With the fourth season of Doctor Who drawing to a close, I would just like to point out that this series was even more special because I was in it. Sort of. In Steven Moffat's opening episode about the library, the little girl is watching a cartoon - Pedro and Frankensheep - as designed by Greg and as voiced by me (Frank)!
There was Pedro full screen replacing the Doctor's image - nice! And there was Frank's voice chuntering away in the background. So in a very real sense I am a prime time actor and writer. Sort of.
Here's a picture of Scarlet... my new border terrier puppy. We picked her up yesterday from Overseal in Derbyshire from a very nice and helpful breeder (and super featherweight boxer) called Stephen Chinnock. His dogs all seemed really happy and it was a really clean place which was in complete contrast to a place I went when I was a boy. We were looking for our first puppy (I was about 11) and we went to this place filled with poodles and children that smelled like concentrated urine. Thankfully little Scarlet's start in life has been somewhat less odorific.
Harry and Toto is a pre-school series created by Paul Shuttleworth at Handle and Spout productions. It's based on Aesop's fable about the Tortoise and the Hare and has been airing on Cbeebies since early June 2008. I was lucky enough to write several episodes for the show. It was great fun to work on and that seems to have been the feeling of everyone who worked on it... I met several of them at the launch party including Liz who wrote the music and Bob Golding who did all the male voices. Here's a clip...
At the recent Showcomotion Conference we were asked to present in a programme called "Get Shorty" with a few other folks, one of whom was Jason Krogh of zinc Roe Design in Canada.
Jason has presided over a number of great projects, including the Zimmer Twins, an online 'make your own film' site for kids. (And for adults like me too.)
Yesterday I attended a great course courtesy of Aardman down in Bristol. It was a one day Comedy Intensive course led by Steve Kaplan. It did what every good course should do, which is make me want to get back to my computer and start writing. One of the most useful things he does is to look at why some comedies don't work... by which I mean he shows you clips from shows or films that are supposed to be comic, but are a complete let down. Last night I got back and deliberately watched a dreadful sketch show on BBC Three just to try and figure out why it didn't work. If you ever have the chance to attend his course I'd definitely recommend it.
I've left Greg to post a million things on the blog and been terribly silent for a while. But lots to muse upon not least because I went to the Edinburgh Fringe in August. More of that later. One of the acts I missed while there was the 5 star rave review rated Camille O'Sullivan. Fortunately she's now on a tour and I saw her last Friday at the Town Hall in Birmingham. Never been to the Town Hall before - most impressive after its refurb. Camille was marvelous - amazing voice and utterly potty - going from the heart bleeding sincerity of songs like God is in the House (a Nick Cave song) to invading the crowd and making us all shout 'meow' at her. Very entertaining. Go and see her if you can.
Once upon a time I wanted to be a science fiction writer. It's strange as it's not something I read much, if at all, anymore. I even wrote three opening chapters to a novel. While recently going through some old files I discovered this short story Storm on Olympus which was mostly there, but just needed some tidying up and a proper ending. So here it is - download as a pdf and read at leisure. If you do read it, let me know what you think.
A ye olde friend Rich Pharaoh recently moved out to New Zealand for who knows how long. We used to be in a band together called November Station - yes a terrible name for a band. He's a drummer, and true to form has found himself a percussive role out in NZ in a band called George and Queen. Check them out here... I think they're really rather good!
I've been doing some amendments to the Esky e-learning Food Safety course and this was recommended by an Environmental Health Officer. My local Indian takeaway doesn't score very well at all. Ugh!
Writing... You have an idea. You like it. You explain to someone. They like it. You read some scripts in the same medium that you're aiming for. You sit down. You write. You leave it a while. You rewrite. You've finished. You think... Is this a giant pile of crap? I've just wasted hours of my life on this and it might be crap. How do we find out whether it isn't or not? So far I've discovered the following...
(a) Read it out loud. This can help, but often I still can't see the thing as a whole.
(b) The old leave it in a drawer for a couple of weeks, then read it trick. Yes this helps, but can also lead to the terrible realisation that the idea is actually crap and needs a great deal of work.
(c) Go for a walk. This really works for me. Just walking the dog and thinking about the idea. Thinking about things from a new perspective or character's pov. Thinking about adding in new characters, or taking out scenes. Highly recommended.
(d) Read it out loud to someone else. This is much better than (a). All the bits that make you cringe slightly when you read it to yourself suddenly make you writhe in agony. It becomes a lot clearer what has to go, plus you can interview your listener afterwards to see if they liked it, understood it, were intrigued. Also recommended by Frank Cottrell Boyce who is somewhat more well known than me.
(e) Read a new writing self-help book, or re-read an old one. I find this helps sometimes, even if I'm just picking out passages or chapters. It helps me to focus and go right back to the basics.
(f) Read some more scripts in the same milieu (hoping that's the correct use of milieu). Then review your own script again. I find this helps sometimes - I can see how my script stands up against similar stories written by my contemporaries.
(g) Deep down, you know the truth. I think that deep down, you know yourself if something is good or not. It doesn't mean you're going to admit it to yourself though. That would require hours, possibly days, of therapy.
(h) The final solution. Send it off to whoever you were hoping to send it to - that competition, that producer you know, that director. Or alternatively, if you write and direct or produce yourself... make it. Await feedback, or see if the production works if you've made it yourself. This is the most terrifying bit of all.
After all this writing fiddling and soul searching the question may arise "Why am I torturing myself?"
This is a question I have often asked yours truly before reminding myself that I am a writer, and considering all the terrible things that happen in the world, I've actually got it good and I should stop having an artistic paddy.
I have written lots of aborted, half finished, or even finished-but-crap things over the years. Some will never see the light of day. Some were good ideas that can be recycled I hope. I think the key thing though is that the general graph of skill and storytelling ability has been on a gradual incline from indifferent to good and hopefully, occasionally, to inspired. I think it's important to just keep writing, even if, after all the in depth scrutiny and detailed tinkering, some of turns it out to be a load of old wallop.
Here's an audio version of 19th Century Horror writer M.R. James' short story "There Was a Man Dwelt by a Churchyard". Spooky. Recorded as a bit of fun at the end of last year. (Format mp3)
The BAFTAs! On Jan 14th 2009 we really weren't expecting to be going to the BAFTAs three weeks later. But fate decreed it should be so. It was immediately clear from the nominees that we didn't have a chance of winning - up against Nick Park who has more gongs than a Chinese percussion factory.
However a strange alchemy takes place in your brain over three weeks where you start to believe that possibly maybe you'll win - even with your four minute experimental film up against two former BAFTA winners who’ve created 25 minute narratives. And with all the TV coverage extended over three channels BBC Three, Two then One, we thought there was a good chance all our friends and family might see us on the gogglebox too!
The night before the BAFTAs there was a nominee's party at Asprey's the jewellers on New Bond Street. We went with wives Lucy and Louise and sister Caroline (pictured above). Very swish, and slightly cramped in places, rubbing shoulders with the rich, the famous, the facelifts and the other 90% who like us were of no interest to the paparazzi and autograph chasers huddled out front. I spoke briefly to Nick Park congratulating him on his inevitable win. I should have spoken to Terry Gilliam. Saw Dev Patel, Sharon Stone and Mickey Rourke. Mickey was completely rock and roll, with his battered face, shades (even though it was night), Rolling Stones hair, shiny suit and, bless him, some very posh slippers with golden crests embroidered on the toe end.
The following day went by with this and that until the evening, when we got dressed up to the nines and got in a taxi and ordered the driver to take us to the BAFTAs. I think he was rather excited. We were dropped at the end of the very long red carpet and walked towards the Royal Opera House past the likes of Claudia Winkleman and various other celeb interviewers waiting for Brangelina.
Awards ceremonies are always rather tedious to watch on television, but sat in the stalls of the Royal Opera House, there as a nominee and surrounded by celebrities, it seemed like quite an event… although you do realise just how few people are actually celebrities. There were 1500 people attending – actors, directors, effects, production, PR, investors, blaggers, bloggers, gangsters (probably), and they even let in some writers and animators. Of those 1500 I probably recognised about 50 people max as celebs.
The moment came for our category – the third one announced (but not on TV – short films and short animation don’t count as real BAFTAs apparently – not that I’m bitter. Except I am. How long would that have taken to show? About five minutes out of their three hour BAFTA TV marathon. Ooo! But we don’t want to encourage new filmmakers or anything do we Mr BBC! No that might encourage innovation or new people to get involved. Whoa there! That’s dangerous talk. I think this digression has lasted long enough now - actually I don't. I could go on quite a lot longer. But. You know how I feel.)
A camera was duly shoved in my face to judge my reaction to winning or losing. It was a very intense moment indeed. For a split second I thought we could do it. And then they read out Wallace and Gromit. Of course they bloody did. I knew it when I first found out we’d been nominated. I’d just convinced myself it was possible in between. You have to keep smiling. Even though you’d probably smile anyway if there wasn’t a camera in your face. You’d just “not have to think” about smiling.
Afterwards we were shipped en masse to the Grosvenor House in coaches, which was an amusingly practical and unstylish way to get around. I sat watching the back of Armando Ianucci's head trying the think of something interesting to say to him other than - hello - I like your stuff. The dining room for 1500 people looked spectacular like something out of a 1930s gangster film. I was looking around to see if Robert de Niro was there holding a baseball bat. But no. As well as the majority of tables down on the main floor where all the big guns and the gangsters and molls sat there were a few tables up top around the balcony. You guessed it, that’s where they hide the short animation and short film people. Boo hiss.
This was where a slight glumness set in for a while. Inevitable since we’re borderline megalomaniacs. Also we now felt like we’d accidentally arrived at a large wedding where we didn’t know the bride or groom or many of their friends and family. A mix up with the tables meant we had to squeeze up and let a rather offensive PR guy and his plus one onto our already crammed table. He proceeded to tell us all about himself and how he had been to the BAFTAs loads of time and wasn’t he wonderful. Then we had to argue with the waiting staff about the vegetarian meal they’d buggered up for my wife. This all left a rather unpleasant aftertaste.
One brief reversal came when Sue Goffe and Marc Craste introduced themselves to us – fellow nominees in our category for the beautiful “Varmints”. I’d like to have spoken to them more, but we were a bit flummoxed by the whole occasion by this point. A party then followed on from the meal. I had to ask Stephen Daldry where everyone was going because I didn’t have a clue. He seemed very nice. I should have finished my film script, then I could have given that to him at the same time.
After watching pop band ‘The Feeling’ butcher ‘Walk This Way’ we knew it was time to call it a night. We returned to our hotel, tired, spun out, but still gloriously BAFTA nominated. It’s all rather bonkers, but still very interesting to have seen inside this exclusive club even if we didn’t quite feel part of it yet.
Finally a note on celebs. There was one moment in the evening where we saw Meryl Streep hug Penelope Cruz while both stood beside Daniel Craig. I wondered for a second if some kind of celebrity critical mass might be achieved, and an atomic explosion might destroy us all. But no! And so finally finally… here is the list of celebrities seen with our own ocular visual receptor organs.
Mickey Rourke, Stephen Daldry, Brad Pitt, Angelina Jolie, Goldie Hawn, Armando Ianucci, David Baddiel, Jonathan Ross, Jonathan Pryce, Ian McKellan, Kate Winslet, Simon Beaufoy, Patrick Stewart, Kylie Minogue, Mick Jagger, Daniel Craig, Emma Watson (Hermione), Sharon Stone, Steve McQueen, Ron Howard, Brendan Gleeson, Noel Clarke, David Frost, Michael Sheen, Danny Boyle, Dev Patel, Amy Adams, Terry Gilliam, Nick Park, David Sproxton (Aardman founder), Meryl Streep, Kirsten Scott Thomas, Michael G. Wilson (one of the Bond producers), Gemma Arterton, Penelope Cruz.
We've just spent the last couple of weeks doing a lot of meetings down in London, pitching ideas and so on. I thought it might be useful to mention a few of the big questions we get asked - things that need thinking about before heading into a meeting.
There are several questions that are asked more often than not. First is, "Are you really brothers?" (D'accord!) Next is, "Do you fight?" (Negatory) At student events we also often get asked, "Where do you get your ideas from?" (Sheesh!)
But in pitch meetings there are some big questions that always come up. The first biggie is "What's it really about?" This weighty question will apply to even the fluffiest pre-school idea. And while it is a mighty annoying question, it is also an important one I think. Part of me does wonder if a filmmaker necessarily needs to know explicity what something is really about. Especially if they're making a short or experimental piece. Sometimes what flows out of you creatively will have all kinds of instinctive resonances and underlying meanings. But if you're trying to sell a series idea then I think you do need to know the answer to this ubiquitous question or you could come unstuck further down the line. [continued]
Another question that sounds like a cliché, but which you also need to know is, "What is the motivation for this character?" Or rather what is the motivation for this character's behaviour? And if it's a long running format idea - why does the character's behaviour persist?
Again it's easy to scoff at this question and I confess to the occasional private scoff, but not knowing the answer will make you look unprepared and as though you don't know your own characters.
The last big question we hear is, "What kind of stories will there be?" Sometimes the person you're pitching to won't quite get the idea for whatever reason. There is nothing like an example storyline to unlock the world you've created. When it comes down to it a pitch document saying this series will be thrilling and funny doesn't establish if the final concept will be (a) thrilling or (b) funny. The proof is in the pudding, which in this case is a nicely baked treatment, a well risen script, or at the very least, a collection of juicy paragraphs hinting at a variety of stories.
This weekend I attended a football match. This is only the second match I've ever been to in person. The first was Aston Villa versus Sunderland one miserable, cold rainy day about ten years ago (Villa won one nil with a goal from England defender Gareth Southgate, but it was a big yawn). This second was Wolves versus Charlton at Molynewinewinewinew stadium.
It is an interesting experience, from a culturally objective perspective. I'm not really that fussed about football. The only team I really 'support' is England. I can't get excited about league games. It all seems rather pointless. But hey 26,000 other people disagreed with me and turned up to watch top-of-the-Championship Wolves shakily beat off Charlton 2 - 1.
Or in the parlance of the fanatic who stood in front of me... they "F*#ked Them Off". The fan fanatic was every inch the classic image of a football nut. He was mid to late twenties, skinny and wiry, sported a dark blue nylon tracksuit, had close cropped hair with wet look gel and wore a signet ring that was large enough to blot out the sun.
He was compelling to watch. More compelling than the game in fact. We were in and amongst a relatively quiet bunch of spectators (who by the way were about 90% male), but he made up for it. Any chants within a five mile radius were immediately picked up by this guy. This would be accompanied by a new dangerous martial art, which I can only describe as the Wayward Fist of Dangerous Clapping. There's a lot of elbow action in this martial art.
It is almost as dangerous as another arm technique, which I hereby name the Flying V. The Flying V is only to be used in moments of extreme fan-based-stress or support. The ref cards one of your players. An opposition player falls badly to the ground. You get the picture. At this moment, you must leap in the air, or if seated, leap from your seat, throw your arms up and out into a V. This technique is guaranteed to ward off any evil spirits and possibly result in your nearest neighbours developing broken noses.
Another intriguing feature of the game is the 'advice' given by the fans to the players. Things like 'get it in the box' and 'get it in the middle'. Perhaps for variation they could have tried other helpful nuggets such as 'kick the ball' and 'score a goal'.
I'm reasonably sure that the professional footballers probably know more about tactics than John Bull stood in the stand. But who knows, perhaps this will start happening in other professions? Perhaps very soon I'll have David Beckham round at my house giving me useful hints on writing such as 'type some words' and 'make up a story'.
This wasn't the extent of the 'advice' though. Other helpful hints included 'skin him', 'cripple him', the unspecified 'get him' and the worrying 'kill him'. Fortunately the footballers decided, on balance, to just play football.
Then there's the language. For the most part I thought the language at the Wolves game was much more tame than the one I attended at Villa Park some years ago. However, this time I learned a great new phrase which was 'F*#k 'em off!' occasionally clarified by 'F*#k 'em off the pitch!'
Our fan fanatic loved this one, and would repeat it over and over, standing in full Flying V stance, while swaying his whole torso back and forth like some fundamentalist zealot. 'F*#k 'em off! F*#k 'em off! F*#k 'em off the pitch!'
Part of me couldn't help but wonder if this was an instruction meant in the same vein as 'get it in the middle' - an instruction to be taken literally. Surely this fine young gentlemen wasn't asking his squad to literally bugger the Charlton eleven until they were outside the boundaries of the pitch? Maybe. Maybe not.
Even more intriguing was the fact that the fanatic had brought his girlfriend with him. She was actually rather pretty, in itself rather surprising considering the look he was working. Even more confounding was the way she looked at him after one of his blue bouts of rant-chant, body-swaying... as if to say, 'Yes. This is the man for me.'
All in all, it was an entertaining experience. There's more I could write about the problems of freezing feet, pretending to be enthusiastic about a team you don't give two hoots about, and chants meant to bully fellow supporters into standing up, but let's just let those lie.
I have to say my favourtie thing of the whole match was the pre-match and half-time entertainment which was about 30 kids from a primary school playing Taiko drums. It was both simultaneously cute and threatening. Imagine the urchins in Oliver suddenly coming together to do the haka and you have the correct mental picture.
Leaf
Broad leaf
On a sea of breezes
Pitched against brothers
Hitched and tugged and torn
Lime, then grass, then ocean green
Brushing ropy veins upon xylem thorn.
Spring is sudden with unfurling budding
Summer follows, the spectrum flapping
Autumn then, full of sail and swash.
At last the mast is splitting, giving.
A pyre smokes auburn into ash.
Then the lonely season
The last
Before
Leaf.
The new series of Noddy entitled Noddy in Toyland is now airing on Five. One of my episodes "Domino Town" has already aired, but the next one "Hide and Seek Whiz" is on tomorrow morning at 7.45am (only in UK, channel FIVE). The show was put together by Chorion Silver Lining and animated by Brown Bag Films in Ireland.
I think one of the most valuable lessons a screenwriter can learn is that the worst thing needs to happen. I don't mean the writer's fingers fall off... I'm talking about story. I think I made a common mistake when I first started writing and that was liking my characters so much I didn't want anything bad to happen to them. But think of any of your favourite films or TV series and you'll usually find that the thing the protagonist really didn't want to happen... happens.
In ET, Elliot is separated from ET and ET appears to die.
In Howl's Moving Castle, Sophie thinks she may have killed the person she loves.
In Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind Joel realises too late that he doesn't want his memories to be erased.
Only once it's happened, does the protagonist realise they're going to pull their socks up and do something even more extreme and dramatic to rescue the situation. I think this rule particularly applies to the mythic adventure stories that Hollywood thrives on. Often it's represented as the antagonist getting what they want for a few moments - think of any Bond film. There's always the bit where the bad megalomaniac presses the World Destruct button. He seems to have won, and Bond's job suddenly becomes even more difficult, but the hero still overcomes. From a viewer's perspective, this is much more dramatic and therefore much more satisfying.
Which is one of the reasons the Transformers film that came out a couple of years ago is so unsatisfying. There's this All Spark thingamabob that gives life to machines and the bad dude Decepticons really want it. But they never get it. We never get to see what they'd do if they got it. As a result the film suffers from a lack of tension. There's just this big fight where you're not really sure who's who or what's going on because of all the shaky camera, so you don't really care. (This is only one of the problems with the film along with overwordy scenes, an off kilter sense of humour, scenes that could be trimmed at the ends, and a massive hole in the character identification department, especially with regard to the Transformers themselves).
With our latest short film The Moon Bird we're trying to create a more traditional narrative tale and trying to crack that way of storytelling. One of the crucial elements therefore has to be that our antagonist Experimentia (a witch) has her moment of triumph.
We're going to Annecy this year because our short film Codswallop is in competition there. But last week we also found out that we are doing a double whammy because children's TV series Harry and Toto created by Paul Shuttleworth and made by Handle and Spout and GS Animation, is screening an episode in the category "TV Series Official Selection". The episode is Up and Down written by Myles. You can watch another episode of Harry and Toto on YouTube to get a flavour of the series.
Here's a short interview I did after the Flip Animation Festival on Doctor Who Animation that I chaired. Featured panelists were James Goss formely of the BBC Doctor Who website, Jonathan Doyle of Firestep and formely Cosgrove Hall, and Rob Ritchie, a fan film animator from the North East.
I’m thirty four next month. I don’t know if I’ve somehow invisibly moved into a subtly different phase or time in my life but I notice that I’ve become occasionally preoccupied by memory and its imperfections.
I don’t know if it’s something particular to men rather than women, but I seem to have forgotten all kinds of things about my own life. Sometimes my wife will remind me of a place or a person and I will barely recall the situation if at all. In my twenties I used to think about my school days a lot. Now I hardly think about them. Some memories, particularly the most exciting and adventurous ones – like the times I travelled for months through Eastern Europe and then later to Australia and New Zealand – they can seem as though they happened to another person; like something I saw in a film.
I don’t keep a diary. The nearest thing to it is this blog. There doesn’t seem much point as most days would be fairly banal and much like all other days from a ‘what I did point of view’. Perhaps ‘what I felt’ might be more interesting, but still, there wouldn’t be so much variation on the micro day to day, week to week level.
I have very occasionally kept a diary – usually when I’ve been travelling – and that only serves to demonstrate the unreliability of memory. There are incidents and meetings recorded in there which make me go, ‘how could I have forgotten that!’
Arguably the fact that once reminded I do remember them means that my memory hasn’t so much lost the information as forgotten where to find it. But without the diary to locate it, what other great incidents from my life have been lost in the library of my brain?
I suspect the fact that we lose or misplace our memories, or that they fade in detail like an old picture must be a natural mechanism. If I remembered everything about my past in livid detail I suppose it might start to overwhelm the here and now. Embarrassing moments would forever be just as embarrassing to remember as they were to live through. But equally, joyous moments are always slightly fading away too.
What I hope and suspect is that the subconscious hangs on to all this material in some way. Perhaps it makes me aware of who I am without having to refer to every remembered, or half-remembered, or stored-but-forgotten detail?
I suppose what worries me is that losing a memory is almost like losing a part of your life. It’s a kind of death. If you don’t remember something, then it’s almost like it never happened. A part of living is lost and through that process a part of you dies. Combined with a heightened awareness of mortality with aging parents and grandparents it creates a rather unsettling phenomenon.
I also wonder if memory malfunction is something to do with activity. In my twenties I had a lot less life to remember and probably had a lot more time to think about old times and reassess them. In that way, I was constantly warming up old memories. With an ever increasing (internal) pressure to “achieve” something as many 30 and 40 something’s feel, I perhaps live a lot more in the here and now, and actually quite a lot in the what-might-be, that I don’t think about the past as much.
This is turn makes me wonder if this ambition and busyness causes a narrowing of viewpoint, expectations, imagination and indeed personality. Or is it vital to choose a single point and head towards it to achieve something, even if the cost is your own memory and personal foundation? It doesn’t sound like a good thing now I come to write it. Though perhaps I'm being a little dramatic. I do that from time to time.
My wife works with students, and while they can often be frustrating for their lack of commitment, she says they can be energising because of their openness, hopefulness and belief in themselves.
This morning, while I was waking up, my subconscious was trying to remind me of the time when my brain ‘felt’ like that.
It wasn’t so much a memory of an event, as a memory of being; a memory of how it feels to have so much possibility ahead of you. I hope that’s a memory I never lose.
A while ago Amazon had a competition to answer the question - What sports do wizards play besides Quidditch? The winners got to go to London to see one of the hand crafted Tales of Beedle the Bard.
I didn't win. And so I shouldn't. I'm in my thirties for God's sake. I do hope the grand finalists where children or I'd be very upset. Of course, I didn't write my entry, as being a Muggle I don't know much about the wizarding world (apart from a few obscure books handed down from my Great-Great Grandfather Alexander McLeod, who I believe was a dragon handler at the Royal Wizarding Zoological Gardens of Edinburgh). Anyway... I found this poem inside a book at the local library...
Here is the text laid out in easy-read format:
Quidditch is Not the Only Game! By the venerable Sir Runcible Spoon
Written in 1949, Hogsmeade
Quidditch is not the only game of note!
Though ‘tis most favoured by popular vote.
There are many great sports and activities
Like Beat the Boggart and Horntail Squeeze,
There’s Hippogriff Racing, and Water Snitch,
Even Roll the Auror, and Hunt the Witch.
Parlour games are good when the weather’s foul
Basilisks and Ladders, Pin the Beak on the Owl.
In old times the grand game was Goblin Ball,
A quite cruel affair, with no rules at all.
But myself, I favour Olympian sport:
Vanishing Discus, Javelin by Thought.
But if you favour games set on the pitch
Well you simply can’t beat it… Quidditch.
It's time to break free of the constraints of the modern world. Leave your home behind and go anywhere. Live anywhere. Sleep anywhere. Yes, camping is a world of freedom where the only boundaries to unconfined joy are your imagination.
Except for the rain of course. And the paltry washing facilities on site. And the fact that it's impossible to gets your clothes dry once they're wet. And the snoring from the next tent. And the forty lads having a party just along the way. Not to mention the toilet block where you can have a shower in a cubicle next to someone having a poo.
I really do try to like camping. There are times when I almost convince myself it's fun. It feels a bit like hiding. The bouncy blow up mattress seems cosy at first. The gadgets are appealing - special fork spoon knife things, gas burners, torches, Swiss Army knives. I tried to like it when I camped my way around New Zealand with my wife in the southern hemisphere summer of 2004 (which was the same temperature as our northern hemisphere winter). I tried to like it again this summer when we went to Cornwall. Sometimes I succeeded in liking it. But mostly... I failed.
Camping is rubbish for the simple logic in my mind that going on a holiday should be more luxurious than the place you call home. If I leave my home for a week or two weeks to pamper myself I shouldn't have to downsize my living accomodation by a factor of 500 so that I can barely stand up, have to share my living space with a legion of spiders, and be caught between temperature extremes so pernicious that I need to bring half of my wardrobe to cope.
Camping might be made more inviting if it wasn't for campsites themselves. I will say that Sennen Cove campsite was very nice on this most recent trip, but even there they only had one washing machine for an entire campsite which required a dawn raid by my wife and I at opening time to secure our slot. There they had also recognised that showers and toilets should not be housed in the same room. It's fine in your own house to have a room where the shower and the toilet are together, but that's because you don't expect someone to come in and relieve themselves while you're working up a lather (or maybe you do, you filthy grotesque).
The other problem with camping is rain. I am a fair weather camper. It's not that I mind rain particularly. I used to like walking in the rain when I was a teenager, mooning about feeling moody. I enjoyed the rain when I sat in some hot springs pools in Hamner Springs. I remember being quite excited about the lashings of rain that accompanied a spectacular storm in France. However, rain + tent = misery. It's a simple and fixed equation.
There's no roaring fire to warm yourself by. There's no central heating to flush the water from your clothes. There's no escape from the dreary, dreary pitter patter that is amplified into a incesant motorised thudding on the canvas. In New Zealand they did at least have the decency to admit that their weather was as bad as ours, and so many campsites have drying rooms where you can hang up your clothes and expect them to dry out in reasonable time. In the UK campsites are generally very basic in my experience, begrudging any optional extra they can provide. They would rather the wet clothes clung to your skin until you are converted by some strange osmosis into part human, part salamander.
So what's the first thing we did on returning from our camping holiday this year? We went to Thomson and booked a holiday to Kefalonia for next year. And no, we won't be camping... although I did camp in Greece many moons ago. Now they have the weather for camping!
Here's a poem I wrote on hoilday all about camping which I think demonstrates my conflicted views on the matter...
CAMPSITE
Regimented tents
Relaxed
Flap
Pitter patter rain
Inside a cloud
Hot-water-bottle dog
Swelter sun stifle
Warm beer
Barbecues
Pegs poles zip ziiiip
Guy ropes (why Guy?)
Caravans
Sharabangs
Multiroom, caterpillar, dome,
Even mushroom-shaped sometime homes
Motorhome
Soft air-filled blow up bed refilled with a whine
Coleman equipped
Sunloungers Superfluous
Moving on
Hot cell showers
Chemical unpleasant stench
Big skies
(Un)Satisfied
I came back from the TV Comedy Forum the other day. I’m not sure how I feel about conferences generally. On the one hand they can be an invaluable opportunity to meet new people, find new business and prevent insanity (from normal activities such as writing where you spend too much time alone). On the other, you can come away having picked up a kind of catatonic panic – “catapanic” if you will.
Catapanic can be constituted of several parts:
(1) first a kind of urgent and terrifying awareness of what the industry is (apparently) looking for
(2) secondly a frenetic urge to immediately supply something that fits the remit
(3) thirdly a conflicting instinct that you should just trust yourself and do what comes naturally to yourself even if that apparently conflicts with (2)
(4) a sense that you are irrelevant
(5) a sense that everyone is irrelevant
(6) a sense that everyone wants to be successful at the expense of everyone else
(7) a sense that the successful are worried they might not be for very long
(8) a sense that doing anything might be wrong, so you should just remain still and inactive as a way of not doing anything wrong, except that that might also be wrong
Oh yes. The joy of TV conferences... at least I got to hear Graham Linehan talk though (along with Harry Enfield, Armstrong and Miller and Jimmy Carr who was in for an ill Frankie Boyle). I'm a big fan of Mr Linehan's stuff and it was very interesting to hear him talk about how he constructs comedic narratives by finding three or so set pieces that really make him laugh, and then finds a way of binding them together in a story. Catapanic finally subsided about 36 hours after the event. Phew!
Every industry has its uniform. In the TV media it’s the banal and bland combination of jeans with a blue suit jacket… usually with a chequered blue and white shirt. Sheesh. There are no doubt some of you reading this saying right now saying, well, at least I don’t have unruly hair, a stupid curly beard and those fashion victim Converse shoes eh, eh! Perhaps you’re right? But no. You’re not.
Jeans and a Jacket. No. The Media Outfit, or “Moutfit” as I call it says absolutely nothing. And that’s why it’s a uniform. Uniforms are a way of conforming, not standing out and not saying anything to offend anyone. Boo hiss!
But hang on… uniforms have a purpose. After all without uniforms the police would seem to be a bunch of patronising but frightening uncles with chiselled knuckles, nurses would be arrested for obscene activities involving surgical gloves and the Olympics would get really confusing in the relay races. But surely this rules don’t apply here! If you’re in broadcast media, surely you should be all about standing out and saying something special about who you are and what you do and what makes you different. No?
It’s not that I don’t think jeans and jacket can work. I have seen it work, possibly once out of about ten thousand times. I think the main problem comes in two places… firstly the jeans… and secondly… you guessed it… the jacket. The jeans are often those straight up and down jobs which make people’s legs look like blue tubes. The jackets seem often to be culled from a whole suit – the poor suit trousers discarded in favour of tough casual pantalons de Nîmes.
It’s like combining a main course and a dessert in the same meal. Beef and custard. Ice cream soup. Blackberry lasagne. Yuk.
But no I hear you cry. This is the outfit for the execs, the business leaders, the management of the media world. But no. I disagree. Even this lot need to think it out again. Get out those suit trousers. Reintroduce them to the suit jacket - yes - one made to work with the other. You’ll look much more high flying, cool, chic, and handsome. Just look at this picture of Daniel "Bond" Craig who is almost getting away with jeans et jacquet combo and then realise how much better he'd look if the jeans were matching suit trousers. I rest my case.
Oh... and buy some more interesting shoes for God’s sake.
Has anyone else noticed lately that most of our news is happening 'On the ground'. "So what's happening on the ground?" "On the ground things look different." "We've been hearing from our man on the ground."
As opposed to what?
Our man in the clouds? Our woman in a tunnel? Our soldier hovering a few feet above the ground?
These words or phrases seem to crop up from time to time. During the floods of 2007/8 hundreds of houses had no water, and soon every other word on the news was 'Bowser'. And after the tragedy of 9/11 (or 11/9 as surely it must be) it was all anyone to do to stop themselves from saying 'Ground Zero' over and over and over again.
But now it's "On The Ground". There are people On The Ground in Afghanistan. There are civil servants On The Ground in Westminster. There were quite a lot of people On The Ground at the Copenhagen Screw-The-Earth Summit. They are probably also On The Ground in the International Space Station. There's stuff happening On The Ground on ships, in submarines and possibly even on some ground somewhere.
What's so special about being On The Ground? Surely most human activities apart from a few hinted at already qualify as being On The Ground? Walking. Eating. Sleeping. Having a poo. And most of these aren't that exciting enough to report on. But of course I'm being facetious (again) and On The Ground really means the place where something is actually happening as opposed to the place where it isn't (i.e. everywhere else... which may or may not be places with some 'ground' as well).
On the plus side it makes a change from being At The Coalface, On the Frontline or On The Shop Floor (presumably after an accident with a rogue tin of baked beans). And of course the ground is very useful for keeping one's feet on, and for hitting it in a running type way. Apparently.
In future rants... the BBC phrase 'Are you ACROSS this?' that is leaking out into public usage and the infuriating 'step up to the plate' which is used all over the UK when surely we should be 'stepping up to the crease' or maybe the non-metaphorical but perfectly functional 'taking responsibility'. Grrrrr!
Sludge red leaves, not yet soil, tarnish the ground.
Here a slip of silver, a quiver of birch,
Last season’s swish and swash still has shape
But soon the drape will rot to rib.
Wet clay will crack and
Spring will knock the winter back.
Yesterday I attended a great course courtesy of Aardman down in Bristol. It was a one day Comedy Intensive course led by 
The new series of Noddy entitled Noddy in Toyland is now airing on Five. One of my episodes "Domino Town" has already aired, but the next one "Hide and Seek Whiz" is on tomorrow morning at 7.45am (only in UK, channel FIVE). The show was put together by 
I think one of the most valuable lessons a screenwriter can learn is that the worst thing needs to happen. I don't mean the writer's fingers fall off... I'm talking about story. I think I made a common mistake when I first started writing and that was liking my characters so much I didn't want anything bad to happen to them. But think of any of your favourite films or TV series and you'll usually find that the thing the protagonist really didn't want to happen... happens.
It's time to break free of the constraints of the modern world. Leave your home behind and go anywhere. Live anywhere. Sleep anywhere. Yes, camping is a world of freedom where the only boundaries to unconfined joy are your imagination.
Okay. Time for another rant!
It’s like combining a main course and a dessert in the same meal. Beef and custard. Ice cream soup. Blackberry lasagne. Yuk.
Has anyone else noticed lately that most of our news is happening 'On the ground'. "So what's happening on the ground?" "On the ground things look different." "We've been hearing from our man on the ground."
