Easy Music for Difficult Ears

Story,
Before I go to bed, I’ve been meaning to put this up for ages. I’ve caught Russell Howard on television shows on the BBC a few times and never really appreciated him, however his stand up is rather good. Although his style does border on “gurning” and “shouty” from time to time, he just steers clear of the fine line between making it funny and going overboard and as such comes out with some excellent stuff.
Now don’t forget to put your fucking clock forward!! I’ve already told you once.
Enjoy.

Hey everyone,
Just a quick note this evening. After a rather rough few days, I was absolutely delighted to come across British Airways blundering with the new Terminal 5. Although I have said on many occasions that not only do I not like flying, I also detest airports themselves. I find them to be horrible and drag places often filled with people that so desperately want to be somewhere else.
However, there is just a wonderful feeling if bewilderment when I read this statement from a British Airways spokesperson earlier on with regards to the mess at the new terminal:

“…on the whole, the day has gone reasonably well. We did have one or two difficulties which caused us to cancel more flights than were planned…”

Apparently the loss of 15,000 bags, 54 canceled flights with another 37 cancellations later on today is defines “reasonably well”.

Anyway while I’m here kudos to the taxi driver who with an air of authority told me yesterday that “I’m walking into a dead industry and that I’ll never work!” Excuse me but when I want careers advice from a fucking taxi driver, I’ll fucking ask for it and as I’m still here, a brief thank you must go to the pills-heads that chased Charlie, the giant rainbow and I around High Wycombe at 2 O’clock this morning.
Morons.
Don’t forget to put your clocks forward an hour!!

Current listening:
BBC Radio Collection “Doctor Who and the Power of the Daleks”

Now go to bed,
Leigh

I picked up “Robot” (Doctor Who) from HMV the other day and have been looking forward to this for quite a while. This story is Tom Baker’s first in the role and while it is a leftover from the Pertwee/Letts/Dicks (actor/producer/script editor) era, it is still a joy to watch, but in saying that I haven’t seen it in years.

So, imagine my absolute dismay when I opened up the box to discover that there was no booklet inside. This sounds quite sad, but I was completely taken aback – disappointed, dismayed and in shock, but there was no way I could possibly take it back. The thought of going back into HMV
However, I must admit I think I was more taken aback by the fact that I was so shocked that the booklet was absent – have I reached a new level of Who fandomness (nessnessness…) that I was so dismayed by a missing booklet. I have a large number of Doctor Who DVD’s, CD’s and videos and to me this will always stick out.

With regards to the story itself, it is good (although not quite reaching the heights of quality that would surface in Baker/Hinchcliffe/Holmes stories later), but the first couple of episodes provide me with some of my favourite Baker moments – wonderful stuff.
A special mention must go to Michael Kilgarriff who played the robot “K-1″ (see right). Even though Kilgarriff is around 6′2″, he still only came up to the robot’s shoulder and sustained major cuts and bruises all over his body as one can only imagine by looking at the picture.

Current listening:
TV on the Radio “Liars EP”

Dang,
Leigh

Apologies for the lateness of the post, but I’ve been rather busy this week with work (etc…) so I’m just going to stick up my Formula 1 bit now quickly. This is my third main love in life (behind music and Doctor Who).
I quite enjoyed the first two races of the season with some wonderful drives and performances, mainly from Honda and BMW – nobody quite thought they’d be that fast. For the two teams to gain over a second in late developments is astonishing by Formula 1 standards and it is fantastic to see Jenson Button and Rubens Barrichello further up the running order, especially Button who has really put his career on the line with the Honda group.

Heikki Kovalainen looks like he could seriously challenge Lewis Hamilton later on in the year, but as with Renault last season he seems to be taking a few races to really get settled in the car and this may give Hamilton the edge for the season. However, Kovalainen was excellent in Malaysia and thoroughly deserved his third place at the end of the race.
Hamilton, however, had problems in the Malaysian race following an excellent win in Australia. After being correctly penalised in qualifying (along with Kovalainen for impeding Heidfeld on his final run), he got stuck behind the Red Bull of Mark Webber and when the McLaren finally pitted, his front right wheel got jammed thanks to those new aerodynamic frisbee’s and as a result lost approximately twenty seconds.
Webber to his credit drove brilliantly with his own reliability problems (his fuel-pump was faulty) to keep the faster car behind him.

I was especially pleased with Kimi Raikkonen’s performance in Malaysia after a couple of slip-ups in Australia, although people talking about the championship now is pure silly – we all knew the basis of this years championship would be between Raikkonen and Hamilton, I do not need ITV to tell me this every twenty seconds!! Two races and two non-finishes from Felipe Massa though tells a different story, he really needs to up his game and stop making the kind of mistakes he made at Sepang.

Pass of the year so far must go to Nick Heidfeld with his move on both Davis Coulthard and Fernando Alonso (turn 15, lap 4 of the Malaysian Grand Prix) – Heidfeld took advantage of Alonso attempting a pass the Red Bull and managed to get around both of them.

There are a number of concerns regarding the 2008 Red Bull with regards to its structure in light of it’s failure’s over the Malaysian Grand Prix weekend, and also let us not forget Mark Webber’s brake failure in qualifying for the Australian Grand Prix. Apparently the car only passed its first crash test four days before arriving at Melbourne, so it’s conceivable that there still problems with the machine.

I used to be an occasional visitor to the ITV-F1 forum on the broadcaster’s website, but I just cannot do it anymore. So many Lewis Hamilton fans attacking anything remotely negative about the driver and constant conspiracy theories surrounding Ferrari and McLaren are just too much – so goodbye ITV literally…
As news filtered through last week that the station has lost the rights to show the sport on terrestrial television and that the BBC have regained them. No figures have been released yet as to how much the sale was, but all I care about is the fact that there will be no more ad breaks. I do hope they lay off the Lewis Hamilton love-fest (I’m looking at you James Allen) which has gotten very, very irritating in the last year – don’t get me wrong, the young Englishman is an excellent driver, but other shit is going down.

So in seven days the championship moves to Bahrain to the circuit of swirling sands where the Ferrari’s are destined to be strong and both the BMW’s and Williams are expecting stronger performances.
In the meantime, I’ve discovered a motor-racing archive site that will keep me busy for a long time yet. Imagine my thrill at being able to watch the 1963 Australian Grand Prix. Fantastic stuff!!

Current listening:
Suicide “Suicide”

Grand job,
Leigh

Hey everyone,
A short one here – our very good David Firth has recently uploaded four new one-minute long cartoons all under the banner of “The World Within a Sock”. According to the animator, the short cartoons came about when

“…(a) writing project between Crust and Myself (Firth), taking some characters from the original Fat-Pie series, along with new ones and throwing them into a new world that just happens to be inside a giant sock (even though this is not visualized at any point)…”

A production company called Zeppotron commissioned four one minute teasers with the hope of leading to a pilot. The results can be seen below. While you’re at it, check out fat-pie.com for more wonderful animated violations.

That Jesus Chap
Apparently, according to a few scholarly folk of the book-reading fraternity, that Jesus chap he rose again today, but screw that because Wikipedia is doing a special on the wonderful sea otter.
However in the meantime, here’s some vaguely jesus related material…

Deadly job,
Leigh

Story folks,
A mate of mind pointed me in this chaps direction a few months back and I must say he is seriously good stuff and probably one of the funniest guys I’ve ever come across. The chap, is Steve Hughes, is a stand-up comedian type from Australia and is currently based in Manchester, however, he was best known as a drummer in a good few Aussie death metal bands over the years (although to be honest death metal is not my forte, so I don’t actually know how good or well known they were).

Anyhoo, he’s playing Camden tomorrow night for the Comedy Store, but unfortunately I’m up to my eyes with work right now so I’ll be missing it. However, I’ll most likely catch him when he’s back in London in May, so all’s not lost.
His MySpace is here and with a couple of clicks, you can find some of his stuff on YouTube as well, but for more info have a look see below…

Happy Easter and all that shit. Just so you know its snowing nicely in these here Wycombe hills and I’m off to get me some nice roast for Sunday dinner!!
Excellent…

Sweet,
Leigh

Edit:
I’m an idiot – it’s Easter Sunday and everywhere is closed!! Toast for dinner then….

Hi everyone,
It is my sad duty to report the death of John Hewer – better known as the famous Captain Birdseye from Birdseye’s fish fingers television adverts that were aired from 1967 – 1998. The actor (who never ever actually had a beard) also touted starring opposite Julie Andrews in the stage play “the Boy Friend” on Broadway as one of the proudest moments of his career.
Hewer was born in either 1921 or 1922 and thanks to the fish-finger adverts and his catchphrase, “only the best for the captain’s table”, became one of the most recognisable icons of the 20th century.

When the brand character was temporarily axed in the early seventies, the Times ran a specialised obituary in their newspaper, but it wasn’t until after his wife passed away in 1998 that he finally decided to step down from the role.
He was eventually replaced later that year by Thomas Prescod, who played the role as a young rugged unkempt sailor, but unfortunately Birdseye’s attempt to regenerate the brand failed and have since taken a more ‘contemporary’ direction with regards to advertising their popular brand of fish fingers.
John Hewer was 86.

Current listening:
Animal Collective “Feels”

Shame,
Leigh

Just a short one at the mo, because I’m very tired. I received an article today from IMRO regarding the state of Irish music on radio stations in the country and it would seem that a variety of Irish national stations have gone further towards pissing on Irish musicians than ever before.
Apparently Ireland has a ruling in place that is supposed to govern the amount of Irish music played on the radio – not that anyone would notice – and that figure is 30%. To qualify for this, a ‘work’ must be:

• composed by a person Irish of origin or background
• recorded in Ireland
• performed or sung by a person of Irish origin or background
• the lyrics are written by a person of Irish origin or background

Readers may have noticed that I have the word ‘background’ in italics – essentially that means any artist with extended relatives (up to 2nd generation) are considered Irish. Therefore, when (for example) the Beatles or Oasis are played on Irish radio, they are considered Irish artists and count towards the quota.
As well as that, the new R.E.M. album and Kylie Minogue’s recent release qualify as Irish music as they were recorded in Grouse Lodge and Windmill Lane respectively.

What makes this even more galling is the fact that very few stations actually manage to reach that quota despite claiming these mainstream artists. Even Louis Walsh has claimed that radio stations with this attitude have done more to damage the Irish music industry than anything else and considering how poor Irish televisions’ attitude to Irish music is, it’s no wonder so many home artists struggle to sell more that 1,000 copies of a release.
Now please excuse me while I go and drink my own piss….

P.S.:
I’m rather biased as I find it difficult to trust anyone in the Irish radio industry with the ability to summon thoughts, see straight and read road signs.

Currently…:
…knackered

Grand job,
Leigh