December 26, 2007
6 MUSIC CHRISTMAS PRE RECORDS AND GOOD WILL
HAPPY JESUSPARTY!
I haven’t posted for a while because I’ve never been busier working on odds and sods that I’ll be able to tell you more about in the New Year (if and when they turn into something) as well as pre recording a few 6 Music shows to give me and Joe a good chunk of time to spend with our various paramilitary gangs over the festivities. Some of the pre records are better than others (our New Year’s Eve one starts off hysterical, goes normal and ends solipsistic and weary, much like new year’s eve itself come to think of it) but the Christmas show that went out on Saturday 22nd (which you can currently listen again to here) was good fun to record and enjoyably stupid as was the show that will go out next Saturday (the 29th December, 9am-12pm). After that we’re back with you live every Saturday morning from 9-12 for a good while. Apologies for belching a couple of times on the New Year’s Eve show (7-10pm). If I heard someone else doing that on the radio I’d be appalled but I was a little tooty and got over-relaxed. No excuse though really.
I’ll ramble on at length in the New Year but for the time being here’s wishing you all the best for the Cringle Zone and Enforced Calendar Shift Celebration, whoever and wherever you are. Be careful out there, will you?!
Love Adam, Boxing Day 2007
December 5, 2007
MeeBOX PILOT FINISHED, KEN ON COMEDY SHUFFLE NEWS!
MeeBOX PILOT FINISHED!
My BBC pilot MeeBOX was delivered this week and I’m pleased with it. It clocks in just shy of half an hour and it’s very colourful, sounds nice and I think it’s funny so thanks to everyone who helped me put it together and here’s hoping the BBC want to commission a series! It’ll probably be on TV sometime in January or February next year and I guess we’ll hear whether or not it’ll get the nod around that time too, so as soon as I know more I will of course let you know as you are my oldest and dearest friends. Except you. You’re a prat.
The only thing I didn’t have time to do was to film more vlog/video diary style pieces to give the while thing more of a narrative through line and introduce more characters for which I was hoping to rope in various comedy pals, but if it got commissioned I would rectify that. As it is, it’s similar to a lot of the stuff I’ve been posting on You Tube for the last year or two with a few slightly more elaborate items featuring my character Famous Guy which I think work well.
I’m also very excited to have some great graphic elements to tie the thing together courtesy of computer wizzbot David O Reilly who I worked with on Time Trumpet. David’s made a lovely, trippy title sequence inspired by a theme tune specially composed by Radiohead’s Jonny Greenwood. There was some concern from the BBC that it was a little long for a title sequence (it’s nearly a minute) but I think it sets the tone nicely. My only worry is that it’s too much to live up to! Here’s Matt Berry (who makes a brief appearance in MeeBOX) talking about the importance of title music on Screen Wipe following the death of Ronnie Hazlehurst earlier this year. I know Jonny’s a bit Hazlehurst aficionado too so he’ll dig that. As I write he hasn’t seen the finished MeeBOX pilot yet so I hope he doesn’t regret putting his name to it when he does!
By the way, if you haven’t heard Jonny Greenwood’s music for Bodysong, you should check it out. It’s in the same spirit of joyful extra curricular experimentation as David Byrne’s equally fantastic Catherine Wheel score. He also played me a bit of his music for the new Paul Thomas Anderson film There Will Be Blood, and that sounded lovely too so I’ll certainly be investigating further…
MeeBOX wise though, I might have a kind of Out Of Focus Group/MeeBOX screening party before the show goes out next year so I’ll keep you posted.
KEN KORDA HOSTS COMEDY SHUFFLE ON BBC3, 11pm, THURSDAY 6TH DECEMBER 2007
Whenever I get asked to be a guest or a presenter on a ‘proper’ TV show my instinct is always to say thanks but no thanks. Contributing sketches or inserts for other people’s shows or appearing in character is one thing but turning up as ‘Adam Buxton’ is quite another. Nevertheless there’s a nagging voice in my head that keeps saying ‘you’ve got to say yes once in a while or people will just completely forget who you are and you’ll never work again, and who knows, you might get good at it suddenly!’ Subsequently I’ve been a guest on shows like Never Mind The Buzzcocks, Have I Got News For You and It’s Only TV But I Like It and I was a crap each time (although I think my second appearance on Buzzcocks was nearly OK). The problem is that I still feel so outside the whole world of big studios and audiences and crews that I invariably revert to empty headed grinning tool mode.
When I was very kindly asked to host an episode of the current series of Comedy Shuffle for BBC3 I immediately asked if I could do it as Ken Korda. I was sort of expecting them to say they wanted me to do it as myself in which case I would have passed but they said they were fine with Ken so I bit the bullet. In fact I was looking forward to it because they had lots of people I like very much on the show (Kristen Schaal, Tony Law, Brian Gittins and a brief appearance from Devvo) and I thought, surely I’ll do a good job this time!? Well I didn’t. It started off OK but the whole thing was being shot as live (ie. with very few stops and re-takes) and I hadn’t given myself enough term to really get to grips with the bits I’d written so after a couple of OK links I got flustered and it all got away from me! Fucking hell, I should just change the title of this blog to ‘Igotflusteredanditgotawayfromme.co.uk’. I don’t think it was disastrous but it wasn’t the triumph I’d hoped it might be.
The audience in the studio were great though and if you came along that night, thanks, it made a real difference having you there and I know the other acts appreciated it too, especially as there was a lot of quite odd stuff that night that could easily have fallen totally flat with a less enthusiastic crowd. Of course TV often has the effect of flattening anything slightly odd so the final show may yet fail to amuse but I hope not. If nothing else you may like some of the pre-recorded stuff, especially a very nice observational routine about girlfriends putting cutlery back in the wrong place by yet another 6 Music affiliate, Jon Richardson. His material is very much straight ahead stand up but it’s well observed and well delivered. I’m sure he’s going to continue to prosper. Don’t judge Ken too harshly though, it wasn’t his fault!
KEN ON FLIGHTPLAN
Speaking of Ken I know I’ve posted a link to this clip before but it’s taken on new relevance in the light of the subject for Song Wars on our BBC 6 Music show this weekend. As we speak Joe and I are composing exit music theme songs (you know, like Men In Black, Wild Wild West etc.) for films that don’t have them and for a lazy second I toyed with the idea of just bringing in my guitar and performing this one again, but I thought better of it. This one’s not bad though! Not very bad at least.
THANKS FOR SELLING OUT BUG 04!
Thanks to all of you who came along for the fourth BUG at the BFI Southbank/NFT last week. I think it was my favourite so far, mainly due to the fact that the auditorium was completely sold out and everyone seemed happy to be there, which always makes life easier from a hosting point of view! I even managed to crowbar a couple of my own videos in there in the form of the Radiohead Jigsaw video (which the band and XL, their new label, have decided to use as the official promo for the single!) and a sneak peak of an item from MeeBOX (both made with help from Garth Jennings who was also there that night). It was a thrill seeing both vids on the big screen with decent sound and they seemed to go down well on the whole.
Anyway I hope you enjoyed the evening as much as I did, and if you still haven’t been then join us for BUG 05 in January when we’ll all need some cheering up. I’ll let you know details nearer the time.
November 10, 2007
LISTEN AGAINST, LADIES & GENTLEMEN & RADIOHEAD WEBCAST NEWS!
Yo yo. Things have got unreasonably busy with the radio show, the BBC pilot and various other bits and ballbags hence rather infrequent posting action, but today’s update should keep you going for a little while, especially if you’re a Radiohead aficionado. But first other news from my gammy hamlet.
LISTEN AGAINST, RADIO 4, WEDNESDAY 14TH NOVEMBER 2007, 6:30PM
I’ve been contributing some fairly demented pieces to a new comedy/topical-ish/satire-ish Radio 4 show called Listen Against which starts this Wednesday. It’s the brain baby of our 6 Music brother Jon Holmes and if the pilot was anything to go by it should be hoot packed. I don’t think I’m in every episode but I pop up as foreign secretary David Miliband from time to time. Have a bite!
BOOK NOW FOR BUG 04, THURSDAY 29th NOVEMBER @ NFT (BFI SOUTHBANK)
I have to deliver my pilot the next day so I may well be stressed and under prepared when I host this night of hot new music video and talking but that’s never stopped it being a good evening before so come along. Mo details here. I see they call me ‘inimitable’ on the site! Nice but not strictly true. To imitate me just stick out your tummy and say ‘I’m the shizbot!’ in a plummy drawl. Don’t do it in front of me though please.
LADIES & GENTLEMEN NEWS!
Herewith, an update on the sitcom I appeared in as part of Channel 4’s Comedy Showcase recently. Last night I had a long weird dream about it and at one point I bumped into Andrew Newman, currently head of comedy and entertainment at Channel 4. He said “Hi Adam. Good news about Ladies & Gentlemen isn’t it?” “What do you mean?” I said, “I thought it wasn’t being commissioned.” “No, we changed our minds” said Andrew from behind his large dream glasses. “We realized it was too good to let it slip away so we’re going to go ahead and start shooting early next year” and off he went. As I turned round I saw Kevin Lygo (director of television and content at Channel 4) who came up and embraced me warmly. “Well done on Ladies & Gentlemen” he said and wandered off after Andrew. I woke up feeling fantastic. Then I remembered that Channel 4 have indeed decided not to commission Ladies & Gentlemen for a series and do not, as far as I know have any plans to change their minds and issue me with congratulations and embraces as if I was solely responsible for the thing in the first place. If that situation does arise however, I’ll be the first to let you know!
RADIOHEAD NEWS!
not endorsement of irresponsible drinking!
I just got back from the Oxford countryside where I’ve spent the last couple of days with the members of Radiohead and a few of their friends putting together a three hour webcast, which went out live last night, to celebrate the completion of their album In Rainbows. It was intense but fun. Funtense! Like the band themselves I suppose.
My friend Garth Jennings and I drove up to the band’s residential studio on Thursday morning and as soon as we’d unpacked our gear and marveled at the coolosity of the place, we sat down for lunch with the webcast team: the five bandmembers, producer and technical mindhub Nigel Godrich, the artist currently known as Stanley Donwood (who along with Thom is responsible for all the Radiohead artwork), and various other friends and helpers.
I’m a long time fan of Radiohead and I’ve only recently got to know them a little (Jonny did the theme tune for my BBC pilot MeeBOX) so I’m still not properly over the strange feeling of excitement and anxiety you get when you see musicians you admire in ordinary situations having formed a very personal one way relationship with them through their work. I think it’s something that’s peculiar to music because a good song becomes part of you on a far more fundamental level than a great performance from an actor or even a really good book. So when you’re suddenly presented with the architect(s) of so many things that mean so much to you, there is an understandable desire for them not to think you’re a dick. Unfortunately that pressure is often exactly the thing that makes a fan immediately revert to dick mode. Or is that just me?
Anyway, there I am sat in Radiohead’s kitchen thinking ‘I’m in Radiohead’s kitchen!’ and all around me are bits and pieces that I recognise or am curious about, but I’ve go to focus on the matter at hand, which is: what are we going to shoot in the next 30 hours or so that we can play in to supplement the live elements in the webcast? Nigel, Stanley and the band have already got a good few items in the bag but they need more. Thom looks at Garth. “What have you got?” he says. Brilliantly concealing his fear that the band will pour buckets of tepid scorn over the few fairly silly ideas he and I have come up with, Garth pitches his arse right off. Luckily everyone seems up for pretty much anything so when Garth suggests we take Thom and Jonny out to a field somewhere to shoot a performance of Faust Arp it’s not long before the four of us are squeezed inside a mini on our way to Wittenham Clumps, a hill overlooking Didcot powerstation that was a hang out for the band in their younger days.
FAUST ARP
The sun is almost down as we scramble up the hill and after some brief, breathless discussion over whether the wind is going to ruin the sound and whether Jonny and Thom should sit or stand, we start filming. They perform the song, one of my favourites from In Rainbows, three times. The third one is the best and the wind even holds off for a gap in Thom’s vocal before blustering into the mics. It’s pretty dark by then but luckily my camera picks up enough to make it worth it. We get a final cutaway of Thom and Jonny silhouetted against the streaks of orange behind the powerstation then head back to the studio.
JIGSAW FALLING INTO PLACE
The next item on our agenda is the Helmet Cam video for Jigsaw Falling Into Place, the first single from the album. The Helmet Cam is something I made a couple of years ago to shoot some bits for my comedy night. It’s a mini surveillance camera mounted on the front of a bicycle helmet which makes the head of the wearer appear stationary while everything around them slides around nauseatingly. It’s a technique that’s been used a lot (Martin Scorcese and Peter Gabriel spring to mind), but it always occurred to me that the bike helmet version might be good for some kind of music video. When I found out we were doing the Radiohead webcast I got to work making 5 new ‘units’ for the band. A bike helmet is ideal for mounting the camera because you can strap it on tight enough for it not to wobble too much, but it has the downside of making you look like a bit of a prat so I was concerned that a band like Radiohead might be uncomfortable with that. If they were they didn’t show it and when Garth and I had hooked up all 5 helmets in the band’s main studio and checked they were all recording, we got everyone in, strapped the helmets on and ran through the song a couple of times. That was it. After supper Garth and I loaded everything onto a laptop and it looked great. We stayed up til 2.30am chopping the footage from the 5 cameras together and when we were finished it looked pretty good. In fact we were very pleased. The band give a fantastic performance made pleasingly odd by the Helmet Cams so that by the last section my heart was soaring as we watched it back. What a band! What a song! Crank it up. I hope you like it.
WHAT’S IN THE BOX?
On Friday morning Garth and I finished tweaking the Jigsaw video and put together the Faust Arp footage then began to think of what was next. Garth had an idea about using the climactic scene from David Fincher’s Seven for something. Although to me it seemed quite well trodden territory (we did our own version for The Adam & Joe Show years ago) the idea of incorporating Thom somehow was too tempting to pass up so Garth found a box and went off to pitch to Yorkles. A few minutes later I found Thom sat on the sofa in the main studio with Garth facing him on a chair with the box between them. It looked like a doctor’s surgery where the patient has just been told he’s going to have to have his leg amputated. Thom took a deep breath and said “come on then, let’s do it.” Once his head was in the box Thom said “hang on, this is familiar. It’s No Surprises all over again!” We gave him a little slap and stuffed some packing foam in his mouth to show him who was boss and he was fine after that.
Everyone seemed to like the finished item although Thom was worried that there would be copyright infringement trouble. Garth and I reassured him that as it was a non profit exercise it shouldn’t be a problem unless anyone at the film company was feeling particularly humourless. You’re not though, are you chaps?
The rest of the day was a scramble to get things finished and transfer bits to various computers for the webcast. It was deeply impressive to see everybody getting this thing together themselves without any help from so called professionals other than the guy sat outside in the satellite truck. Nigel and his two man team sat in his little control room surrounded by old vision mixers he’d bought off E-Bay and various laptops and put together a three hour live show that was slicker (in a good, home made way) than it had any right to be. In the end the last 20 minutes of the thing went out with no audio thanks to a problem with the satellite link, but as far as I could tell there was still an amazing amount of wonderful stuff in those three hours, including about 5 live performances from the band in addition to pre recorded pieces that I would certainly have been delighted with had I been watching at home. At one point I even found myself doing a scrappy link with Thom, which may have made for some pretty awkward viewing (see below) but was certainly one of my prouder presenting moments! What other band would work so hard to do something like that for their fans though? Maybe Jimmy The Hoover and Living In A Box in their heyday but very few since.
As if all that wasn’t enough we had been visited earlier in the day by David Byrne who was conducting an interview with Thom for Wired magazine. When they had finished David came up to the control room and watched the Helmet Cam video. I was stood next to him as he chuckled away at the sight of them all being so serious in the silver helmets. “What a great performance!” he said. “And you can crop the helmets later, right?” I had to spend the next couple of minutes explaining to David and Thom why I thought we should keep the helmets in vision. Good times. Byrne is completely white haired now and very dapper indeed. Apart from Bowie I loved David Byrne in a kind of romantic way more than anyone when I was growing up so the old gay Byrne fancier in me was delighted to find him looking so good. I’m sure he’d be pleased to hear that. He’s so great though. No wonder Radiohead took their name from one of his songs, even if it was one of the unlikliest and least representative in the Talking Heads cannon (I have a soft spot for it nonetheless). If you’re a fan, you should really check out The Catherine Wheel (almost a lost Talking Heads album) and The Knee Plays which has just been re-released. It’s grade A art pop that’s great to listen to while you’re making art. Details of all those can be found on Byrne’s well maintained website here where you’ll find all kinds of treats including this wonderful clip of a NY City bike ride with commentary from David. For a cycle nerd and Byrne obsessive it doesn’t get much better.
ADDENDUM
Here’s how the Wired piece turned out.
What a couple of days though! I do hope it won’t be the last of my Radiohead dalliances. Cheery Ho.
October 28, 2007
CONSUMER NEWS (SOME CHRISTMAS PRESENT IDEAS)!
Hello phantom friends. Today’s post is going to be a little like a consumer guide in a glossy magazine for thick men or half-witted women. Funnily enough Joe and myself have been offered the job of writing just such a column a few times and we’ve been tempted because we’re both a bit thick and we both like free stuff, but usually we come to our senses before the contract is signed. Anyway, today amongst all the other self regarding eyewash, I’m going to impart to you some top purchasing tips which have improved the quality of my life in recent years. I should stress that no money has changed hands for these endorsements (although if any of the companies involved would like to just send me some free things and/or money, that would be fine). These are just UK based companies I’ve stumbled across who in my experience provide an excellent and efficient service and sell stuff that isn’t a total rip. I like getting these kinds of recommendations from friends so I thought you might dig it too. Plus it’s Christmas in about 15 minutes isn’t it!
CAVEAT!
If any of these recommendations don’t turn out as well for you as they did for me, I’m sorry but please resist the temptation to tell me about it in great detail. As much as I’d like to be, I’m simply not Nicky Campbell.
6 MUSIC AND DIGITAL RADIOS!
Thanks if you tuned in to our first Saturday morning show on BBC 6 Music. We’re there for the next year (!) from 9-12 every Saturday so if you haven’t already, invest in some kind of DAB radio and plunge into the superior world of digital listening! I get many of my electronicals from Stone Audio here. They deliver the quickest of anyone I’ve used on line for this kind of thing and they send you e-mails written by actual humans with real names if your product is out of stock so you can select an alternative. If you’re after a digital radio I’d go for a Tivoli DAB or for a lovely sounding, compact i-pod speaker/radio (although this one’s NOT digital) may I recommend the Tivoli Audio Model PAL (Portable Audio Laboratory) Radio. Many of my close friends have received one of these as a birthday present over the years and they always go down a treat.
Of course if you just want to listen again to our 6 Music shows you can do so from their website here. As the weeks wear on I hope we’ll get round to providing the BBC webfolks with some more recent pics. It would be nice if we were still as fresh faced as the fairly ancient photos on the site suggest, but it’s probably best for all of us if we simply come to terms with the older, jowlier versions. Isn’t ageing terrific!?
As we mentioned on the show yesterday we haven’t yet nailed down the details of the podcast situation but we’re thinking along the lines of doing a monthly digest featuring the best of the Saturday morning shows as well as a good few specially recorded nuggets where we can be a little more free wheeling than we might be on air. I’ll keep you posted.
BOOK NEWS!
A while back I went for a meeting at Faber & Faber who were interested in hearing any book ideas I had. Days later however I got the commission for my BBC3 pilot MeeBOX which has taken up most of my time since so my literary pretentions had to be popped on the bookshelf for a while. Shame though cos I had some great ideas for books.
10,000 THINGS THAT ARE SOOO CRAP
This would be just a long list of things that I think are crap. Mainly I would just write them all down in no particular order without even really justifying why I thought they were crap. Every now and then there would be a childish drawing of one of the things I thought was crap but it wouldn’t even be on the same page as the thing it corresponded to. Here are some of the things that would be in there: Trees (so crap!) Bad Food (yuck!) Metal (the point anyone?) Fish (hate them!) and the letter ‘p’ (Piss off!) You get the idea. There would also be a tie in TV show. In fact I think I’m going to make it and put it in MeeBOX as a clip.
RAPPER MOUSE
This would be a children’s book based on a story that I made up for my sons one time. There’s a mouse and he wants to be a rapper. He’s called MC Mouse. The book would be cute but also streetwise and there’d be a lot of quite rude jokes that would go over the kids heads. I would illustrate it myself to ensure that I got more money, even though the illustrations would be embarrassingly poor. The kids won’t mind, have you seen how crap their drawings are? Anything looks like genius to them. There would also be a tie in movie and of course an album both of which would also be sub par.
I WAS BULLIED AT SCHOOL
A very slim collection of memories from my school days when I was often bullied. I would make it sound as if the bullying was very bad although it was actually fairly low level. I would leave out the times when I was a bit of a bully myself, or maybe I’d mention those times but make it sound as if I learned some valuable lessons. Perhaps I’d even track down some of the people that bullied me and the people I bullied. Has someone done this already? Fuckit, I’ll do it again but it’ll be different cos I’ve got a different name. Again, could also be a TV series.
ADAM BUXTON’S POLAROIDS OF COCKS
I travel the world at great expense for a year taking pictures of people’s penises with a Polaroid camera then put them in a book. Some of them are famous people, others are just ordinary people, some of them are homeless etc. What do their cocks say about their lives? You decide. I’d do cocks first as I’m not gay so it would appear that prurience was not my primary motivation. A year later I would do Adam Buxton’s Polaroids of Twats. Both would sell very well. Again, I don’t care if this has been done before, I’m doing it again with my name on it.
Unfortunately Faber & Faber tend to concentrate on slightly different kinds of books but I bet I could talk them round. My meeting there concluded with me being given an armful of their recent publications which all turned out to be very good. Particularly entertaining were Ten Bad Dates With De Niro, a great collection of well written movie top tens for both the high brow and low brow film fan, and Simon Reynold’s excellent Rip It Up And Start Again, about post punk music from 1978 to 1984. If you like bands like Talking Heads, New Order, Devo, Pere Ubu, Orange Juice and their arty experimental pop colleagues then you will love this book. He covers the story of pretty much every single significant act from that time with enough love and enthusiasm to make you want to listen to all their stuff again, even the really quite rubbish stuff (the rubbosity of which is also acknowledged). It does for this most interestingly diverse and rewarding period of music what The World At War did for WW2! I’m telling you!
RADIO CONTROLLED PLANE NEWS!
Last Christmas my wife got a cheap looking RC plane for one of our young sons and it looked so unpromising that after the initial unwrapping euphoria it lay untried for the next few days. However on New Year’s day (surely one of the most depressing days of any year) driven to desperation by physical misery and unable to watch more frigging telly, we found the nearest field and gave it a go. It worked pretty well! It was hard to steer but Frank, aged 4, was able to keep it in the air for several satisfying minutes at a time and since then we’ve become rather skilled at making the thing do what we want. All it needed to be ready to fly was a 20 minute charge from the controller which we started as we left the house. By the time we arrived on the airfield, we were ready for takeoff!
We’ve lost a few to roofs (rooves?) and wear and tear but they’re cheap enough for it not to be the end of the world so I keeping ordering new ones and the newer models are even better. What’s more, the place I order them from, Wonderland Models delivers the next day, and again if they don’t have what you need they call you up and suggest alternatives. Along the way I’ve tried buying other similarly priced RC planes and helicopters and not one of them is as satisfyingly easy to use and hardy as these X Twin planes which have provided me and the boys with some of the most enjoyable afternoons ever. Hope they do the job for you too.
October 20, 2007
A&J STARTING ON 6 MUSIC & STARDUST PREMIERE NEWS!
ADAM & JOE ON 6 MUSIC, SATURDAY MORNINGS 9-12 FROM 27th OCTOBER 2007!
It’s finally official! Joe and I are taking over the Saturday morning show on 6 Music as of next Saturday (27th October). We’ve signed on for a years worth of shows (minus a few holiday weeks) so it’ll be the longest unbroken run we’ve ever had on the radio (unless we get fired/suddenly very ill etc.) In some ways it’s a little daunting because both Joe and myself are as busy as we’ve ever been with various odds and sods, but a regular show at the great Big British Castle is too good an opportunity to pass up.
Our new producer will be Jude Adam who also produces Stephen Merchant’s very good Sunday afternoon show at 6 and used to produce Roundtable which I went on a couple of times years ago so I’m pleased we’ve got her! As far as the podcast goes we’re having a meeting next week to establish what we will be able to do with these. Joe and I are very keen for it to be as much like our old Xfm ones as possible, ie around half an hour containing good bits of the broadcast show and a few new tittles too. I really hope we can find a way to do it without it being as time consuming as it used to be at Xfm.
As far as the Saturday show goes it’ll be the usual sort of thing: me and Joe talking a lot of bollocks about TV, movies, music and anything else that occurs to us on the way in. I imagine Text The Nation will return, and I’m keen to continue our version of Sean Keavney’s feature Band Aid, with Joe and me pitching home made tunes against eachother to play out at the end of the programme. Anyway I need to talk to Joe and Jude about all this so I should shut up for now but I’m very excited and I really hope you like it. The picture above is from a few weeks back of us at 6 Music with Jenny who assisted us so wonderfully when we were covering for Sean. We really need to get some new pictures taken.
STARDUST PREMIERE GOSSOP!
I’ve been increasingly busy with the BBC3 pilot so I failed to deliver exciting premiere gossop immediately after the exciting premiere, but to be honest it wasn’t the most exciting night of all time, for me at least although it was great being there with my Ma. For a start I was feeling quite fluey and then me and Mummy (to use her proper name) made the mistake of turning up to the Odeon Leicester Square on time, ie. much too early. If you arrive with all the famous people you can pretend that the paparazzi and the crowd are screaming for you as well as Tina Sparkle or whoever, but when you’re alone on the red carpet and not a single person has a clue who you are it tends to bring you back down to earth in a way that’s unwelcome at the premiere of a film you’re actually in.
Of course even if they’d seen the film they would have a hard time picking me out of a Krypton Factor style line up, but that’s not the issue. I consoled myself with the fact that these days the red carpet and screaming crowd has been replaced with a small rather antiseptic press enclave, temporarily walled off to exclude the throngs of passers by and honest everyday folk for whom I am a kind of legend. If they’d let the REAL people in, the place would have gone mental when me and my Mum showed up. They probably just didn’t have the police to deal with it is all.
Once inside we were ushered into an empty VIP holding cell downstairs, as I was going to be going up on stage with the rest of the cast before the film. I felt bad that the place wasn’t rammed with people I could point out for my Ma, but she seemed to be having a good time, sipping her warm, flat champagne and checking out the wall of old black and white photos from 50 odd years of premieres at the Odeon. Odd to see them all there in that lost world of old school movie stardom, smoking and drinking away luxuriously, looking young and sexy and properly famous, no cheeky TV presenters waiting nearby to spit in their face. It must have been fun, surely.
Finally it was time to join the other members of the Stardust cast on stage with director Matthew Vaughn. There was no De Niro, Danes or Pfeiffer (although Michele did appear briefly for the cameras outside) but most of the Brit comedy types showed up. On our way down the side of the auditorium a few people saw Ricky Gervais and Dave Walliams and started snapping away on their camera phones. One guy called out to Dave ‘here he is! What a joker!’ which made David laugh. Then we all stood about rather awkwardly in the wings waiting to be introduced. I found myself stood next to Jason Orange (Take That did a song for the film) and we shook hands for something to do. He seemed nice although I noticed that none of The That said their names when being introduced to people as if there was no possible way you wouldn’t know who they were. Even Mark who I thought would have better manners. Ricky and David amused eachother in the gloom and Sienna Miller squeezed my arm affectionately, possibly by accident as I’m sure she didn’t know who or what I was. Rupert Everett didn’t acknowledge me in the slightest, despite having spent a good 5 days working with me and the others on our ghost scenes last year. Perhaps he’d read an interview I did recently where I described him as a bit of a twat when you first meet him but very nice after a while and didn’t appreciate it. Or perhaps he was just nervous to meet me again. Yes, that’s probably it.
Here’s a picture I took from my spot on the stage. On the extreme left you can see the edge of Julian Rhind Tutt’s face, next to Mark Strong who is looking at Walliams and Sienna Miller and that’s Vaughn behind her with Ricky Gervais behind him. Then there’s Take That at the end.
Favourite part of the night: meeting Neil Gaiman and chatting with he and Dave Walliams about Lou Reed whom, Dave pointed out repeatedly, Neil resembles somewhat (see pic below). Neil told us a story about having supper with the irascible ex-Velvet a while back. Apparently Lou was interested in getting Neil to turn his album Berlin into a graphic novel of some kind. What a whimsical delight that would have been! According to Neil he was not the cantankerous tyrant of legend. That doesn’t surprise me. I’m sure he’s not the easiest of people but when you think of all the tedious questions he must get asked over and over again by half witted rock journos, is it any wonder he occasionally decides to behave like a prick, if only to give them something fun to write.
And that was about it. I was sorry not to hve seen Jonathan Ross and his wife Jane (who co-wrote the screenplay) as Jane got me involved with the whole thing in the first place by suggesting me to Matthew Vaughn for the role of Quintus when Noel Fielding had to drop out, but it’s always impossible to have a normal conversation with anyone at those things even if you can find them so hopefully I can say thanks under more normal circumstances in future. Premieres tend to be a bit anti-climactic unless you’re off to some party or other, but I wasn’t so I stepped out of the cinema into the small gang of onlookers hoping to catch a glimpse of someone exciting. By this time the walled press enclave was gone so it was open season for onlooking. And still there were no screams when I emerged. Bastards. I think my Ma had a good time though and that after all, should always be the main thing, right?