Category: Uncategorized

  • Note on Comments

    Unfortunately I’m currently being deluged by comment spam on this blog – many hundreds of comments a day. While most of the comments aren’t getting through, I thought the best thing to do for the time being was switch them off for a bit. It’s the most hassle-free solution for me. In any case, I…

  • Alan Partridge: Alpha Papa

    On Radio 4’s Film Programme recently, Mark Gatiss has been re-examining TV spin-off films from the seventies including film versions of Are You Being Served, On the Buses, and the only one he really rated, Porridge. The feature-film spin-off has a long history in UK television, although as Gatiss explained it was largely used as…

  • Sports on TV… Again

    The weekend just gone was a big one in UK sport. Picking up a broadsheet newspaper on Saturday morning left you in no doubt of that. And the first key event was the deciding Lions test in Sydney. Page after page was dedicated to Warren Gatland’s decisions over who to include and who to leave…

  • In The House/Dans La Maison

    In The House is the new film from Francois Ozon, director of a range of films including 8 Women and Swimming Pool. This film is of a kind you just don’t get in Britain. It’s profoundly middle class (or should that be Established Middle Class?). Frabrice Luchini and Kristen Scott Thomas are a respectively a…

  • My BBC DQF Proposal

    Another day, another proposal under the BBC’s Delivering Quality First (DQF) – aka, what significant cuts can we make as painlessly as possible? We’ve had plenty of them to date including the gutting of BBC Local radio, stopping late night or daytime broadcasts. Just today, the BBC News channel (or BBC News 24 as it’s…

  • Lost and Found

    It’s been a lovely weekend, so today I was out on my bike taking some photos. I headed down to the South Bank and was near the front of Tate Modern capturing a couple of pictures of the people nearby. There were thousands of other people about. Tourists; locals; people working. I moved on further…

  • Photographic Exhibitions

    I went to a couple of different photographic exhibitions the other day – although only a hundred metres or so separated them – they were massively disparate in style. The V&A is hosting Shadow Catchers: Camera-less Photography until February 20. Using a variety of styles and techniques, the five artists featured work directly onto photographic…

  • Cinema Advertising

    Over the weekend I saw a couple of films, and because I showed up early, I saw most of the ad-reel in front of each film. A couple of things occurred to me with cinema ads that are relatively unique to the medium: – Advertisers aren’t scared of running long ads. The Spanish beer brand…

  • Prom 54: Sibelius’s Second Symphony

    [Not taken last night when it was pouring with rain] I love Sibelius’s Second Symphony, so I cycled over to the Royal Albert Hall last night to see it performed by the BBC Symphony Orchestra. It was also being broadcast on BBC Four (and Radio 3, of course). Before that we had the premiere of…

  • Enron

    If you’re into plays based around colossal financial scandal, then now is a great time to be in the West End. Last autumn I saw The Power of Yes at the National, but the play that everyone was talking about was Enron. And this evening I finally got around to seeing the play that’s won…

  • In Radio News Today…

    The DRDB has announced 10m DAB digital radio sets sold in the UK (and Pure has announced that it has sold a cumulative 3m DAB sets worldwide). This comes at the peak time for selling DAB sets – the run-up to Christmas. David Liddiment, who is leading the BBC Trust review of BBC Radio 2…

  • Sky Player

    In today’s Observer there’s a Sky ad that reads: “Want to watch Sky Sports live on your PC?” Then there’s a picture of a laptop showing some Premier League football. “Now you can with Sky Player.” Hmm. I’ve heard that claim before. Yes you can, as long as you subscribe to Sky Multiroom (i.e. pay…