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?