Last Chance to See..., by Douglas Adams and Mark Carwardine

With a long old drive in the company of the young Lord of Chaos, I choose an audiobook to match the expected duration (and was only five minutes out) which I thought he'd like - and he did. Last Chance to See is one of my favourite books and it's been fun to pass it on. Mathew Baynton is also a very good choice of reader.

For those who might not know, in 1985, the Observer magazine sent Douglas Adams, best-selling author of The Hitch-Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy, and zoologist Mark Carwardine to Madagascar to look for the endangered aye-aye lemur. Enthralled by this encounter, they followed it up in 1988 with a longer trip looking for a range on endangered species including the northern white rhinoceros and the kakapo. That trip led to a BBC Radio series first broadcast in 1989 and the book published a year later. In 2009, Stephen Fry and Mark Cardwardine made a TV series retracing the original trip.

Fry's introduction to the 2019 edition of the book included things I didn't know, not least that one inspiration for a lengthy trip around the world looking for different endangered species was Adams's tax situation. By spending a year out of the UK, he saved himself a six-figure sum. We learn, too, of Fry's own role in the original endeavour, as house-sitter for Adams and the emergency contact when things went awry.

The main body of the book is a masterpiece, at once killingly funny and shrewdly, beautifully observed. Much of it has long been lodged in my memory; many speak of Adams's ability to correctly predict the future but he's also skilled and sharing ideas and stories in ways that stick. One thing, I think, I'd not picked up on previous readings is how much this is about human foibles and bureaucracy. By detailing all the things that get in the way of Adams and Carwardine getting to see these creatures - of Things Getting Done - these frustrations illuminate the problems faced by conservationists. 

Mark Carwardine's last word updates the one in my dog-eared paperback and makes depressing reading: one of the species he and Adams went to see is now officially extinct, another is near as dammit, and the rest all teeter on the verge of extinction, along with countless others. What a world we are passing on to our children.

See also:

• Me on the radio version of Last Chance to See...
• Me on Douglas Adams at the BBC and my reaction to news of his death

Children of Time, by Adrian Tchaikovsky

“How can we trap them?” (p. 589)

Doctor Avrana Kern begins an ambitious scientific study. From her spaceship the Brin 2, she launches two vessels at a newly terraformed planet — “Kern’s World”, as she sees it. One vessel, the Barrel, contains a population of monkeys. The other, the Flask, contains a nanovirus that will affect the monkeys’ DNA, shaping succeeding generations of their descendants, encouraging the development of intelligence like humanity’s own. The hope is that one day the monkeys will be able to respond to, and converse with, Kern. 

But something goes wrong with the experiment. Instead of monkeys, the nanovirus sets to work on another population on Kern’s World: the spiders. Over thousands of years, alternating been chapters set on the planet and chapters involving the last human survivors of Earth, we follow what happens nexts…

This is an absolutely brilliant book, epic and thrilling and rich. It’s the sort of novel you want to hare through to find out what happens next and yet never want to end. It’s big on ideas and emotion. For all the enormous scale — it sprawls across space as well as time — it is grounded in compelling characters, human and spider. Their respective civilisations are very different from our own, yet we’re drawn in by relatable fears and desires, tensions and challenges.

One clever way in which we are ensnared is that Tchaikovsky retains a number of characters through the enormous span of the novel. Humans are stored cryogenically or by other means (it would be a shame to spoil exactly how), so sleep for thousands of years and then awaken for the next chapter, catching up as we do on what’s changed in the meantime. With the spiders, Tchaikovsky repeats a number of names among different generations, so we follow the adventures of various Portias, Biancas and Fabians, some the descendants of others. In effect, we inherit a connection each time. That in turn matches something the spiders can do in inheriting memories and “understandings”, so it’s a structural device that also helps us understand the psychology of these creatures.

The alien perspective rendered as normal and humanity seen as other is an old trick from science-fiction, one I first encountered in the opening chapter of Malcolm Hulke’s novelisation Doctor Who and the Cave Monsters (1974), which involves a similar clash between human civilisation and a species of intelligent “monsters” with just as much claim to the world. But the span of the novel, that long view of developing society and culture seen through a few long-lived characters so that each challenge is deeply affecting, is reminiscent of Kim Stanley Robinson’s Mars trilogy. In some respects, this is the Mars trilogy with monsters, which I mean as the highest praise.

It all builds and builds to a thrilling climax and extremely satisfying conclusion. Really, I’m kicking myself for not getting to this sooner. I bought a copy on 24 August 2016 at the ceremony for the Arthur C Clarke Award for best science-fiction novel of the year, which it won; Adrian was kind enough to sign my copy. On the train home I found the opening chapter a bit dense (I think I was probably the dense one, and also a bit pickled), and the 600-page word count was daunting, deserving or proper attention and time. The result is that this book has sat patiently by my bedside, watching and waiting for me to be smart enough to respond.

The audio version is expertly narrated by Mel Hudson - who makes the various characters distinct and recognisable. I’m pleased to see she has also narrated the two subsequent novels in the series, Children of Ruin and Children of Memory. I will not leave those so long.

Hackenfeller’s Ape, by Brigid Brophy

Professor Clement Darrelhyde spends his days at London Zoo, singing opera by Mozart to one of the enclosures. Despite this encouragement, Percy and Edwina — two specimens of Hackenfeller’s Ape (Anthropopithecus Hirsutus Africanus) — continue not to mate, though she seems more in favour than he does. Then Darrelhyde learns than Percy has been sold to the space programme and will, in just a few days, be blasting off in a rocket on what’s likely to be a one-way trip.

Darrelhyde attempts to fight the bureaucracy and rouse the interest of the press in his efforts to save Percy. When this fails, he teams up with a young pick-pocket called Gloria to free Percy from his cell…

This short (125 page), funny novel begins with a neat reversal, describing the behaviour of a particular species of ape which, we come to realise within a few sentences is us. I’ve seen this kind of anthropological inversion done elsewhere, such as in David Attenborough’s Life on Earth (1979), where the final, 13th episode looks at human beings from the same objective viewpoint it has applied to other creatures. 

This sort of thing is quite common in science-fiction, too; our ordinary, unthinking behaviour suddenly strange. (I’m near the end of Adrian Tchaikovsky’s amazing Children of Time and will have more to say in due course…)

While the conceit only lasts for those first few pages, we frequently see events from Percy’s perspective. The effect of this inversion is, said a review in Time quoted in the front flap, “a pointed and amusing satire”, while the Herald Tribune thought it, “a brilliantly accomplished small book which widens out into large meanings.”

The lightness of touch surprised me given what I know about Brophy’s later campaigning on the issue of animal rights. Her name came up when I was looking into issues of personhood and reading around the documentary Project Nim, which I reviewed for the Lancet.

The novel was apparently inspired by Brophy’s time living close enough to London Zoo to hear the cries of captive animals. She later wrote a piece, “The Rights of Animals” (1965) for the Sunday Times, subsequently republished by the Animal Defence and Anti-Vivisection Society, and contributed to such publications as Animal, Men and Morals (1971) and Animal Rights: A Symposium (1979). 

I’m also aware of Brophy’s effective campaigning in other areas. With Maureen Duffy she was instrumental in seeing the Public Lending Right enshrined in law, so that authors receive payment for their books being borrowed from public libraries. I’m a direct beneficiary, a fact I have to declare at each meeting of the British Library’s advisory committee to PLR. As I linger over the complimentary sandwiches, I think of Brophy and Duffy and all they achieved.

Yet this novel is not a polemic or even particularly campaigning; indeed, an anti-vivisectionist is one of the targets for satire here. Colonel Hunter of the League for the Prevention of Unkind Practices to Animals is more keen to collect and share photos of animals in distress than to stop such things actually happening. There are no goodies or baddies, just a lot of different frail and fallible people with their foibles. 

Elsewhere, a newspaper won’t get involved because they’ve already decided to support the nascent space programme and run a “Space corner” each Saturday. This, we’re told is,

“For the kids. It does them less harm than sadistic comics.” (p. 43)

That’s a sign of the time in which this was written; the anxiety about American comics warping impressionable minds led to the creation of the far more wholesome, home-grown Eagle, launched in 1950. This novel is a counterpoint to the optimistic future lavishly displayed each week in the Eagle’s cover strip Dan Dare. The idea that the space programme could conscript an ape from the zoo is perhaps informed by the shadow of war. The professor’s boarding house and the niceties of dinner with his sister all seem from another age.

It’s been interesting to read this, by chance, after another novel from the same year. It is very different to Farewell Crown and Good-bye King, more in tune, I think, with something else from 1953: Nigel Kneale’s TV serial The Quatermass Experiment has a similar ambivalence to the space programme and the costs involved. But what really struck me about this novel was how modern it feels. I can see why it still felt relevant enough in 1979 to be republished in hardback — the edition I read.

One reason for that is the treatment of impulse and desire, whether ape or human, unworried by social convention. At one point, Gloria daydreams of an encounter with an imagined, handsome young man, who she tellingly gives the name of the aged professor. When, in reality, a young man then asks her out, the relationship lasts only briefly. 

“I wasn’t flash enough for her,” (p. 124).

Percy being at liberty transforms his sex drive but his freedom is short-lived. Kendrick, the young man from the space programme, has to hastily improvise an alternative to using Percy that further blurs the distinction between primitive ape and sophisticated human. There’s something both comic and disturbing in all this. When Percy returns to his enclosure of his own volition, Gloria asks what he’s up to.

“Darrelhyde repressed the first word that came to mind. ‘Mating,’ he answered.

“Oh.” Perhaps with cold, Gloria shuddered, and then giggled slightly. “Aren’t animals awful?” (p. 92)

Doctor Who Magazine Yearbook 2025

The 2025 yearbook from Doctor Who Magazine is now out, featuring a couple of things typed by me.

Pages 28 and 29 relive the experience, in May, of watching season opener Space Babies for the first time, my son the then 12 year-old Lord of Chaos keen to see it at midnight - especially if we had crisps. Then, on page 68 and 69, we mark the 40th anniversary of The Who Shop on 2 December, with an interview with owners Alex and Kevan.

Farewell Crown and Good-bye King, by Margot Bennett

After so enjoying Margot Bennett’s 1952 crime novel The Widow of Bath, I plunged into her next novel, a thriller first published in 1953. It’s not nearly as good, yet full of things of interest.

The plot is quite involved so I’ll endeavour to explain the set-up. In the first chapter, we meet wealthy Barry and Vanessa Bone as they return home late from a posh party, arguing about the cheque for £2,000 that Barry has just given Roger Maple. The money, insists Barry, is as an investment in a new railway in an eastern European country called Ardania, where copper has been found; Maple is a friend of the local king.

A young woman called Kate Browning returns home from the same party and admits to her sober, level-headed sister Julia that she overheard Maple and the Bones, got mixed up in their conversation after she claimed to know the king as a friend of a friend, and has herself invested £100 in the scheme. Yet Kate believes that the money is an investment in a deal to distribute Ardanian oil.

Vincent and Frances Roydon were also at the party. Vincent is features editor of the Vigilant newspaper, which is ironic as he, too, has been hoodwinked by Maple, investing £250 that he can ill-afford in what he thinks is a paper-making scheme to exploit Ardania’s plentiful soft woodlands.

In the second chapter, we meet Maple himself, calling in on his old friend Duncan Stewart, an impoverished documentary film-maker who finds £250 to invest in what Maple describes as a scheme to dam Ardania’s Lixaman Falls and supply hydroelectric power across the border. 

By now the reader is sure of what Duncan only suspects: that all of this is a scam. Maple conspicuously leaves the remains of a letter from a mystery woman, Elvira, in Duncan’s wastepaper bin and then heads off to meet his wife, Jenny Maple, so they can leave the country.

He promptly disappears. Jenny tells Duncan that her husband stood her up but she refuses to go to the police, even as days turn to weeks without word from him. Duncan instead meets the other hoodwinked investors and together they investigate what has been going on. Their first move is to try and meet up with Ardania’s former king, now living in London under the name Mr Forster and busy trying to agree the sale of his unrivalled collection of paintings by Vermeer…

That is just the start. This is all fiendishly complicated and yet the mystery at the heart of it I very quickly guessed, not least because the fictional, mittel-European country of Ardania put me in mind of The Prisoner of Zenda. As with The Widow of Bath (and the Sherlock Holmes story The Adventure of Silver Blaze), the behaviour of a dog is an important clue — in this case, the telling feature is that the dog does bark. But I think the whole thing might have been more effective if the dead body found in water late on in the novel happened much earlier on, with these people then all involved in solving a murder, not just trying to retrieve their investments.

Even so, the novel is full of brilliant details and Bennett shows her usual sharply observational eye. Roger Maple, before he disappears, is a beguiling rogue with a neat line in tradecraft. For example, he advises Duncan Stewart not to buy beer on credit from his local shop:

“It gives you a reputation of being hard up, and in your own street, too.” (p. 22)

It doesn’t matter that Duncan is hard up; the important thing is appearance. Maple instead recommends being bold and try cashing a cheque for £100 in the same establishment to give a contrary impression. Then there’s the artful way Maple gives the names of his other investors — Bone, Browning and Roydon — to sufficiently impress Duncan that he wants to put in money himself, while thinking this is his own idea (p. 28). In doing so, the author also provides Duncan with leads to follow when Maple disappears, bringing the different investors together to compare stories and so form a bond. That is elegantly, effectively done.

Speaking of bonds, I wondered at first why Duncan was so easily taken in by Maple, given he’s such an evident rogue. How did these two so very different men ever become friends? Just as I wondered this, the answer came: on p. 34 we’re told that they were in the army together. The implication is that this formed an unshakeable bond between two people otherwise from completely different worlds. Now I wonder how relatable that would have been to readers of the time, so soon after the end of the war and with National Service ongoing. I’m aware that the services threw together people from different backgrounds and classes who might never otherwise have met. But I’d never thought of the lasting relationships so created, akin to friends made on holiday that you can’t then shake, but with a stronger, faced-death-together connection.

Another contemporary insight is Duncan’s own frustrations. As a filmmaker, he’s keen to find truth, avoid cliche and to document ordinary, real life. There's a sequence late on where he’s being briefed on an advert for serial. When he offers his view on how to lift this above cliche, he is told “This is meant to be an advertising, not an art film” (p. 166) — though the implication is that his suggestions will be taken on and will prove effective.

This and the sequence where Roydon is faced with the sack, apparently on the whim of the publisher, may reveal something of the real-life experience of the author, or her husband who was editor of Lilliput between 1943 and 1950, when Margot wrote regularly for it. How much could the Bennetts do what Roydon does here, his threat to take a scoop to a rival publication earnings him promotion and a raise? My guess is that this was wish fulfilment, even revenge for real life.

On another occasion, Duncan rails against the nannying welfare state, in much the way as might the protagonist of novels from the same year such as Ian Fleming’s Casino Royale or Nevil Shute’s time-travelling In the Wet.

“‘I can’t leave the country, drive a car, open a shop, buy a pound of butter, not without permission. There are places where I can’t cross the road until a policeman lets me. I know I’m a man and not a unit,’ he said satirically, ‘because I’m allowed to register a vote for Holborn Borough Councillors. I’d like to do something more. I’d like to find Roger and not just run bleating to the police. I’d like to be a man on my own.” (pp. 62-63)

But Duncan isn’t alone; the whole wheeze of the book is that it’s an investigation by a group of amateur detectives, all from different backgrounds but linked by common cause. Though Duncan crave adventure of a John Buchan/Richard Hannay sort, it is Roydon who enjoys racy antics abroad.

There are lots of fun supporting characters, best of all Derek Vaughn, the burglar battling with his own conscience. Here’s a typical monologue from him, all sex and violence and comedy:

“When I was a lad, I was one of the roughest types on God’s earth. I’ve done five years for rapping a harmless old woman on the head. But I used my time to educate myself, and before the end I was the prison librarian. Some of the least educated men used to be great readers They’d get me to mark off the dirty bits for them, and even if it was just the lights going out or a description of a woman’s brassiere they’d read it till the page dropped off. That way, sir, I gradually got a lot of them interest in literature for its own sake.” (pp. 73-74)

Something of this echoes in a later sex scene just kindling as a chapter ends:

“She drew his hard, reluctant body closer to her and held his head against her soft, generous breasts. She soothed him with her loving, expressive hands until he was utterly relaxed in the ambience of her kindness. He was weak, and knew for the first time the peace that comes from abandoning the painful disguise of strength.” (p. 217)

How different, I thought, to the gruff, masculine perspective of bonking in Fleming or Shute, sex as surrender rather than attack. And yet, this sex is also victory, an accomplishment and something got away with for the lover who is married to someone else. 

That is more interesting than the way the novel ends for Duncan, rejected by one woman so he immediately proposes to another. We leave him and his fiancee on an ostensibly happy note, but the cold exchange of one woman for another simply doesn’t sit right. The Widow of Bath neatly tied up all the threads of its plot and added an unsettling coda to haunt us after the close of the book. The ending here is is unsettling because it is unsatisfactory, not quite tying things up. The basic trick behind this novel isn’t as clever or as satisfying as her last book, and it’s not quite so well done.

Bennett followed Farewell Crown and Good-bye King with two novels both published in 1955 which I’ve already read: unconventional mystery The Man Who Didn’t Fly and the science-fictional The Long Way Back; my friend Matthew Sweet calls the latter her masterpiece. I’ll be back to read what’s considered the best as well as the last of her detective novels, Someone From the Past (1958).

Missing Believed Wiped 2024

I had a lovely day out on Saturday at the BFI’s Missing Believed Wiped event(s), where we got to see an assortment of old telly that had been thought lost. These events are always a thrillingly eclectic mix, some items really good and some plain boggling. Usually, it’s made up of stuff that has been returned to the archives over the preceding year but here that rule had been a little extended to include some special items.

Session 1, which was dedicated to the memory of Rory Clark, began with Jo Griffin telling us about the restoration work done on LWT comedy series The Complete and Utter History of Britain (1969). Two episodes of this were previously known to exist, then last year the whole lot was suddenly up on Britbox, to the amazement of my archive telly pals. It turns out that the other episodes had been misfiled, all as “episode 2”.

We watched episode 6 of 8, originally transmitted on 16 February 1969. Colin Gordon is the straightman, a sort of news anchor bridging comic skits based on historical moments, all in chronological order. In this case, we covered from Guy Fawkes (here lighting a fireworks display of Catherine Wheels) to Oliver Cromwell (being interviewed on a chat show, insisting he is popular while the audience throws things).

It was often very funny, such as the expert historian describing the execution of Charles I who ends up killing a member of the audience, or Michael Palin’s impression of David Frost as he interviews Terry Jones as Cromwell... as Edward Heath. Best of all, the episode ended with a sort of trailer for the next one, with a load of quick-fire visual gags. It was also often very well staged and shot, notably in the fun sequence of a witch (Jones) getting her spells wrong.

(ETA: I misunderstood some of what we were told. Seven episodes were made of the series but the first two episodes were then edited together, making a broadcast series of six. We saw the final, sixth episode, the closing sequence therefore trailing an unmade second series to come. The six broadcast episodes survive, as do the first two episodes in their original form before they were cut down, making a total of eight surviving episodes.)

Afterwards, Michael Palin and producer Humphrey Barclay were interviewed on stage. Palin seemed gratified by the response — not least because, on broadcast, John Cleese rang him up to say the series wasn’t very good. Instead, Cleese invited Palin and Jones to collaborate on something else, which of course ended up being Monty Python. Palin was funny about this and the context in which the programme was made, and classy in acknowledging the excellent job done on restoration by Jo Griffin and her team.

Next up was a compilation provided by my mate Ed Stradling from TV Ark of some otherwise missing telly he’s found by looking through old VHS tapes. This included Andrew Sachs as Manuel from Fawlty Towers chaotically cooking paella on Pebble Mill At One, and a bit of a New Year’s Eve programme from the late 1970s, with two comedians dragged up as Scottish policewomen trading bawdy jokes in front of a police box that then dematerialises.

(ETA: The comedians were apparently Jack Milroy and Rikki Fulton, at the time known for playing teddy-boys Francie and Josie; the policewomen in the sketch were Nancy and Rosie. This all went over my head.)

This was followed by an episode of trendy magazine programme A Whole Scene Going from 16 February 1966, in which a documentary crew visited three contrasting parties — one very posh and staid, another more down at heel — followed by a studio interview with the hosts, one of them a young Annie Nightingale. They discussed what made a good atmosphere and how to cope with people being drunk and sick. It was a fascinating snapshot of the time, loaded with assumptions about class and status, and all achingly awkward. 

So was an interview with Dudley Moore and Shirley Anne Field, who answered “Agony Aunt” style questions about dating, such as whether it was all right to kiss at the end of a first date. Marianne Faithful was filmed at home and then live in the studio, responding to fans’ repeated displeasure that she’d got married and had a baby. Presenters, guests and audience were all so oddly nervy, none of them knowing quite how to be in front of a camera, the way people now take for granted. The sense was of precocious, well-spoken children, squirming in their seats while nervously seeking approval.

We finished the first session with an episode of Six More Faces of Jim, in this case The Face of Fatherhood from 15 November 1962. The wheeze of the series (and the preceding Six Faces of Jim) was that each episode featured Jimmy Edwards as a different role and situation — effectively a series of sitcom pilots. This episode was a bit different: a TV version of the radio skit The Glums from the 1950s, with Mr Glum (Edwards) seeking to thwart the engagement of his son Ron (Ronnie Barker) to Eth (June Whitfield). It was fun, though I felt that it maybe under-served Edwards by having him play so closely to type.

Eth is a spirited character, laying down the law to Ron and snapping back at selfish Mr Glum. That, I think, was particularly notable after the lack of speaking women’s roles in The Complete and Utter History and the rather demure women in Scene (at one point, an audience member complained that Marianne Faithful’s marriage meant he could no longer consider her angelic, and she nodded along rather than punching him).

With barely enough time to wolf down a burrito, we hurried back in for Session 2, this time comprised of material recovered by Film is Fabulous. I’ve long been in awe of this project, which is really focused on ensuring that film collectors leave provision so that their collections don’t end up as landfill. But that has in turn led to a scheme to catalogue the contents of a number of collections, which has led to the discoveries of some otherwise missing telly. 

John Franklin and Simon Nicholls from Film is Fabulous gave us some background and announced some new finds: a Jackanory-style programme called Storyteller from September 1956 presented by Elizabeth Beresford years before she created the Wombles and illustrated by Tony Hart; and three episodes of Douglas Fair Banks Junior Presents, also from the late 1950s.

We were then treated to something called Disc Jockey from 1960 or 1961: a series of filmed performances of pop songs, all in very good quality. Jimmy Lloyd performed “I Double Dare You” on a set that looked like a New York apartment, with well dressed young people smouldering at one another, including a black man and white woman. Another song saw Frank Ifield getting very close to a young woman in a coffee bar. Later, a young woman at the window of her house in America sang about liking the young man loitering outside though her parents wouldn’t approve. For all the lightness of the pop song, behind her there was a rifle on the wall suggesting the risk posed to the would-be amore. The whole lot felt potent and rich, and I’d love to know more about this programme.

This was followed by a series of clips from found programmes, including a thrilling sequence from Mogul: Is That Tiger, Man? (30 April 1966) in which Tiger (Michael Coles) dons scuba gear to fix an oil-pipe in shark-infested waters while being taunted by gruff bully Peter Thornton (Ray Barrett) and cooed over by Steve Thornton (Justine Lord). When the sharks come close, Tiger surfaces too quickly and gets the bends; Thornton coldly insists he be thrown back into the water to recover. This and the scene of Alec Stewart (Robert Hardy) was all of the cross business-tycoon type that I remember once being so much part of TV drama until it was basically killed off by parody in A Bit of Fry and Laurie’s John and Peter (“Dammit John!”) — but what we saw here looked great.

We then got an episode of Tom Jones! (with exclamation mark) from 3 April 1967, comprising songs sharing a given theme, in this case Work. This ranged from a daft sequence of professional dancers fooling about in a kitchen to Jones as a miner, or working on a chain gang, or driving a truck while singing “Hard Day’s Night”. Yet when guest Maxine Brown sang about a woman’s (domestic) work, the gag was that Jones was doing the dishes, coming on with a tea towel which Brown handed back to him at the end of their flirty duet.

Finally, there was an episode of The Basil Brush Show from 20 November 1970, the CSO effects evidence that it was originally made in colour, for all it survives in black and white. The oddest thing about this, I thought, was how poorly it was pitched to the live audience of children (in their school and cub scout uniforms, all dressed up to be on TV). As Mr Derek (Fowlds) struggled not to corpse, Basil rattled off quips at the expense of women, trades union and foreigners. For example, when told he talks too much, he says it’s an inherited trait because his father was an auctioneer, his mother a woman. “Fucking hell,” responded the bloke just in front of me.

Some of the jokes earned a laugh, from the audience on screen and at the BFI, but it was notable how much less a response it got than The Complete and Utter History earlier that same afternoon. Discussing this afterwards in the bar, I wondered how much it was following the conventions of stand-up, taking as read How Jokes Are Done. So often, what makes old telly so extraordinary is the way it reveals these kinds of now-lost convention, things once taken for granted, perhaps not even thought of, that now seem so peculiar. Puzzling over these things is what makes an event like this so compelling. Television is such an intimate, immediate form, we have a particularly vivid means of travelling back in time.

Thanks to Robert Dick and Ian Farrington for catching some of what I missed, and to Dick Fiddy and the team at the BFI.

See also:

• Me on Missing Believed Wiped 2007
• Me on Missing Believed Wiped 2010
• My current work-in-progress: an episode guide to mostly missing BBC adventure series Garry Halliday (1959-62)

The Power of 3 podcast #316: The Time-Travelling Almanac

I spoke to Kenny Smith for his Power of 3 podcast about my new book, Doctor Who: The Time-Travelling Almanac, which would of course make the ideal Christmas gift for the Doctor Who fans in your life...

• Power of 3 #316: The Time-Travelling Almanac

I spoke to Kenny last year about another of my books, David Whitaker in an Exciting Adventure with Television; that podcast is available here and you can still buy the book.

(The photograph above right shows two copies of the Time-Travelling Almanac plus my copy of Kate Orman's 1994 Doctor Who novel The Left-Handed Hummingbird.)