Blackadder Rides Again
It’s hard – and painful – to think that Blackadder Goes Forth first appeared on TV in 1989. I know. Twenty seven years ago. And for 27 years, those of us who loved it have wanted it to come back. We have lapped up rumours and weighed the options. Could it be Blackadder in WW2? […]
Victoria Wood: my unfunny encounter
“She won’t be funny, you know,” said our executive producer. I had booked Victoria Wood, who died yesterday, as a guest on a chat show I was producing for ITV, starring Jimmy Tarbuck (about which I have written before). She was a late booking, the first guest on the first show in 1996. Two days […]
A gem on every page
Fifteen years ago I was holiday with my then-girlfriend (now wife) in Zahara de los Atunes in southern Spain. Three things are especially memorable. Mrs W told me she was pregnant; Islamist psychos flew aeroplanes into the Twin Towers in New York (the horror of which we watched unfold on a television in a village bar); […]
Master of deception
A lifetime love of magic and illusion means it’s no surprise that I’m a fan of Derren Brown, and especially the way that, by pretending to be totally open about how he achieves the remarkable effects he does, he has avoided being “exposed” on YouTube as many more conventional magicians are these days. In truth, he isn’t totally open about his […]
What do you mean, you haven’t watched it?
Game Of Thrones, I mean. It’s awesome, and anyone who hasn’t watched it is missing out big time. I know: you’ll be late to the party, but the advantage of that is that you’ll be able to binge-watch them all on a box-set. To be honest, I think watching it in weekly episodes would be […]
Raquel Welch – My Beauty Secret
It was fun to see Raquel Welch on the Piers Morgan show on ITV. When I was a kid, she was THE sex symbol when the term “sex symbol” was still used. None of us boys had EVER seen a Raquel Welch movie, I don’t think, but we all knew who she was thanks to her […]
The internet has eaten itself
There was a time, before internet shopping took off, before Ebay, before YouTube, before FaceBook became cool and then uncool, when the main purpose of the internet seemed to be the dissemination of intermittently amusing short films and animations. (Well, that and porn, obviously. Apparently.) I even had a job compiling hundreds of these clips into […]
Writing a comedy about comedy writing
Writing comedy is hard. I’ve tried it. So to try to squeeze comedy out of the plight of writers writing a sitcom would seem to be a case of writerly navel-gazing at its worst. Thank heavens, then, for Episodes (BBC-2) which, having reached its fourth series, seems finally to be getting the attention it […]
Eurovision, Australia and Lee Lin Chin
I haven’t watched The Eurovision Song Contest in years. Not, I should add, through any especial resistance, it’s just that I haven’t been in on the night, or something else has taken precedence. And, no – it’s not “I had a library book to return” – I’m really not being snide. I just haven’t watched it, OK? […]
