As it occurs to us, in the 88th Collings & Herrin podcast, we present an exclusive tribute to Peggy Mitchell, who is to leave EastEnders after 15 years, consider Malcolm MacDonald's nightmare vision of St James' Park stadium in a commercial world, stir the latest political correctness storm in the Daily Mail's teacup, apply for a job on Wight FM, ponder the newspaper grammar of Kelvin MacKenzie's column in The Sun, review the extras that come with the new Terry Gilliam film, and give an update on the not-for-sale rhino and its matted-hair horn. Don't forget to book tickets for our live podcast gigs in December (Christmas Podcast Party, Brighton Duke Of York's) and February (100th podcast, Leicester Square Theatre)
The rhino may not be, but our asses are. If you'd like to be a part of the Collings & Herrin podcast, and you're in the right half of the country, two dates for your diary:
TUESDAY December 8, 2009 Duke Of York's Picturehouse, Brighton The Collings & Herring Christmas Podcast Party: an evening of stand-up, interaction, prizes, secret dancing, an exclusive Q&A, the chance to pick up a perfect Christmas gift and, of course, the one hour, 6 minute and 35 second podcast itself. After May's near sell-out, we hope to repeat the feat, and celebrate the birth of the baby Jesus a couple of weeks early. With you. Tickets available here.
MONDAY February 1, 2010 Leicester Square Theatre, London The 100th Collings & Herrin Podcast: the 100th C&H podcast, seasonally adjusted, recorded in front of a baying audience of nerds, 7.00-8.30 then you can buy us a drink somewhere quiet. Tickets already available here.
If we can sell these out, we promise to look into some more gigs outside of London and Brighton in the new year. Maybe even one in the north of England. Or the West.
And I didn't. For anyone who doesn't listen to podcast: I have become fascinated by a not-for-salerhino that sits atop a shelf at a key-cutting/watch repair concession at Vauxhall overground station in South London. It made me laugh that the rhino was seemingly put there for decoration but had to have the handwritten RHINO NOT FOR SALE sign put in front of it, thus ruining the decorative look of the statue. I cling to the idea that so many people must have gone in there to have a key cut or a watch battery fitted and asked how much the rhino was, the poor harassed owner had to make and erect the sign. The RHINO NOT FOR SALE sign disappeared for a while, which made me wonder if the owner felt the signage had done its job and risked taking it down, or else the rhino had actually suddenly gone on sale. However, the recent return of the RHINO NOT FOR SALE sign - a slightly smaller, less obtrusive one, actually - suggests customers have started asking about it again. Ah, the gentle, large-mammal-based soap opera of real life. Thanks so much to Andy McH for hearing my plea on the podcast and going out on South London safari to bag a snapshot. If AA Gill had done it, he would no doubt have shot the rhino, to see what if felt like.
Of course, Richard thinks people should go in the shop and ask how much the RHINO NOT FOR SALE sign costs, so that the owner will have to make a RHINO NOT FOR SALE SIGN NOT FOR SALE. He is a professional comedian.
PS: Update. Our nerds are dangerous people. What would happen if they used their powers for evil?
I will add more pics as they come in, but hats off to Andy McH for taking this evocative rock shot - and posting it on Twitter within seconds - at tonight's absolutely brilliiiiiiiiaaaaaaaaaaaant Karaoke Circus extravaganza, back in its spiritual and literal home the Albany Downstairs in Central London, where, dwarfed by the comedic talent either side of me on this illustrious bill, I belted out Lithium by Nirvana. My rendition looks, if I may be so bold, better than it sounded. Certainly from where I was standing. We were also treated to an emotional Nothing Compares 2 U from Josie Long, which was almost impossible to follow, but I chivalrously held her new coat while she sang it, which I hope was a contributing factor to her greatness. (I am nothing if not the man who holds the coats for comedians.) Also, a song from Bugsy Malone by Anna Crilly and Katy Wix; an ironically stopped Don't Stop Me Now from the super-patient Margaret Cabourn-Smith (who subtly referenced the C&H podcast in her patter, which we appreciated); a remarkably tuneful rendition of the punk rock classic Orgasm Addict from Mr Richard Herring, dedicated to his current comedy partner; Song 2 by the cycling-fit Dave Gorman ... and then I snuck off home to watch Question Time because an ugly man was going to be on it. I was torn. Apologies to those performers whose work I missed and whose coats I could not hold, including genial, snake-hipped Chris Addison with an apparently show-stopping, ovation-deserving Common People, Robin Ince, Jeremy Hardy (aka. Robin Ince in the future if he calms down a bit) and special secret guest Jessica Hynes, who, as Richard commented, cheated "by using talent", and also earned an ovation. Below are a selection of photographs from various sources. First past the post were these evocatively blurry ones by Andy McH, which were also instantaneously Tweeted, and would have definitely been printed in the NME in 1991:
And now some slightly clearer ones from Linzy aka AngryFeet:
And finally, from unofficial Karaoke Circus photographer Paul Bailey, are some highlights from his full set, which can be viewed here.
So, a big hand to packed-lunch addict Martin White [above], who pulls this whole thing together every time; to Danielle, Foz, David and the rest of the musicians; and to Dan and the Baron, the Yin and Yang of critique. Another subterranean have-a-go triumph over technical adversity in the key of fun.
In the 87th Collings & Herrin podcast we are the news but don't even know it, as helicopters buzz over Shepherd's Bush to monitor the protests against Nick Griffin on the night of his historic Question Time appearance. (We mistakenly imagine them to be piloted by Michael Legge and James Hingley, aka Bollings & Nerrin, our podcast stalkers. We are idiots.) However, we still discuss the issues of the day: Nick Griffin, again, pictured in frankly unrealistic Sun cartoon form, whose own wife Jackie calls an "oddball" and seems confused about how precisely the sun might rise and set inside his fat Nazi arse, the shame of the as-yet-unnamed binge-drinking Cardiff girl and her skateboard knickers, Mitch Winehouse's approval of his troubled daughter's new breasts, the demanding nature of As It Occurs To Me listeners and the latest update on the Vauxhall Station rhino. There are no sketches. Thank God.
It was truly an honour last night to have been asked to host the grand opening of a new cinema, the HMV Curzon in Wimbledon, guest of honour: Shane Meadows. The cinema itself actually sits above the existing HMV on the high street and may well point the way forward in these uncertain times: a large record chain expands its old-fashioned business to include music venues and now, cinemas. Wimbledon has a massive Odeon - indeed, the new Curzon is virtually next door, in an almost sneery gesture - but this is increasingly a place where the movie-lover takes his or her life into their own hands, not really knowing whether the viewing of a film will be actually possible, what with all the young people talking and texting all the way through it.
The Curzon is essentially an arthouse cinema, which means it may charge a few extra quid (tickets at Wimbledon will be capped at £10), but that, combined with its more esoteric programming choices, means that it's less attractive to the talking and texting teenagers. Anyone living South West of the river should be as cheered by its arrival as I am. I frequently trek into London's busy West End to visit either the Curzon Soho or Curzon Mayfair for a respectful, eyes-front, mobiles-off evening of cinemagoing - recent happy occasions include Moon and Antichrist (well, maybe happy isn't the correct word for Antichrist). Let's hope the Curzon Wimbledon will develop into a profitable venture. It has three modest-sized screens; the biggest, the Red Screen, seats just 103 patrons, but in comfort and with all digital mod cons. (I'm told the entire cinema can be operated from a laptop in space, or something.)
Anyway, to the glamorous gala night: our guest of honour was Shane Meadows, whose ace new film - shot in five days for £28,000 - Le Donk and Scor-Zay-Zee, was the inaugural screening, and he was a terrific sport, wielding the giant golden scissors and being photographed in a sea of HMV logos and with Nipper the HMV dog (seen above with Karolina Kus, the Curzon Wimbledon's manager). Having posed with the giant scissors, he was then given a normal-sized pair to actually cut the ribbon! I have known Shane, on and off, in a professional capacity, for many years, and he remains unnecessarily gracious about the fact that his first ever award was presented to him for his no-budget debut feature Small Time by Collins & Maconie's Movie Club on ITV in 1996. (We sprayed a Fisher-Price farmyard gold and called it the Barn D'Or.) He was happy to do an informal, sit-down chat before the screening - after Simon Fox, Chief Exec of HMV Group, had presented him with a complete Seinfeld box set, which he had cheekily mentioned he was after in a short promotional film for the cinema's opening. Shane really is one of the good guys, unspoiled by success, just as cheery and sociable and amenable as he was when I first met him, and just as fired up by getting out there and making films. Le Donk is hilarious and moving, and you should see it. At one candid point in our Q&A, Shane admitted that he considers Once Upon A Time In The Midlands "a piece of shit" but that its commercial failure, despite big names and a massive marketing push, actually helped relaunch him as a guerrilla filmmaker. (It isn't a piece of shit, but it lacks the personal beating heart of his other work, and if it led to the rich seam of work beginning with Dead Man's Shoes - which Paddy Considine did as a favour for his old pal - then it was worth doing.)
So, a successful launch. The cinema itself opens tomorrow (Friday). It's rare that a new boutique cinema opens, and it was thrilling to be there, and to have lured so many people south of the river to see it. (Nipper the dog is a bitch. No, really.)
Thanks to Hugh Thompson for the official photos. And thanks to Debbie, Nadia, Karolina and all at HMV and Curzon for giving me the chance to host the evening. Also to Gennaro, a whirlwind presence at HMV since I used to work at Q, who reminded me to mention this charitable venture:
The HMV My Inspirations 18-month calendar is based on the ads with nice black and white photos of famous musicians you've probably seen. Proceeds go to children-and-young-adults cancer care charity CLIC Sargent.
Two things I thought I'd bring up about the Star Wars Episode I review I wrote for this week's Radio Times, a publication I won't assume you buy, even though a million people do, God bless them every one. (Why was I reviewing Star Wars Episode I? Because ITV1 are showing the whole hexalogy from this Saturday, in episodic order - or "the wrong order" as it's known to purists.)
1. Spot my schoolboy error in the review:
The answer to "life, universe and everything", according to The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy, is 42. But what about the really important question? In which order should you watch the six Star Wars films? This week, ITV1 posits an answer: you start with Episode I: The Phantom Menace, and conclude, in six Saturdays' time, with Episode VI: Return Of The Jedi. Sounds perfectly reasonable to the non-obsessive, but is it? I would argue that the hexalogy (as nobody calls it) should be viewed in release-date order, beginning with the original Star Wars - since reconfigured as Episode IV: A New Hope - at which point we had no idea about the extent of the "issues" between Luke Skywalker and Darth Vader.
Released in 1977 into an entertainment industry that considered sci-fi a moribund genre, George Lucas's long-held space opera dream changed everything. Star Wars busted unexpected blocks and provided a young generation - mine - with what we would always regard as "our film". Having grown up with Star Trek re-runs, it fed the same stargazing wonder and love of rubber-suited monsters.
Star Wars has almost amounted to George Lucas's life's work - production of all six installments occupied him from 1973 to 2005, when the final film was released. During the gap in the middle, CGI technology developed enough to lure him back into the galactic game. The release in 1999 of the first of the second trilogy, The Phantom Menace, had grown-up Star Wars fans salivating. What a shame it failed to live up to the hype.
Despite seamless digital effects, intriguing narrative "seeds" (such as our first sighting of nine-year-old Anakin Skywalker, whom we'd already seen grow up), the return of such key creatives as composer John Williams and Frank Oz as the voice of Yoda, and the casting of red hot Ewan McGregor as the young Alex Guinness - sorry, Obi Wan Kenobi - Menace felt scrappily scripted and, ironically, episodic. It was also hobbled by the idiotic, Goofy-like sidekick Jar Jar Binks.
Things would pick up for Episode III: Attack Of The Clones, showing for the first time on terrestrial TV in five Saturdays' time, at which the trilogies merged, but "our film" had been sullied forever.
I apologise for my lacklustre performance, but in mitigation it was rewritten in haste. Some eagle-eyed folk have already picked me up on my schoolboy error on Twitter, confounding my theory that, hey, sci-fans aren't the sort to notice this sort of thing and bang on about it. (By the way, I have also been picked up on my use of the phrase "sci-fi fan", as Star Wars isn't sci-fi, apparently. Oh, shut up. What is it? Period drama? Oh.)
2. Enjoy the discursive and self-indulgent intro I wrote for the piece that was quite rightly cut for reasons of "space" (that's "space" as in room on the page, not "space" as in the final frontier):
It is the greatest sci-fi saga ever told. An ambitious, mythic, densely-plotted odyssey set in a parallel galaxy wrought by civil war. The definitive space opera, it unfolds across multiple episodes aboard enormous space cruisers and upon alien worlds, using familial strife and old-fashioned romance to give it a human heart. It is Battlestar Galactica, the "reimagined" TV series that drew to a conclusion after four seasons etc. etc.
And on the third day of In The City, Manchester's legendary music industry jolly, I travelled due North-west to take part in a panel about ... well, it was never really made totally explicit what it was about, either in the publicity or by fragmented punk-rock moderator John Robb, but it was something to do with writing books and rock music. This explained why I found myself squashed into a leather sofa alongside John Niven, A&R-turned-gamekeeper and author of scurrilous biz novel Kill Your Friends, Mark Hodkinson, genial boss of indie publisher Pomona and author of affectionate post-punk novel The Last Mad Surge Of Youth, Pete Frame, all-round beardy legend and architect of the mighty Rock's Family Trees, and Peter Hook, musician, bon viveur and now author of just-published hardback memoir How Not To Run A Club. (John Robb is no literary slouch either, having collected his fragmented thoughts in many a bound volume, most recently Death To Trad Rock.) The suite at the Midland Hotel where the panel took place was well attended by biz types, and at least one spunky young band called My Name Is Animal - I think - and if anything there were too many good talkers onstage for the allotted hour. (I could have listened to Pete Frame for an hour - that man has lived a life.) But it was a lively one, and although we started by talking about whether the myth of rock music can be conveyed on the printed page, we soon got off the subject of books and onto the subject of the reduced influence and literary content of the music press in a digitally fragmented world. (John claimed, at 48, to be well up for this fragmented world, as it was the democracy that he sought during punk, but most of us disagreed, most eloquently Mark, who worried that a world where everybody is chattering about music on a democratically equal plane is too diffuse to nurture movements, such as those we have experienced in the past - I hope I haven't paraphrased too much.)
Anyway, even though I was in Manchester for just four hours, I enjoyed returning to the scene of so many past music biz crimes. I attended In The City on an annual basis during my years in magazine publishing, and did as the Mancunians do whilst in Manchester. (It was, I always thought, healthy that the London-based media had to spend so much time in another city around the turn of the decade when Madchester was the centre of the universe.) This time, I drank two cups of peppermint tea and one glass of carbonated water. I ate a healthy packed lunch on the train. But hey, just wandering into the lobby of the Midland, going downstairs to pick up my delegate pass and goody bag, and feeling the industry vibe took me right back to the 90s, to the deregulated days of pluggers and BBC press officers and Select and the Hit Parade and taxis and Mark Lamarr and Mark Goodier and Indian food and lager and Tiny Monroe and their manager. God bless Manchester for continuing to generate its own electricity and sense of occasion. The old place doesn't seem to have changed that much, and just hearing Hooky sparring with John Robb reassured me that the years may pass, but the song remains the same. Top one, nice one, get sorted etc.
The lead photo above was taken by Hobbsy. These were posted on Flickr by Martin at VisitManchester.
They're falling like dominoes now. As I review Season Two of Battlestar Galactica, I am already well into Season Three. And regardless of word-of-mouth hype, it really is getting better and better. ++++++++SPOILERS! SPOILERS!++++++++++ At the end of Season One, we left our "rag-tag" exiles in stasis, with Adama's blood all over the octagonal/hexagonal CIC lightbox, Starbuck back on Caprica clutching the Arrow of Apollo, Roslin in the brig after a military coup, and the whiteboard bearing the population tally 47,887. Thus Season Two begins with Adama in a hospital bed, with stitches down his chest, Tigh in charge and feeling the pressure (clear liquids in a jam jar all round! oops, I have declared martial law!), Roslin going cold turkey without her chamalla, and a motley crew, including the drastically unsuited Baltar, stuck on Kobol hoping not to experience their last gleaming. (One of them does.)
Father-son relations are strained between Adama - who's up and at 'em and regaining the con by Episode 5 - and Lee, who took Madam President's side and helped her hightail it to Cloud 9, where "convicted terrorist" Richard Hatch becomes an ally. Things take a turn for the unpleasant on Caprica when Starbuck wakes up in an all-too-quiet hospital that turns out to be a human ovary farm - scars are left. Both kinds. She has to leave her new boyf, former basketball/snooker-hybrid star Anders, behind, but vows to come back and save him, Hollywood style. Xena Warrior Princess turns up - she's now an Australian reporter making a documentary about Galactica. Actually, she's a Cylon. (It's a clever disguise - who can resist having a documentary made about them?) An obsessed and grief-struck Chief builds his own plane, Roy Neary style. Sharon plugs the ship's computer into her wrist.
The Pegasus turns up, captained by Admiral Cain, who's Adama's boss, and a bitch, and doesn't last long. Baltar effectively cures Roslin's cancer using half-Cylon blood out of Sharon's doomed foetus. With rebirth, comes death. There's a lot of heavy emotional stuff in Season Two, and more schisms than you could shake an arrow at. Scar becomes the embodiment of the evil Cylon threat in one of a number of stand-alone episodes, Scar. This also bonds Starbuck to Cat, tenuously - they remain at each other's throats. We also meet a new Cylon, the priest (Dean Stockwell), who's quite chirpy, but ruthless. And in the Lay Down Your Burdens two-parter, an election takes place. You won't be surprised to learn that voting cards have the corners cut off. But when Roslin attempts to cut the corners off democracy, further difficult questions have to be answered, and, with the now-constantly blubbing Baltar (and his special, imaginary adviser in the red dress) in charge, the pivotal events that kick off Season Three are in place.
I'd been warned that BSG takes you places you didn't foresee, and it does. But I wasn't prepared for the massive narrative shifts, even after the cliffhanger assassination attempt that ended Season One: the near-death of Roslin and the way that was averted; the arrival of the Pegasus and the short life of Cain (whom I understand to be the flashback pivot of The Razor); the rise to power of Baltar and the permanent shift from white coat to presidential blazer; the bit where Chief beats the hell out of future wife Cally; but most importantly, the development of Starbuck as a rounded human being, with an actual past, and an actual heart. (She gets her boyf back in the end, which causes Lee to ripple his bag-of-walnut muscles* in jealousy.)
When I started watching Two, weeks ago now, I could never have imagined that it would end with the survivors colonising a shitty, grey planet christened "New Caprica" as if they have come to Glastonbury in winter by mistake, then surrendering to the Cylons, under wet-eyed President Baltar! I love that a whole bunch of American writers thought of this and I didn't. So say we all, surely?
Now, Season Three, must get on.
* Yes, I have borrowed this fantastic image from Clive James, who once described the overdeveloped Arnold Schwarzenegger as "a condom filled with walnuts."
There, that got your attention. In the 86th Collings & Herrin Podcast, recorded at the Three and Ten pub in Brighton before a packed audience of around 50 people, many of who probably wished they had sat further back. Despite the Brighton Fringe using a photo of Richard Herring on his own to illustrate the gig [see: incriminating pic], this was a two-man show, albeit only one of us actually felt inspired to mime what it must be like at an orgy. This was sparked by a story in the Sun about the MoD and a Travelodge, in which the word "ORGIES" was helpfully picked out in caps; we also cover the Jan Moir Daily Mail gay-bashing outrage ("Are you thinking what she's thinking?" er, no), the Leona Lewis head-punching outrage (and yes, I realise I said Robert Plant when I meant Jimmy Page), and the Cardiff students war memorial-weeing-on outrage. All the outrage that's fit to print. Fortunately, things pick up at the end when I reveal the mystery of the Colgate Plax mouthwash bottle*.
Thanks to all who came out and paid money to see our unscripted, non-Radio 4 antics. Especially the incredible burping man in the second row. (Damian Harris, the boss of Skint Records was there, too. Cool.) And to the venue staff, who provided me with Magners Pear cider. But not to the bar staff downstairs, who told me off for "bringing my own drink into the pub"! I didn't! (Richard had already gone off, in his Hitler costume, to do a proper theatre gig of his own. I wonder if the picture advertising it had me in it?)
*You'll have to listen to find out what this refers to.
It can't be just me who keeps getting the same piece of spam - the Notice Of Underreported Income - its arrival seems to be expanding exponentially, as if perhaps the more times an obviously fake email arrives from HM Customs & Excise requiring to me to click on a link the more likely I am to cave in and click on it like a prize twat. Hey, I understand spam, and have written at length about it before, but this one is curious. I've had it 125 times since October 7, that's 37 times yesterday, and 22 times today since midnight (compared with nine times on October 7, before they really worked out the strategy of overegging the unscrupulous-bastard pudding). It's interesting that the same email started out being addressed from the Internal Revenue Service, then, two days ago, it switched the more UK-friendly HM Customs & Excise. I find spam and the logic behind it fascinating. The stuff that comes through in Chinese or pidgin English is easy enough to dismiss, as are the Nigerian scams, the knock-off designer watches, the lottery-win notifications and the ones promising that if I "enlarge" my "device" women will "jump in my bed." But these punts disguised as official notification from banks and building societies are more carefully built - and in this case, apparently adjusted to suit the nationality of the recipient. (Did someone pass on the information to the evil nerds in a pizza-box-strewn shed in Iowa who send this shit out that it's not the Internal Revenue in the UK? And if so, why doesn't this person work for Dan Brown and help him out with his poor grasp of British culture?) I particularly like the fact that it has extrapolated what it thinks is my name (the prefix "happy" from this website's email address, the one that attracts all the spam and has no filter) and added that word to the fake "Taxpayer ID". It would be nice if such codes in real life had the word "happy" in them.
Sorry not to blog about anything more interesting, but I am going through one of those fraught periods where I have panicked and taken on way too much work which simply cannot be squeezed into the waking days I have available to me. Better get back to it. If only, I don't know, some of my income had been underreported by the Internal Revenue. I can but dream.
In the 85th Collings & Herrin podcast, we tread a fine line between undermining Richard's new, breakaway, sketch-based podcast, As It Occurs To Me, by accidentally previewing material about Berlin that might turn up in it, in advance, and undermining our own, already-less-popular podcast, by going on about As It Occurs To Me all the way through it. However, despite tiredness and the lateness of hour, it's a great week for racism-based news, and we cover all the racists: Anton de Beke, Bruce Forsyth and Jackson Jive, who won an Australian talent contest in 1989 and have come back to redress the balance of 20 years of enlightenment. There's also a tiny hedgehog, Carol Vorderman's bum and a rhino. What more do you want? Michael Legge and James Hingley?
I have now polished off the establishing miniseries and Season One of Battlestar Galactica, which is officially my latest box-set obsession. There's something especially pleasing about starting a box set which has a finite ending, so you can go at your own pace (unlike The Wire, whose first three seasons I caught up with on DVD, binge-style, then had to trudge through the last two, one episode a week, on FX). BSG, as I'm now comfortable calling it, concluded at the end of Season Four earlier this year on Sky 1 (and on Sci Fi in the US). The definitive Region 2 box set contains 25 discs: that's 75 episodes, plus the "back-door pilot" miniseries. (The Razor, also included in the box, is widely accepted to form the first two episodes in Season Four, even though it's presented as a separate entity.)
BSG is already mah favourite sci-fi TV series. Hey, I grew up on Star Trek, especially the original series and the movies, but have fallen in and out of love with the subsequent spin-offs; The X-Files was good, too, although the final season went off the boil; meanwhile, Lost has pulled it back from the brink. Entire sci-fi universes have passed me by, such as Buffy and Firefly. (Yes, yes, one day I will watch Firefly, I do have a job as well, you know.) But BSG has a story arc that I know for a fact concludes at the end of Season Four, even though I have no idea how, and that is why I felt compelled to dive in.
+++++++++++++++++++SPOILER ALERT+++++++++++++++++++++ There's no way I can review each season as I complete it without giving certain plot points away as I go. If you have yet to embark upon this epic quest from Caprica to the fabled planet called Earth, please stop reading. I have managed to avoid learning too much about later seasons by averting my eyes when I refer to episode guides on Wikipedia or other sites (I have also stopped using IMdb for cast information, as in brackets after each actor it says how many episodes in total they appeared in, potentially giving away the lifespan of the character).
So then, Season One ...
The miniseries, aired in 2003 in the States, was our first glimpse of Ronald D. Moore and David Eick's "reimagining" of Glen A. Larson's 1978-79 series of the same name (I remember excitedly seeing the movie - at the cinema - in 1978, in the hope that it would be like Star Wars, but it wasn't really, beyond a few similarities in design). Building on essentially the same story, it reboots, as they say, and sets everything up again: a distant human civilisation, the Twelve Colonies, see their home planet comprehensively nuked by Cylons, cybernetic robots designed by humans, leaving only those currently off-planet, around 47,000, alive. What is always referred to as a "ragtag" fleet of survivors gathers around a worn-out old Battlestar, Galactica, captained by equally weathered old warhorse Adama (Edward James Olmos, whose problem skin as a teenager has, many years later, made him a formidable-looking middle-aged actor, who might have been hewn from rock).
The only reason Galactica has escaped Cylon intervention is that its computers aren't even networked! I love this about BSG - it's not exactly lo-fi, in that its spacecraft are able to "jump" to other co-ordinates in the nick of time, but its comms devices are attached by curly telephone cables, its attack ships come into land like ducks on a lake, and the cry of "Warm up the computers!" is actually heard in the heat of battle in the miniseries. (In Season Two, when Gaeta networks the computers up in an emergency and has to un-network them to avoid a virus getting through his firewalls, he literally pulls the cable out of the side of his computer!)
It's certainly militarily-themed, with Viper space-pilots the gym-toned hunks and honeys of the series, and many a pivotal scene on the bridge, with Adama and Michael Hogan's pisshead second-in-command Tigh hunched over the octagonal lightbox, but there's so much more to it than Cylon attacks, exchanged gunfire with funky noises and fire in the hold. First of all, there's the political layer: Laura Roslyn (Mary McDonell) is sworn in as ad hoc President after the attack, despite being a lowly education secretary ("the schoolteacher" they call her, disparagingly) and must instantly face sacrifice and thorny decisions. We see the withholding of key information from the public - via a familiar-looking press corps - and a blind eye turned to rendition in the name of winning what is very nearly a War on Terror, with the Cylons not only "walking among us" but having a go at suicide bombing too. Next, there's the religious layer, which really gets going in Season Two, which I'm quite some way into now. But in Season One, we learn about the scriptures, and the schism between the atheists and the polytheists - led by Roslyn, who, dying from breast cancer, identifies herself as a kind of saint, put here to lead the humans to safety on the fabled planet Earth. We also meet Zarek (played with a bold flourish by Richard Hatch, who was Apollo in 1978), a terrorist leader/freedom fighter, with whom Roslyn is forced to deal.
But most importantly, there's the personal layer - you get Oedipal father-son stuff, between Adama and Lee "Apollo" (our own Jamie Bamber, of course doing a spotless American accent - you may remember him from Hornblower); you get unrequited - thus far - love between the all-too-gym-toned Apollo and Kara "Starbuck" Thrace (played by Katee Sackhoff), a seeming tomboy pilot whose more emotional side is gradually drip-fed to us, to the point where she takes on a messianic hue and starts crying all the time, but in a hard, I-can-fly-anything kind of way; the growing romance between apple-cheeked political aide Billy (Paul Campbell) and "D" Dualla (Kandyse McClure - now there's somebody who had to re-spell her name for the Actors' Guild handbook) with the hypnotic blue-green eyes; there's doomed inter-racial romance between a number of Sharons (all played by Grace Park) - ie. Cylons who are convinced they can feel love and get pregnant but might assassinate at any moment - and, respectively, Helo (Tahmoh Penikett - how quickly you become accustomed to these unfamiliar names as they go past on the credits, and how pathetically I always shout out "Hello!" when he come onscreen) and Tyrol, "the Chief" (Aaron Douglas), who doesn't know whether he's coming or going. On top of all that, Roslyn and Adama are like the platonic, surrogate mum and dad of the show - he says he "loves everybody on the ship", and still grieves the loss of his other son Zack, whom Starbuck feels she sent to his death - and both Vice President Gaius (James Callis, another Brit, but playing a Brit) and Col Tigh (Michael Hogan) are being manipulated by their own Lady Macbeths, respectively Number Six, the forces' sweetheart-shaped Cylon in permanent evening wear, and the apparently humanoid Mrs Tigh (Kate Vernon), who sits around in a slip all day and makes Tigh do things he doesn't want to do, between drinks.
I'm not sure who I'm writing this for, except myself, but it's good to get it down, having been entirely sucked into the parallel BSG universe, with its colonies and its Gods and its own swear word ("Frak!" "Frak you!" "Frak me!" "Warm up the frakkin' computers!" "What the frak?!" "Motherfrakker!" - it's the malleable, all-occasions equivalent of "naff" on Porridge). I love the way the population number changes for each episode, I love the gay vests, and I love Bear McCreary's stunning score, which I'm told grows with the saga - certainly that haunting piano sonata is under my skin. If only they didn't feel the need to do a rapid-cut montage of what's "coming up" before each episode. Stop teasing me.
Now, on with Season Two, and no more Mr Nice Gaius.
The holiday cover they ask for by name! Filled in for George Lamb on 6 Music this morning, 10am-1pm (on iPlayer for seven days). Didn't attempt to match his energy levels or use any of his catchphrase, just played some records, spoke in between them, and enjoyed the guests that had been lined up for me: the engaging Tom Wrigglesworth, whose Edinburgh-anointed Open Return Letter to Richard Branson show is now touring and whose part in BBC4's Electric Dreams experiment is getting him recognised by people who want him to take the back off their telly; and Armstrong & Miller [pictured], of whom I've only met Ben Miller, at Karaoke Circus, so it was good to complete the set and make the more casually attired Xander Armstrong sit directly underneath an unforgiving spotlight. (They get a high class of guest on the new 6 Music - Shaun Keaveny had Dara O'Briain in at breakfast, and George has Terry Gilliam in on Wednesday. We used to be more than happy with the drummer from Razorlight and the man who'd written a book about Eminem in my day.) Is it wrong of me to get this comfortable behind the desk there? Is it? I can't help it. I woke up this morning feeling under the weather due to the change in seasons, and the sheer adrenalin of live radio, pressing the buttons, riding the fader, trundling around on my swivel chair, reading out texts and backtiming Down In The Tube Station At Midnight up to the news literally cured me of my ills.
The 84th Collings & Herrin Podcast, recorded in front of a broadminded audience old enough to remember Panini sticker albums in the Lincoln Performing Arts Centre (or LPAC), in Lincoln, in Lincolnshire, is now available to everyone who didn't have the commitment to travel to Lincoln to hear it being recorded. And to the patient people of Lincoln - and Ipswich and Preston - who did. After warming the crowd up with my version of stand-up and actual stand-up, and a 20-minute interval, we came back on with the laptop, sat down and did what we are now increasingly doing across the country: make things up for an hour, 6 minutes and 35 seconds and expect people to pay for it. In the podcast, during which you can either imagine the two of us [above] wearing our new official merchandise (Richard in a limited edition t-shirt design that has been mysteriously discontinued), or imagine looking into the faces of these people [below], we discuss the death of New Labour (now available as a wallchart courtesy of the Sun), the hairy ape lady, Richard Littlejohn and the "Bin Police", Michael Jackson's autopsy and make the audience feel special by constantly referring to aspects of Lincoln's history and what it is the capital city of.
We did a Q&A after the podcast which may be made available in the future but for now remains only in the collective memory of Lincoln.
We would like to thank the people of Lincoln, especially the staff at LPAC and Shaun from the Lincoln Comedy Festival, which continues until the 6th with the likes of Josie Long, Stewart Lee, Gary Delaney and Pappy's Fun Club. A smart venue, big dressing room, clean toilets, excellent tech support, good publicity, nice bag of wine gums, three bottles of organic cider and a fine parade of people, many of them in what looked like monogamous relationships, at the merchandise stall afterwards, where Rich sold a ton of stuff and poured white wine on the money he made, and I wished I hadn't forgotten my box of audiobooks like an idiot as I gaily posed for photos with my comedy mentor and signed some tickets. A terrific night, topped off with a drink in the Holiday Inn Express bar like two middle-aged travelling salesmen.
As it occurs to us, in the 88th Collings & Herrin podcast, we present an exclusive tribute to Peggy Mitchell, who is to leave EastEnders after 15 years, consider Malcolm MacDonald's nightmare vision of St James' Park stadium in a commercial world, stir the latest political correctness storm in the Daily Mail's teacup, apply for a job on Wight FM, ponder the newspaper grammar of Kelvin MacKenzie's column in The Sun, review the extras that come with the new Terry Gilliam film, and give an update on the not-for-sale rhino and its matted-hair horn. Don't forget to book tickets for our live podcast gigs in December (Christmas Podcast Party, Brighton Duke Of York's) and February (100th podcast, Leicester Square Theatre)
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