Gordon Brown, moralising workaholic that he is, demands that only people in work have any virtue, that scrubbing a loo in McDonalds is infinitely more rewarding than making your child smile. If there wasn’t such a shortage of mental health professionals, I’d suggest he gets his head examined.
Labels: British Politics, Conservatives, Health, Labour, Nick Clegg, The Today Programme
Doctor Who 45th Anniversary – Why Was 1972 Brilliant?
Creatures out of time strain to pull Doctor Who out of the ‘exiled to Earth’ format, with time-travelling Daleks in a dystopian future, Sea Devils rising from the waves and their long sleep and a distinctly anti-colonial look at Earth’s future Empire. The Doctor even manages several limited trips in the TARDIS again, the most entertaining (and topical) of which takes him to a future monarchist backwater hoping to join a distinctly un-Star Trek Federation in which aliens abound…
EuroGalacto-sceptic religion and greed the villains, while old monsters turned dryly witty and the campest of hysterical hexapods are friends. On top of that, there’s inspired blagging by our heroes, and a legendary shaggy ghost story.
You’ll have to look around for a second-hand copy of the VHS until they bring out the DVD – or of Brian Hayles’ novelisation, which makes hermaphrodite hexapod Alpha Centauri if anything even more vivid, as well as giving the story just a slightly bigger budget.
The Curse of Peladon
“I would rather be a cave-dweller, and free.”Like UNIT, this interplanetary political fable inspires internationalism, with
“Free? With your people imprisoned by ritual and superstition?”
You’ll have to look around for a second-hand copy of the VHS until they bring out the DVD – or of Brian Hayles’ novelisation, which makes hermaphrodite hexapod Alpha Centauri if anything even more vivid, as well as giving the story just a slightly bigger budget.
Labels: Doctor Who, European Politics, Jon Pertwee, Reviews, Why Is Doctor Who Brilliant?
Monday, November 24, 2008
“Your Mail.” “Yes, I Am, And I Can Prove It, D’You Hear! Prooove It!”
Charlotte Gore has at last found a topic to get the Lib Dem blogosphere into more of a lather than libertarianism: all morning, male bloggers having been leaping up in horror like Sir Bernard Cutting* and firing up Sinitta’s So Macho on YouTube to protest their masculinity. The “GenderAnalyzer” thinks Love and Liberty is, like Charlotte’s blog, 73% likely to be written by a man. Thank goodness it wasn’t settled by arm-wrestling.
But wait! Setting it on my two other blogs – both dormant for eighteen months; I will reanimate them, but not today – I find something very different. My detailed Doctor Who analysis blog ‘proves’ me to be 94% male, with “strong indicators” that it’s written by a man… But my LiveJournal featuring enthusiasm about people I’ve met and complaints about toothache guesses that I’m 58% male, and “quite gender neutral”. Perhaps some of us are more versatile? I notice that Costigan, for one, isn’t afraid to be in touch with his feminine side.
I predict that, later today, Jennie will reveal her Butchometer score of 112% and threaten anyone who challenges her to a monster truck duel.
*Like the headline, this is a reference to Carry On Matron (yes, I can spell “your / you’re” and “mail / male”, but I’m pedantic about punning quotations).
But wait! Setting it on my two other blogs – both dormant for eighteen months; I will reanimate them, but not today – I find something very different. My detailed Doctor Who analysis blog ‘proves’ me to be 94% male, with “strong indicators” that it’s written by a man… But my LiveJournal featuring enthusiasm about people I’ve met and complaints about toothache guesses that I’m 58% male, and “quite gender neutral”. Perhaps some of us are more versatile? I notice that Costigan, for one, isn’t afraid to be in touch with his feminine side.
I predict that, later today, Jennie will reveal her Butchometer score of 112% and threaten anyone who challenges her to a monster truck duel.
*Like the headline, this is a reference to Carry On Matron (yes, I can spell “your / you’re” and “mail / male”, but I’m pedantic about punning quotations).
Labels: Blogs, Carry On, Memes, Sex
Doctor Who 45th Anniversary – Why Was 1971 Brilliant?
Less harsh and more colourful than the previous year, it’s the year of the Master (pretty much continuously). An old friend of the Doctor who parted company many years before, he arrives to duel with his fellow Time Lord, teaming up with many different alien forces in his desire to gain ultimate power. The Autons return, ancient powers rise in The Dæmons, and the Master unleashes war and the dark side of humanity in…
This one’s unlikely to be out on DVD very soon; the BBC’s insane archive purges didn’t completely destroy any Doctor Who episodes from the ’70s, but they did cleverly burn the colour tapes of this story and leave us with just a black and white copy, which looks surprisingly stylish but which you’ll have to find on second-hand VHS for the time being. The book tells the story quite crisply, too.
The Mind of Evil
“That is Thunderbolt. A gas missile, nuclear-powered, and British, of course. But the most important thing about it is that it’s illegal.”The Master at his most Bond-villain impressive. We see him smoke a big cigar, plot against a peace conference (complicated by the UK’s illegal WMDs), conduct disturbing experiments on prisoners then pitch them against the army in thrilling action sequences, and reveal his deepest fear.
This one’s unlikely to be out on DVD very soon; the BBC’s insane archive purges didn’t completely destroy any Doctor Who episodes from the ’70s, but they did cleverly burn the colour tapes of this story and leave us with just a black and white copy, which looks surprisingly stylish but which you’ll have to find on second-hand VHS for the time being. The book tells the story quite crisply, too.
Labels: Doctor Who, Jon Pertwee, Reviews, The Brigadier, The Master, Why Is Doctor Who Brilliant?
Sunday, November 23, 2008
Doctor Who 45th Anniversary – Why Was 1970 Brilliant?
A bold relaunch for the series, in colour, consistently impressive, but with the Doctor exiled to modern-day-after-tomorrow Earth. UNIT, the Brigadier and fabulous scientist Dr Liz Shaw join new Doctor Jon Pertwee in investigating such strange occurrences as Auton shop-window dummies bursting to life in Spearhead From Space, missing astronauts in The Ambassadors of Death, lycanthropic slime in Inferno and breakdowns at a research station in…
Though you might be able to find a second-hand copy of the VHS, buy the DVD box set Beneath the Surface instead – not only is the picture restoration an enormous improvement, but the extras include a superb video essay on the politics of Doctor Who that you could easily imagine on BBC4 (oh, and there are two other stories in the box as well – Richard adds that you can listen to the isolated music tracks on all three and enjoy the terrifying race memory in the comfort of your own home!). Malcolm Hulke’s novelisation, Doctor Who and the Cave Monsters, is just as stunning: it expands the characters, sees much of the story from the reptile people’s viewpoint, and has splendid illustrations. It’s probably more responsible for making me a Liberal than any other book, and if you can’t find a copy, you can now buy it as a talking book on CD.
Doctor Who and the Silurians
“Three people have seen them. They do exist. And we’ve got to attack them first.”Green scaly rubber people are people too. A great cast clash over the discovery of a race of reptile people waking after millions of years to reclaim the Earth from ape-descended upstarts, leading to terrifyingly apocalyptic scenes and one of the series’ most tragic endings.
“Just because they’re an alien species, that doesn’t mean we have to kill them.”
Though you might be able to find a second-hand copy of the VHS, buy the DVD box set Beneath the Surface instead – not only is the picture restoration an enormous improvement, but the extras include a superb video essay on the politics of Doctor Who that you could easily imagine on BBC4 (oh, and there are two other stories in the box as well – Richard adds that you can listen to the isolated music tracks on all three and enjoy the terrifying race memory in the comfort of your own home!). Malcolm Hulke’s novelisation, Doctor Who and the Cave Monsters, is just as stunning: it expands the characters, sees much of the story from the reptile people’s viewpoint, and has splendid illustrations. It’s probably more responsible for making me a Liberal than any other book, and if you can’t find a copy, you can now buy it as a talking book on CD.
Labels: Books, Doctor Who, DVD, Jon Pertwee, Liberalism, Personal, Reviews, The Brigadier, Why Is Doctor Who Brilliant?
Doctor Who 45th Anniversary – Why Was 1969 Brilliant?
Writer Bob Holmes’ first two Doctor Who scripts hit the screen, and there’ll be far more from him once the series goes into colour. This is the last black and white year, topically fascinated with going out into space, though the bleak, epic final story seems very down-to-Earth. Where 1968’s The Mind Robber had forces exploiting humanity’s creative talents, here it’s our talent for destruction in a story where the Doctor’s people are finally revealed and the prospect of a black Doctor is shown to be distinctly possible…
A DVD may well be on its way next year, but in the meantime, you may be able to find second-hand a copy of the VHS or of Malcolm Hulke’s shortened but thoughtful novel. If you can track down WH Smith’s The Time Lord Collection, that includes not only the best video transfer of this story, but also The Three Doctors and The Deadly Assassin.
The War Games
“Use the conventional forces. It could be quite amusing.”A grim, brilliantly structured story opens in the First World War then opens out into ever-wider revelations. Horribly similar rigged trials top and tail this passionately anti-war tale where each successive monster is more deadly than the last, and they all look just like us.
A DVD may well be on its way next year, but in the meantime, you may be able to find second-hand a copy of the VHS or of Malcolm Hulke’s shortened but thoughtful novel. If you can track down WH Smith’s The Time Lord Collection, that includes not only the best video transfer of this story, but also The Three Doctors and The Deadly Assassin.
Labels: Doctor Who, History, Patrick Troughton, Philip Madoc, Reviews, Why Is Doctor Who Brilliant?
Doctor Who 45th Anniversary – Why Was 1968 Brilliant?
More monsters hit the screen as hypnotic seaweed rises from the waves and the fabulous Quarks appear, but 1968’s most lasting contribution to the series comes when London is attacked by Yeti and Cybermen in The Web of Fear and The Invasion. Rising to fight these threats is Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart, to be a friend of the Doctor’s for many years (and soon to be back on TV). The year’s most striking story, though, is memorable less for its monsters than for its sheer postmodern weirdness.
The book’s rather fun, if slightly less disturbing, so you can look out for that (or the VHS) second-hand – but it’s the DVD you should buy. The picture’s been spruced up a treat and there are some smashing extras, with documentaries on the story and on the Doctor’s companion Jamie, and even a bit of Basil Brush.
The Mind Robber
“I think we may be in a place where nothing is impossible.”Funny, silly, literary, intelligent… Our heroes find themselves first in a void where the TARDIS, shockingly, explodes, then marooned in a Land of Fiction. Highlights include a resigned Rapunzel, a dumb superhero, a helpful Nottingham man and the Doctor losing face (but not his own).
The book’s rather fun, if slightly less disturbing, so you can look out for that (or the VHS) second-hand – but it’s the DVD you should buy. The picture’s been spruced up a treat and there are some smashing extras, with documentaries on the story and on the Doctor’s companion Jamie, and even a bit of Basil Brush.
Labels: Books, Doctor Who, DVD, Patrick Troughton, Reviews, The Brigadier, Why Is Doctor Who Brilliant?
Doctor Who 45th Anniversary – Why Was 1967 Brilliant?
As Patrick Troughton’s performance as the Doctor becomes compelling, his stories really hit their stride. He faces his own double, a would-be world dictator in the twisty-turny The Enemy of the World, as well as a host of monsters: giant crabs that mess with your mind in The Macra Terror; the eponymous The Abominable Snowmen and The Ice Warriors; the Cybermen at their most chilling in The Tomb of the Cybermen; and even, could it be, the final end of the Daleks…?
And, yes, I’m afraid it’s one more that doesn’t fully exist, though I’m hoping the big, CGI-Dalek-packed Recon that’s due soon will be thrilling. If there’s one ‘missing’ (burnt) story that I’d love to be rediscovered… Anyway, thankfully you can at least buy the one fully surviving episode in the Lost In Time DVD set, and the whole soundtrack is terrific on CD (there’s a book you might find second-hand, too). It was adapted as a stage play two years ago, and though you can’t see that, you can read Richard’s review courtesy of Millennium.
The Evil of the Daleks
“Somewhere in the Dalek race, there are three Daleks with the Human Factor. Gradually, they will come to question. They will persuade other Daleks to question. You will have a rebellion on your planet!”Doctor Who’s Faust, a gripping morality tale of insidious Daleks and the Doctor exploring human and Dalek nature – defined as ‘to ask questions’ and ‘to obey and to kill’ – it’s the series’ most powerfully Liberal message and intertwines past, present and an alien world to perfection.
And, yes, I’m afraid it’s one more that doesn’t fully exist, though I’m hoping the big, CGI-Dalek-packed Recon that’s due soon will be thrilling. If there’s one ‘missing’ (burnt) story that I’d love to be rediscovered… Anyway, thankfully you can at least buy the one fully surviving episode in the Lost In Time DVD set, and the whole soundtrack is terrific on CD (there’s a book you might find second-hand, too). It was adapted as a stage play two years ago, and though you can’t see that, you can read Richard’s review courtesy of Millennium.
Labels: Daleks, Doctor Who, DVD, History, Liberalism, Patrick Troughton, Recons, Reviews, Why Is Doctor Who Brilliant?
Doctor Who 45th Anniversary – Why Was 1966 Brilliant?
Grand historical tragedy in The Massacre, far-future space opera with Earth’s survivors, Wild West comedy and song in The Gunfighters, panic on the streets of London in The War Machines, even a serviceable Dalek movie on the big screen… Most strikingly for the series’ future, The Tenth Planet creates two of Doctor Who’s biggest ideas, spare-parts techno-zombies the Cybermen and the astonishing concept of regeneration, with Patrick Troughton as the Doctor facing The Power of the Daleks. But the year opened to building tension in a huge Dalek epic…
Unfortunately, if you want to see the whole of this story… You can’t. Three-quarters of it was burned by the BBC and no longer exists, though you can buy the whole soundtrack on CD, and see the restored surviving TV episodes in the Lost In Time DVD set (and you might find second-hand copies of the twin books). However, though you should of course buy those, if there’s one Recon you should send off for, this is it. The huge Reconstruction of this story is a labour of love, with CGI Daleks and a breathtakingly recreated finale. It was adapted as a stage play last year, and though you can’t see that, you can read Millennium’s review.
The Daleks’ Master Plan
“One Dalek… Is capable of exterminating all!”The Daleks reach the zenith of their power and cunning in a plan for Universal conquest spanning many planets and times and spinning between thrilling, sinister and downright surreal. Shockingly, several of the Doctor’s friends die – the harrowing climax beats even modern finales for emotional punch.
Unfortunately, if you want to see the whole of this story… You can’t. Three-quarters of it was burned by the BBC and no longer exists, though you can buy the whole soundtrack on CD, and see the restored surviving TV episodes in the Lost In Time DVD set (and you might find second-hand copies of the twin books). However, though you should of course buy those, if there’s one Recon you should send off for, this is it. The huge Reconstruction of this story is a labour of love, with CGI Daleks and a breathtakingly recreated finale. It was adapted as a stage play last year, and though you can’t see that, you can read Millennium’s review.
Labels: Daleks, Doctor Who, DVD, Patrick Troughton, Recons, Reviews, Why Is Doctor Who Brilliant?, William Hartnell
Doctor Who 45th Anniversary – Why Was 1965 Brilliant?
The series stretches out into new territory, creating the archetypal Who story of mixing history and science fiction in The Time Meddler, experimenting with comedy scripts like The Romans, trying a story with no ‘humans’ except the regular cast in The Web Planet and even a one-off grim Dalek adventure with none of our heroes at all but a James Bond-like lead instead, Mission to the Unknown. The first Annual appears. And a huge Dalek nightmare begins, though more on that story later, after…
Unfortunately, if you want to see the whole of this story… You can’t. Half of it was binned by the BBC and no longer exists, though you can buy the whole soundtrack on CD, while the Lost In Time DVD set has both the audio-only parts and the restored surviving TV episodes. This is a good one to send off for the Recon, naturally, with a superb interview with Julian Glover as well as reconstructed visuals. Then there’s David Whitaker’s rather dashing novel Doctor Who and the Crusaders, now available as a talking book read on CD by William Russell, and well worth getting.
The Crusade
“You defy me with the Pope?”The Doctor lands in a remarkably even-handed 12th Century ‘BBC adventure serial’, caught between two dangerous leaders – intelligent, calm Saladin and impulsive, petulant Richard – and their butchering warlords. An extraordinary script brings out the best from outstanding actors with perhaps the finest ‘serious’ dialogue in Doctor Who.
“No! You defy the world with your politics!”
Unfortunately, if you want to see the whole of this story… You can’t. Half of it was binned by the BBC and no longer exists, though you can buy the whole soundtrack on CD, while the Lost In Time DVD set has both the audio-only parts and the restored surviving TV episodes. This is a good one to send off for the Recon, naturally, with a superb interview with Julian Glover as well as reconstructed visuals. Then there’s David Whitaker’s rather dashing novel Doctor Who and the Crusaders, now available as a talking book read on CD by William Russell, and well worth getting.
Labels: Books, Doctor Who, DVD, History, Julian Glover, Recons, Reviews, Why Is Doctor Who Brilliant?, William Hartnell
Doctor Who 45th Anniversary – Why Was 1964 Brilliant?
In 1964, and not for the last time, Doctor Who becomes a massive ratings hit. There’s psychodrama inside the TARDIS on The Edge of Destruction; the Doctor’s adventure with Marco Polo hits the Radio Times front cover; his arch-enemies return after their total destruction (imagine that happening today!) for The Dalek Invasion of Earth; and the show’s terrific first novelisation is, naturally, Doctor Who in an Exciting Adventure with the Daleks. So, what’s my pick for the year of Dalekmania?
You might be able to find second-hand copies of the VHS, or of the novelisation (an enthralling recreation of a then unimaginably ancient story for me in 1984), but really, I urge you to buy the marvellously cleaned up and extras-filled DVD. It’s by far the best way to enjoy the story, and even boasts an educational piece by Valerie Singleton and a South Park-style cartoon of the late, great John Ringham as the villainous high priest Tlotoxl, telling us how to make proper Aztec cocoa.
The Aztecs
“But you can’t rewrite history – not one line! …I know. Believe me. I know.”The most fabulous companion ever, schoolteacher Barbara Wright, is made a goddess and determines to save the Aztec people from destruction. The greatest of tragic historicals, with stunning concepts and dialogue. Plus, the Doctor gets engaged, which means lovely characterisation, cocoa, and absolutely no tongues.
“Not Barbara. Yetaxa.”
You might be able to find second-hand copies of the VHS, or of the novelisation (an enthralling recreation of a then unimaginably ancient story for me in 1984), but really, I urge you to buy the marvellously cleaned up and extras-filled DVD. It’s by far the best way to enjoy the story, and even boasts an educational piece by Valerie Singleton and a South Park-style cartoon of the late, great John Ringham as the villainous high priest Tlotoxl, telling us how to make proper Aztec cocoa.
Labels: Books, Doctor Who, DVD, History, Reviews, Why Is Doctor Who Brilliant?, William Hartnell
Doctor Who 45th Anniversary – Why Was 1963 Brilliant?
Need you ask? It all begins on 23rd November 1963; several brilliant people invent “the best idea ever invented in the history of the world” ((c) Russell T Davies) and Verity Lambert puts it on TV with the impossibly brilliant William Hartnell as the Doctor. The weird, alienating Pilot episode’s awesome, The Daleks and their world look fantastic… But really, there’s only one choice for why 1963’s Doctor Who is brilliant. They nail it from the very beginning.
Now, if you want to buy it… You might be able to find a second-hand copy of Terrance Dicks’ rather jolly novelisation, or of the two releases on VHS (and two more of the Pilot version of the first episode), but really, you should pick up the marvellously cleaned up and extras-filled DVD box set, Doctor Who – The Beginning, possibly the most indispensable release in the range. As a bonus, it has two more stories and a taste of another on it, too.
An Unearthly Child
“Have you ever thought what it’s like to be wanderers in the fourth dimension? Have you? To be exiles?”Two teachers investigate a strange old man’s granddaughter – their lives, and ours, are never the same again. They fall into the TARDIS and into history (quite literally, with cavemen). And the very first episode is still perhaps the greatest single piece of television ever made. Seriously.
Now, if you want to buy it… You might be able to find a second-hand copy of Terrance Dicks’ rather jolly novelisation, or of the two releases on VHS (and two more of the Pilot version of the first episode), but really, you should pick up the marvellously cleaned up and extras-filled DVD box set, Doctor Who – The Beginning, possibly the most indispensable release in the range. As a bonus, it has two more stories and a taste of another on it, too.
Labels: BBC, Doctor Who, DVD, Ideas, Reviews, Why Is Doctor Who Brilliant?, William Hartnell
Friday, November 21, 2008
What’s New Is Old: The Seventies Are Back! Starring Tom Baker’s Explosion of Desire
On TV over the next few days there’s a feast of wonderful things with one feature in common: a ’70s revival. Tonight’s highlight may hail from 1966 – one of The Avengers’ greatest episodes, The House That Jack Built, at 1am on BBC4 – but it’s preceded by House of Cards, a striking episode of 1976 Avengers revival The New Avengers. Appropriately for Doctor Who’s anniversary weekend, there’s also a new sequel to a 1975 Doctor Who, fine storytelling from The Sarah Jane Adventures (she debuted in 1973) and a remake of Dalek author Terry Nation’s 1975 apocalyptic drama Survivors. And you thought it was just decaying Labour Governments, nationalisations and economic disasters that were back in fashion!
House of Cards at five past midnight tonight on BBC4 is a splendidly double-crossing piece of cold war fun featuring a high-kicking bishop and an outrageous shaggy dog scene about the past Avengers women, and starring the always enjoyable Peter Jeffrey. One of The Avengers’ top recurring guest stars, this is the last of a strange trilogy of episodes spread across a decade, in each of which he plays a different old foe bent on revenge against an Avenger. Each uses a playing card motif; each has a dubious continental connection; and each one is dead…
On Sunday night at six and again at midnight, Doctor Who’s 45th anniversary, brings a radio sequel on BBC7 to a rather fabulous 1975 TV adventure. Terror of the Zygons was the last big hurrah for UNIT, brought in the Loch Ness Monster (seriously), and perhaps best deserves to be remembered for the Zygons, undoubtedly for me the greatest of one-off Who monsters (sorry Reapers, werewolf and Quarks). Despite a slight disadvantage to seeing these aliens with your wireless sets, this sequel with Paul McGann and Sheridan Smith is very different in tone, but fun – guest stars include Tim Brooke-Taylor and Steven Pacey. And though it’ll be introduced as The Zygon Who Fell To Earth, it’ll always be Trevor of the Zygons to me.
The Doctor Who-related highlight, though, despite strong competition from Einstein and Eddington on Saturday night (damn! It clashes with The Devil’s Whore! But still, the Doctor and Terry Nation on the front of the Radio Times, and not even for Doctor Who; how brilliant is that?), is Monday’s The Sarah Jane Adventures: The Temptation of Sarah Jane Smith. The first half’s on BBC1 at 4.35, and the conclusion follows on CBBC at 5.15; having seen Part One on CBBC last week, I can’t wait to find out what happens after the fantastic Pyramids of Marsesque cliffhanger. Don’t let it being a ‘children’s programme’ put you off; it’s a great series, not only far better than Torchwood but – heretical thought – possibly better than this year’s Doctor Who, too (and how many other kids’ shows quote The Wicker Man?). This story by the very talented Gareth Roberts is the highlight of this year’s Sarahs so far, in which she’s led into a trap by a sinister figure known as the Trickster, who to fans of Doctor Who’s 1978-9 Key to Time season may bear an uncanny resemblance to the Black Guardian (but, as Gareth said to me of something completely different when I jumped him in Borders last week, “We’re not allowed to call it that”).
The Temptation of Sarah Jane Smith is also, of course, the sequel to the very best of last year’s The Sarah Jane Adventures, the positively uncanny Whatever Happened to Sarah Jane? BBC1 handily repeated that last Sunday, so if you missed it, tune your IPlayer to the 16th and watch the sufferings of Lis Sladen and Jane Asher – but be quick, before it’s gone (or just buy the boxed set of the complete first series, which came out on DVD last week).
And finally, of course, I’m on edge wondering just what the remake of Survivors will be like, coming up on Sunday night at nine. The original series varied from gripping post-apocalyptic drama to, er, The Archers, and was never the same after the producer sacked the terrific actress playing the strong, independent female lead because she was, er, a strong and independent woman. I’m hoping the new Survivors is good; there’ve been some intriguing teasers shown and it’s got quite a few good actors in it, but they’ve given the central part to that woman from Bonekickers. Let’s hope it was the series and not her, eh?
Having had a rough couple of weeks and not got out much or been in any way sociable, this morning I spent a couple of hours queuing outside the Stamp Centre on the Strand and getting very, very cold. In keeping with the ’70s mood, it was one of those rare opportunities to see ’70s Doctor Who icon Tom Baker, and indeed fellow ’70s Doctor Who icon Nicholas Courtney, the Brigadier, who’s a very funny man in his own right but usually plays Tom’s straight man at such events. As Tom has a rather mercurial temperament, I thought it best to bring along a little sweetener. You never know if he’s going to go into an extended anecdote and profess his love for you, or eye up what you want signing and mutter “You can see I was in 180 episodes…”
Reckoning he was sick of jelly babies (“Yeerrhh,” he growled), but remembering that he’d given me a bag of them, along with half the kids in Britain, when I met him at the age of about nine, I gave him a pack of Hotel Chocolat’s Fruity Selection. “Fruity seemed appropriate,” I suggested. Those brilliant blue eyes fixed me. “Am I fruity, then?” Fortunately, Nick came to my rescue and told him that indeed he was. On my recommendation, he tried the lemon truffle first: it’s got a centre of lemon and white chocolate, but the outer shell is incredibly tart. Fortunately, he loved it. “That’s kept me from death!” rang this great cry down the shop. “What an explosion of… Desire!” He turned to Nick. “Try the pink one. You’ve played a bishop” (I didn’t enquire whether or not he was high-kicking or not, though I suspect not). Nick agreed that they were, indeed, very good. Tom tried a pink one too, and slowly swooned into Nick for a kiss. Then, upright and bellowing again, “Aren’t these marvellous? We could do the adverts, if they’ll have us!” So there you are, Hotel Chocolat. Get in touch with his agent at once.
The morning’s guests also included the rather brilliant and slightly terrifying David Troughton, who’s appeared in Doctor Who in the ’60s, ’70s and Noughties, with the distinction of turning up in the best story of the year each time. I love him, though, for an ’80s series, A Very Peculiar Practice (like all four of the doctor stars, he’d have made a terrific Doctor). Though the first series is out on DVD, the second’s never even been repeated, so I’ve not seen it in twenty years. He’s of the view, it turns out, that Mrs Thatcher was so offended by it and hated the BBC so much that she stopped it being reshown (and I probably can’t repeat some of his comments; suffice to say that, unlike poor David Davis crying this morning into his Puccini on Desert Island Discs over her resignation, Mr Troughton is more likely to play Elvis Costello). Who’d have thought the man who played uber-Thatcherite Bob Buzzard would be so vehemently anti-Thatcher in person? Well, everybody, admittedly.
Newer› ‹Older
House of Cards at five past midnight tonight on BBC4 is a splendidly double-crossing piece of cold war fun featuring a high-kicking bishop and an outrageous shaggy dog scene about the past Avengers women, and starring the always enjoyable Peter Jeffrey. One of The Avengers’ top recurring guest stars, this is the last of a strange trilogy of episodes spread across a decade, in each of which he plays a different old foe bent on revenge against an Avenger. Each uses a playing card motif; each has a dubious continental connection; and each one is dead…
On Sunday night at six and again at midnight, Doctor Who’s 45th anniversary, brings a radio sequel on BBC7 to a rather fabulous 1975 TV adventure. Terror of the Zygons was the last big hurrah for UNIT, brought in the Loch Ness Monster (seriously), and perhaps best deserves to be remembered for the Zygons, undoubtedly for me the greatest of one-off Who monsters (sorry Reapers, werewolf and Quarks). Despite a slight disadvantage to seeing these aliens with your wireless sets, this sequel with Paul McGann and Sheridan Smith is very different in tone, but fun – guest stars include Tim Brooke-Taylor and Steven Pacey. And though it’ll be introduced as The Zygon Who Fell To Earth, it’ll always be Trevor of the Zygons to me.
The Doctor Who-related highlight, though, despite strong competition from Einstein and Eddington on Saturday night (damn! It clashes with The Devil’s Whore! But still, the Doctor and Terry Nation on the front of the Radio Times, and not even for Doctor Who; how brilliant is that?), is Monday’s The Sarah Jane Adventures: The Temptation of Sarah Jane Smith. The first half’s on BBC1 at 4.35, and the conclusion follows on CBBC at 5.15; having seen Part One on CBBC last week, I can’t wait to find out what happens after the fantastic Pyramids of Marsesque cliffhanger. Don’t let it being a ‘children’s programme’ put you off; it’s a great series, not only far better than Torchwood but – heretical thought – possibly better than this year’s Doctor Who, too (and how many other kids’ shows quote The Wicker Man?). This story by the very talented Gareth Roberts is the highlight of this year’s Sarahs so far, in which she’s led into a trap by a sinister figure known as the Trickster, who to fans of Doctor Who’s 1978-9 Key to Time season may bear an uncanny resemblance to the Black Guardian (but, as Gareth said to me of something completely different when I jumped him in Borders last week, “We’re not allowed to call it that”).
The Temptation of Sarah Jane Smith is also, of course, the sequel to the very best of last year’s The Sarah Jane Adventures, the positively uncanny Whatever Happened to Sarah Jane? BBC1 handily repeated that last Sunday, so if you missed it, tune your IPlayer to the 16th and watch the sufferings of Lis Sladen and Jane Asher – but be quick, before it’s gone (or just buy the boxed set of the complete first series, which came out on DVD last week).
And finally, of course, I’m on edge wondering just what the remake of Survivors will be like, coming up on Sunday night at nine. The original series varied from gripping post-apocalyptic drama to, er, The Archers, and was never the same after the producer sacked the terrific actress playing the strong, independent female lead because she was, er, a strong and independent woman. I’m hoping the new Survivors is good; there’ve been some intriguing teasers shown and it’s got quite a few good actors in it, but they’ve given the central part to that woman from Bonekickers. Let’s hope it was the series and not her, eh?
Tom Baker’s Explosion of Desire
Having had a rough couple of weeks and not got out much or been in any way sociable, this morning I spent a couple of hours queuing outside the Stamp Centre on the Strand and getting very, very cold. In keeping with the ’70s mood, it was one of those rare opportunities to see ’70s Doctor Who icon Tom Baker, and indeed fellow ’70s Doctor Who icon Nicholas Courtney, the Brigadier, who’s a very funny man in his own right but usually plays Tom’s straight man at such events. As Tom has a rather mercurial temperament, I thought it best to bring along a little sweetener. You never know if he’s going to go into an extended anecdote and profess his love for you, or eye up what you want signing and mutter “You can see I was in 180 episodes…”
Reckoning he was sick of jelly babies (“Yeerrhh,” he growled), but remembering that he’d given me a bag of them, along with half the kids in Britain, when I met him at the age of about nine, I gave him a pack of Hotel Chocolat’s Fruity Selection. “Fruity seemed appropriate,” I suggested. Those brilliant blue eyes fixed me. “Am I fruity, then?” Fortunately, Nick came to my rescue and told him that indeed he was. On my recommendation, he tried the lemon truffle first: it’s got a centre of lemon and white chocolate, but the outer shell is incredibly tart. Fortunately, he loved it. “That’s kept me from death!” rang this great cry down the shop. “What an explosion of… Desire!” He turned to Nick. “Try the pink one. You’ve played a bishop” (I didn’t enquire whether or not he was high-kicking or not, though I suspect not). Nick agreed that they were, indeed, very good. Tom tried a pink one too, and slowly swooned into Nick for a kiss. Then, upright and bellowing again, “Aren’t these marvellous? We could do the adverts, if they’ll have us!” So there you are, Hotel Chocolat. Get in touch with his agent at once.
The morning’s guests also included the rather brilliant and slightly terrifying David Troughton, who’s appeared in Doctor Who in the ’60s, ’70s and Noughties, with the distinction of turning up in the best story of the year each time. I love him, though, for an ’80s series, A Very Peculiar Practice (like all four of the doctor stars, he’d have made a terrific Doctor). Though the first series is out on DVD, the second’s never even been repeated, so I’ve not seen it in twenty years. He’s of the view, it turns out, that Mrs Thatcher was so offended by it and hated the BBC so much that she stopped it being reshown (and I probably can’t repeat some of his comments; suffice to say that, unlike poor David Davis crying this morning into his Puccini on Desert Island Discs over her resignation, Mr Troughton is more likely to play Elvis Costello). Who’d have thought the man who played uber-Thatcherite Bob Buzzard would be so vehemently anti-Thatcher in person? Well, everybody, admittedly.
Labels: A Very Peculiar Practice, Big Finish, Chocolate, Doctor Who, Fandom, Food, Paul McGann, Peter Jeffrey, Sarah Jane Smith, The Avengers, The Brigadier, The New Avengers, Tom Baker
