July 31, 2006
ARMANDO IANNUCCI NEWS
TIME TRUMPET STARTS THURSDAY 3rd 10PM, BBC2
Armando Iannucci’s new show Time Trumpet, to which I have contributed a few pieces, begins a six part run on Thursday 3rd August 2006 (I’m putting the year for archival reasons, not because I think you might wait until August 2007 then be disappointed). I described the show in a previous post so I won’t bollock on any further except to say I wish I’d been in a position to contribute more because from what I’ve seen so far I think it’s great. Unfortunately various unpleasant bits and pieces of crap over the last few months have frustrated my efforts to produce more stuff so I think my presence in the programme will be fairly minimal. I really hope it goes down well and makes it to a second series in which case, if Armando asks me, I’ll hopefully be able to do a lot more. Check it out!
July 5, 2006
XFM NEWS
ADAM & JOE BACK ON XFM IN A NEW SLOT: SATURDAYS 10am-1pm
What was supposed to be long summer break from Xfm to allow us both to concentrate on other projects has ended earlier than expected and this Saturday we return to the airwaves with a new slot and an extra hour to play with! If you were a fan of Alex Zane’s show on Xfm then you’ll know that the last hour between 12 and 1pm is devoted to the X-List and is made up entirely of requests from listeners which will hopefully give us a chance to talk to more people and crap about a bit more, as well as playing more excellent music of course!
I must admit I’ve had some misgivings about the earlier slot. I’m a big fan of Jonathan Ross’s Radio 2 show which is on at the same time and apart from the fact that I’ll miss listening to it, I’d like to think that when we had our old 1-3pm slot some people would listen to Jonathan then switch over and listen to us but now, faced with a choice I don’t fancy our chances much… That said, I hope the majority of people who listen to our show will stay loyal to it and anyway, our listeners are probably too young to appreciate Jonathan’s punk pensioner antics! That was a kind of jokey showbiz dig from one celebrity to another there. OK, I promise never to try it again.
PODCAST & DIRTY SPONDOOLICKS
Of course the answer to all those time clash problems is our podcast! I’m sorry to say that despite my pleas, Russel Brand has soundly trounced us in the podcast charts, but we’re still hanging on in there and with your help we can continue to climb higher up the geeky ladder! I’m spending far too much time gathering material for these things (which is why occasionally we miss a week, for which we apologise-the next one should be available on Friday) but it’s the most enjoyable thing Joe and I have done together for ages and it’s almost completely on our own terms so it’s doubly rewarding that they seem to be doing well. If we got paid for the fuckers I’d be 100% sorted but you can’t have everything I guess.
Unfortunately, the longer I spend working on free stuff, the less choosey I can afford to be about paying gigs. I am profoundly grateful for and enthusiastic about every job my lovely voice over agent gets me but every now and again you do find yourself doing something that you know is going to irritate the shit out of people when they hear it either on the radio or on TV. If you do recognise my voice in an ad that makes you want to kick your TV in, remember it’s all helping to build a better podcast! An inspiring thought, I think you’ll agree.
YOU TUBE NEWS
TINY TV BOSS
Here’s my Tiny TV Boss clip which I have also put on You Tube to try and increase the efficiency of my dissemination programme! I’m up to almost 250 views on my Randy Tartt clip, so as you can tell, I’m really causing a stir out there. I tried to put my CADS clip up there too but for some reason when it’s uploaded the sound seems to fall out of synch which ruins the effect on that one particularly. The other clips I’ve put up there suffer from the same problem but it doesn’t matter so much. I’m going to have to consult my brother about that before I put any more up.
Tiny TV Boss was something I made last year after buying a video baby monitor to keep an eye on our son Frank. Like the Pope’s funeral bit, it ended up being used as part of my Edinburgh show and I thought I might use it somewhere else but the moment seems to have passed so I decided to release it into the netsphere. Several people who’ve seen it have assumed that it’s me doing a baby impression but I assure you my vocal skills don’t stretch quite that far and the voice you hear is genuinely that of Frank who was about 2 and a half at the time. He was genuinely talking into a phone and it’s me on the other end so it’s more or less as real as you can get. I did a few more bits with Frank along the same lines, which I may try to post in due course. I also gave Armando a thing I shot with him for possible Time Trumpet use so we’ll see if Frank makes it to the small screen when the show comes out. Incidentally I negotiated a very generous buy out with Frank for the use of this stuff, so there’s no need to worry about him being exploited. Let’s just say he’s now got more Bionicles than any tiny human could possibly need, want or destroy.