Keep it secret, keep it safe

“It’s like Allo! Allo!, but without the laughs,” said Monster Maker as he tried to explain to me Secret Army.

“Oh,’ I said. “So just like Allo! Allo!”

Secret Army (1977-79) was one of a number of highly acclaimed BBC telly dramas based on the Second World War. Thought up and produced by the same gang what did Colditz, this is about the adventures of the Belgian “Lifeline”, a top secret network that rescued crashed Allied airman and got them back to fighting Nazis again. For several wise people I know, it’s the best thing ever on telly.

In the first series, Jan Francis plays Lisa – codename Yvette – the brave young zealot running Lifeline. She works through Brussels café le Candide run by the charming Albert Fourier (Bernard Hepton). Albert’s crippled wife is bed-ridden, but aware that Albert’s carrying on an affair with waitress Monique (Angela Richards). Lifeline also gets help from teenage waitress Natalie (Juliet Hammond-Hill) and vegetable-seller / radio-operator Alain (Ron Pember), plus Doctor Keldermans (Valentine Dyall). There’s also English agents, old ladies and helpful peasants along the way.

It’s a brutal series where nobody is safe, the work of saving some 800 airman taking a terrible toll. As the Germans continually point out, an airman being captured goes becomes a prisoner of war, but anyone helping them escape will be shot. So there’s plenty of chases across roof-tops and through the country, and some occasional firefights and explosions.

Pretty much every actor of the time is in it, plus several young faces yet to be names. Matthew Sweet and I invented a game for watching it, where you get one point for naming an actor, two points for naming something else they’ve been in, and five points for their role in Doctor Who. The Black Guardian’s a regular, and so is Doctor Skagra, and there’s roles for the Security Chief from The War Games, Griffiths from Attack of the Cybermen and even the boss of the Krillitane.

It’s also odd to see Klinkerhoffen, von Strohm and Gruber from Allo! Allo! in it. But also odder to imagine anyone being sold “Let’s do Secret Army as a sitcom”. Did someone really respond, “Yes, that’s a good idea…”?

Like a lot of old drama (and maybe Casualty now) the pathos comes from watching people dashed on the rocks of ill-fortune. Yes, like Casualty, we can sometimes spot which characters are going to die from the moment they’re introduced. But other characters, like (muto) Stephen Yardley’s Max and (my friend) Paul Shelley’s Major Bradley, are both sudden and nasty surprises.

Likewise, Yvette is suddenly killed off in the first episode of season two, just as le Candide becomes a posh restaurant and changes the whole dynamic of the series. This means that it can cater for the occupying forces, so there’s more interaction between the goodies and the German villains. These are lead by Clifford Rose’s Kessler, head of the Gestapo, and Michael Culver’s Brandt as the firm-but-fair head of the Luftwaffe. The series also explores the Germans’ relationships, and offers a sympathetic view of the ordinary German soldiery, as separate from the Nazi sadists.

Which is odd, because Andy Priestner’s notes and the DVD extras tell us that Clifford Rose was the one the audience went for. Perhaps that’s because the ladies like a villain, or because even he is made sympathetic through his relationship with Hazel McBride’s Madelaine. She didn’t, though, continue into the dubious-sounding spin-off which sees us rooting for Kessler on the run.

In fact, a hell of a lot of the series is about the complexities of what’s often portrayed elsewhere as a simple war of good versus evil. Lifeline has to make tough decisions and sacrifice people, just to protect themselves, while the Germans are often kind and caring people, just as hurt by the ongoing war. The fact that the series can so ruthlessly, unexpectedly despatch its characters also adds to the sense that we don’t know what’s coming next.

Season Two also sees a lot of stock footage mixed in with the action, tying the events and characters of the drama into the real, historical record. I wondered how much more effective that would have been at the time, so soon after The World At War.

The second season ends with news of the Allied invasion, and the prospect of liberation. But this in fact causes more complications in Season Three, as it becomes harder to run Lifeline with the roads, trains and phones out of action, and with Terrence Hardiman’s Reinhardt breathing closer down their necks. What’s more, the communists see Albert as the enemy, and the rest of Brussels see him as a conspirator. It becomes a race against time: will Albert and his friends be lynched before the Allies can explain their efforts.

The four episodes leading up to the end (bar the final episode) take place on consecutive days as the Allies get into Brussels. There’s a sudden change of pace and loose ends get tied up very quickly. There are still some last-minute deaths for regular characters, but there’s also a sudden romance and rescue that I hadn’t seen coming at all. Calling the final episode “The Execution” had me thinking it would go a whole other way entirely. Good herring there, fellas!

I’d heard something of the events of the penultimate episode from my parents, who remembered the series fondly. The bit that stuck in their mind was Monique having her head shaved by the Brussels mob, for being an adultress and collaborator. Is it wrong to be disappointed that it’s only an extra who gets the grade 2 treatment? I felt that this rescue and Monique’s subsequent adventures were too contrived a happy ending – even if the final scene of the series plays again into the complexity of everyone’s relationships.

And then suddenly it’s all over. A never screened, never available final episode is described in the DVD notes, reuniting the characters in 1969, while Albert and Natalie had cameos in the spin-off Kessler. And there are details of a CD of singing on Andy Priestner’s website.

Is it the best thing ever, then? The structure’s a bit odd in places so that suddenly whole long plot lines are over. Sometimes it’s pretty hysterical (“Plague!!!”), and I’d have liked some more funny bits to balance the general misery. But it’s a gripping, intelligent series full of fantastic characters and detail, and really rather special.

There's so little else occupying my head

Devon drizzled with occasional sunshine. Salcombe conspired to have 45 degree slops whichever route you took, but is a pretty, posh-shopped little town. I drank a lot of the local Tinners and answered the same questions from friends-of-the-parents over and over again: living in south London; married for three years; yes, writing pays; no, we don’t have kids yet.

Met the brother of a film star – one I sort of interviewed once – who showed remarkable patience at being always introduced as this-is-Film-Star’s-brother. We bonded over a love of food, and how a bit of exercise keeps the gorging in balance.

Also saw some of an uncle and his family who I’d not seen in nearly 10 years. We have vowed to do better in future, and I hope to get up to see him next month. Unfortunately, I didn’t quite avoid telling my all-grown-up cousin that the last time I’d seen her she’d been toddling. Gather she got that a lot.

Ate and drank and chatted and drank. Then on Sunday to see some of the Dr’s family, who live either end of a steep hill in Cornwall. Ate five Cornish pasties, two lots of trifle and a couple of hefty saffron cake wedgess. Back to Devon for pub tea and more beer, but too knackered to make a bash at the big brother’s which started at about 10 pm.

Wended our way slowly home yesterday, with a brief stop at Totnes castle. It’s a fairly bare, round keep with commanding views over the town towards the curving river. Schoolkids dashed about and shouted, none of them very interested in how a round keep is harder to undermine, or in the politics England post-Hastings. Must admit the extant shell is not the most exciting castle I’ve ever been to.

Having left our nice B&B at 10 in the morning, we finally got home just gone six. Was meant to be eating sushi in town for seven to celebrate J’s latest birthday. Wussed out in favour of an early night… and so was around to help L when she turned up to heft her many boxes and bags from our attic.

Back to working today. Plenty to be caught up on – last niggles on the Inside Story and the boss’s notes on The Pirate Loop. Has been a fun and long-time-coming break, but I don’t half feel like I now need a holiday…

Run Simon Run

A long day of chasing about madly yesterday – and my limbs are still not recovered from wild disco at a wedding on Saturday. It has been too long since I last did “dancing” (in quotes ‘cos of my own unique “style”). But cor, it wasn’t half fun.

First off, an appointment at the Petrie Museum of Egyptian Archaeology, which has been confirmed as the venue of a special signing for the Benny Inside Story on Saturday 3 November.

I’ll be there, as will Lisa Bowerman (Benny), Rebecca Levene (editor of many of Benny’s books, and of the forthcoming Missing Adventures), Nicholas Briggs (my boss and the voice of the Daleks and Cybermen), plus Benny regulars Steven Wickham and (I hope) Sam Stevens. More details to come, but put 3 November in your diaries.

After a coffee and discussion with one of my bosses, I chased down to the station to have my picture taken by LB Photography. This is mostly for the back-flap of the Inside Story and partly just ‘cos I is vain. Sat under a hedge just out of the sunshine and did as I was told – leaning forward and raising my chin and other tricks of the trade. After, there was calzone, gossip and a search for other photos.

Then hauled myself up to what used to be a pub not far from one end of Mark Brunel’s famous tunnel. Worked with clever designer Alex Mallinson on amends to the Inside Story until 9 pm, by which time mine eyes were glazing over. Home by nearly ten to watch a draft music video Codename Moose had directed on Saturday. It features some pretty impressive fisticuffs, the same Alex Mallinson leaping over the bar in a pub (I expect he practices at home) and my friend O. being a bruiser.

Last proofing tomorrow; another long day. And then fleeing to Darkest Devon for my parents’ ruby wedding bash. They were of course married the same day as The Tomb of the Cybermen part 3.

"Simon? Oh - he's rubbish!"

The third issue of free Doctor Who fanzine Shooty Dog Thing is now online.

It's packed with all kind of Bernice Summerfield goodness. As well as interviews with Lisa Bowerman, Stephen Fewell and, er, me, you get a potted history of Benny's adventures, some reviews and all kinds of good stuff. And I love the cover.

Plenty more fun to come in honour of Benny's 15th birthday. Watch this space.

The philosophy of numbers

(For those keeping score at home, this is my 500th post.)

The Steep Approach to Garbadale, the almost-new book by Iain Banks, is like a comfy old pair of trainers, an effortlessly easy, lively, funny read for the train up to Blackpool. I’m somewhat relieved by this having read some mixed reviews – especially one in Private Eye which seemed to think this effortlessness not only easy but contemptible.

Alban McGill doesn’t want to be found by his family. But cousin Fielding tracks him down because he needs his help at their gran’s 80th birthday. The family’s made its fortune from a board game called Empire!, and the gathering will see a vote on whether or not to sell the game and family name to an American corporation…

The inside flap of the book calls this Banks’s “most compelling novel since The Crow Road” – as if that’s his Scary Monsters, and as if he’s not since produced anything good. It certainly has a lot of similarities to The Crow Road, as the black sheep of a large and eccentric Scottish family falls for the wrong, posh girl, delves into the family history and unearths a terrible secret. Structurally, this new book is perhaps a little stronger – I always felt The Crow Road’s murder mystery was a bit tacked on.

Yet I also spotted the main twist of this one well before halfway, and so found the ending a little anti-climactic. But importantly, like The Crow Road (and the Banks-thieving Dr Who and the Also People), the plot as such is more a distraction from the book’s real brilliance – exploring people’s lives as they meet up, have drinks, fall in love… It’s often at its best, and funniest and most insightful, when you don’t feel anything important is going on. Fielding trying to impress his elderly aunties with PowerPoint, or a night out on too many drugs. VG struggles to explain the philosophy of numbers.

There’s also lots of things that reminded me of other books by Banks. Games are models of morals and society as in Complicity and The Player of Games. Tango’s bad grammar as he narrates parts of the story are a bit like Bascule in Feersum Enjinn. Alban and cousin Haydn in Paris made me think of The State of the Art, while the suicide made me think of Look to Windward. This is not a criticism, rather an acknowledgment that Banks returns to certain themes; it wouldn’t be a criticism of John le Carre to say his new book’s about spies and big money.

Another Banks trait is the effort to get the zeitgeist. There’s mention of Live Aid, 9/11, Iraq and the Boxing Day Tsunami, and a sense of how these things – some experienced first hand, some experienced as news on the telly – affect and change people’s lives. It’s a way of blending the personal experiences of the characters with the broader experiences of the reader, making the characters more real and convincing.

This sort of thing’s at its best when it also shows us something about the characters. Alban split up with a girl over his (initial) support for the Iraq war. But too often there are glib bits of politics that come not from the mouths of the characters but feel like the author ranting.

"The USA, perhaps not surprisingly, proved reluctant to accept Empire!; sales were miserable. Henry tried a version of the game based on a map consisting only of the contiguous states of the US, but that did little better. Finally he bought up a small printing firm in Pittsburgh so that the box and board could each bear the legend Made in the USA, altered the map of the world on which Empire! was based so that the USA was centred – the boundaries of the board cutting through the heart of Asia – renamed the game Liberty!, changed nothing else and watched the dollars roll in."

Iain Banks, The Steep Approach to Garbadale, p. 130.

This is just one example; there’s also a history of the 20th century given in the names of different permutations of the game, and a thing about how being right-wing is a sign of a lack of imagination. This is a shame because it detracts from the richness of detail and character that makes the book so engaging.

In fact, some of Banks’s best work is where he tells a story from a point of view he doesn’t agree with. The utopian Culture of his sci-fi is often seen through the eyes of those it has not won over and – as I argued in my academic paper nearly a decade ago – most of the Culture stories contrast the Culture with other societies, showing aspects that are both better and worse. Complicity, likewise, has a main character who we empathise with yet never like.

This hectoring aside, there’s some great insights throughout the book. I especially liked the line about readers of science fiction not being taken in by sweeping statements like “the end of history”. It’s extremely good at evoking the embarrassment and thrill of first love and naughties, and the pressures and delights of a sprawling great family. For all it is funny and lively, it’s also quite a melancholic book, the potential sale of the family business a symbol of everything else that’s been lost.

I’d been nervous about the book based on other people’s reactions, but The Steep Approach to Garbadale was simply a pleasure to read. And now I am hopping with excitement about the forthcoming Matter.

"Had he said the right thing [...]? He'd tried to say what he felt, what he believed. He'd probably been too political, too self-indulgent, but when else was he going to get a chance to say stuff like that to an audience willing to listen?"

Ibid., p. 357.

Deliverance

So the badger-pirates have been delivered. I've heard the SFX mix of The Final Amendment and the pre-title sequence for The Wake, and yesterday unearthed a secret cachet of photos from early Benny recording sessions. Also been going through my logs for sketches and roughs and all sorts of oddments, so the Inside Story will have plenty of previously unseen stuff. And there is proofing of that and Missing Adventures, and something eventful in the works...

But damn knackered. Am away this weekend to the north. Can't remember when I last had two whole consecutive days off. Am planning on reading the not-quite-new Iain Banks. And catching up on sleep.

And then, and then... Well, there's some on-spec stuff I have been meaning to do forever. And How The Doctor Changed My Life to edit, in time for... er, sort of June 2008. Which means I might have time to blog again shortly. Sorry. But you must have know it couldn't last...

Expletive deleted

Long story short: buy product.

The Big Finish website now boasts the exciting cover artwork for Bernice Summerfield Jason Kane audio "The End of the World". It's meant to be out this month, but a vital member of the cast was only available right at the last minute, so it went to press this week. Due back early part of September.

Of course I'm going to think so, but golly it's worth waiting for.

Listened to the final version myself only last night, and am a bit dead chuffed. Dave Stone's script delivers exactly what I asked for - a definitive Jason Kane, the character first seen in the 1996 novel Death and Diplomacy and variously used and abused ever since. This one sees Jason grappling with both his past and future, and even though I'd read the script and been at the recording, it didn't half give me goosebumps.

Kudos to all the talented folks who made it happen: Lisa Bowerman directing, Stephen Fewell starring alongside an exemplary cast, and Matthew Cochrane making some really rather fabby music. I've just transferred the bonus Track 18 on to my bulging iTunes.

But it was weird to hear the story segue into trailers for the next two plays - The Final Amendment and The Wake. Because after that, for the first time in 15 plays, I'm not going to have been involved in What Benny Did Next...

Individuals and their families

The thing about reading and writing for a living is that it eats into reading for pleasure. At one time it was unthinkable to still be reading the same book two days in a row. I first read Excession with unheard of extravagance – and took almost a week.

Now the things that don’t have to be read or edited or proofed get carried around in my satchel for getting on for months. I’ve found niches for pleasurable reading, too, where work can be forgot. So I’ve got Tarzan in our bathroom and Bloody Foreigners for the train.

The latter is a quite incredible history of immigration to Britain, and is very recommended. Since people first stumbled upon this woody, rainy island they have fought with them that followed. Some groups have been more fought off than others, but as a general rule it’s the same depressing story as you get from the Princelet Street Museum; each generation of immigrants persecuted by the kids of the last lot.

Robert Winder’s story is engaging and full of facts and telling details. Often he follows the stories of specific individuals and their families, their struggles to do better and to provide for a future. But I think his real strength is in tying together so many different groups and details into a history we already know.

It doesn’t come as news, for example, that the UK has always been a mongrel nation. The first recorded black people in the UK were Roman soldiers, here to quell the savage natives.

Another one we should all know is that migration works two ways. Emigration not only balances out the numbers, but affects what it means to assimilate. British ex-pats in their second homes in Spain expect the food and booze and language just like it is at home.

Nor is it radical to note the positive effects of immigration: cheap labour in the first instance, but cultural and economic boons that have lasted centuries. Winder explains the beginnings of the vindaloo and Marks and Spencer, Bombay Mix and music. And this all adds weight to his argument that those prepared to give up their homes and go live somewhere else often have very pressing reasons to do so; that those with the get up and go to start up somewhere foreign are exactly the kind of ambitious lot we want. It occurred to me that Norman Tebbitt’s famous reply to the Brixton riots is a call for economic migration.

“I grew up in the 1930s with an unemployed father. He did not riot. He got on his bike and looked for work, and he went on looking until he found it.”

Norman Tebbit

Despite the many and varied successes, Bloody Foreigners is no comfort read. It’s rather a history of national stupidity and meanness. The horrific increase in violence and intolerance in the last hundred years is particularly disturbing. Events from the 70s and 80s are particularly appalling, with institutional racism effectively condoning the violence of the National Front. It is little solace that our record was better than much of Europe.

A few times I’ve tutted at generalisations. For all he critiques the “establishment” tarring a whole race with the behaviour of a few individuals, Winder does use his specific examples to make sweeping statements about large groups. I'm not sure how else you could tell a history like this, but there have been times when I felt him guilty of the same "them" and "us" mentality he otherwise pulls apart.

There’s also a couple of not-quite-right bits. He describes the Vikings as “the horn-helmeted tribe from across the Baltic” on p. 26. As well as the relativism of seeing the Vikings as barbaric pillagers, they also never wore horns.

But these are minor quibbles with an extremely engaging, insightful book. Winder draws few conclusions himself, rather letting the story tell itself. But there’s an implicit liberal agenda of compassion and tolerance, perhaps best put when he explains the word “xenophobia”:

“The word is mostly defined as a nationalistic hatred of anything foreign, but at its root is the Greek word xenos, meaning ‘guest’. So xenophobia is, literally, a fear of guests. This does indeed seem a distinctive national terror. Guests might eat all the food! They might outstay their welcome! For a people whose bungalows were their castles, the thought of unexpected visitors, the inconvenience of having to lay an extra place at supper, was enough to make anyone turn pale.”

Robert Winder, Bloody Foreigners, pp. 326-7.

The aqueduct?

Because of the showbiz, may-fly lives we lead, the Dr and I rarely follow TV shows as they’re going out. We didn’t watch all of Droo live, for example, and sometimes were not even in the same country. There are come colleagues who think this behaviour desperately, dangerously wrong.

So, while the second series of Rome comes to an end on the telly, we have just got to the end of the first lot on DVD. And find ourselves bothered that we’ve got a whole three weeks before we can see the next bit.

The Roman republic is falling on its arse, because of soldier called Julius Caesar. He insists he’s only being a tyrant to get Rome back on its feet. At the same time as all the politics, we follow two lowly Roman soldiers, Titus Pollo and Lucius Vorenus, as they struggle with everyday life.

I’d watched the first episode and bits of some more when it was on the telly, but it had failed to win me over. The writing seemed all gruff and joyless, the attention on the look of the thing. Sudden and shocking naked bits and violence were less titillating as excluding. And I was probably working at the time, and not paying due attention to the story.

Some learned colleagues explain that the first telly episodes had been edited - the BBC favouring less talky explaining in favour of more stabbing and bums. And I also think it’s a series you need to stick with to get into.

This is also true of I, Claudius, the BBC’s series from the 1970s which we watched some time ago. With that, I felt it didn’t really get going until Master No. Five Derek Jakobi was appearing in the flashbacks as well (the first episode or two just set the scene, and Claudius appears as a nipper). Once he’s commenting on stuff we watch him do himself, critiquing and juxtaposing the story, it all becomes much more absorbing.

I, Claudius also had a lot of sudden, shocking violence and nude bits – though a telly generation more tame. And it also worked hard to get through all the big history while also keeping in all the gossip. The Dr provided commentary on both that and Rome, explaining the various sources. I found I came to Rome with a bit more knowledge of my own, too, having studied both Asterix and Shakespeare.

I noticed that the Gaulish leader Vercingeterox looks less like he does in the comic and much more like the mulletted Dying Gaul (the statue that’s the spitting image of nineteenth century classicist Adolf Furtwangler). And I’m sure that Caesar is meant to have been bald.

The Dr was horrified by the look of Egypt, which would have Edward Said spinning in his sarcophagus. She liked the way that rumours were started – for example why there are accounts Julius did it with Augustus. We also marvelled at the scale and excitement, and the clever way it mixed the epic story of the city and empire with everyday people’s lives.

Still think it could have been funnier, though. And some of the dialogue clanked.

Also, I can’t quite reconcile myself to the fact that Max Pirkis is playing the young Brian Blessed.

Three books at once

I have been busy with badger-faced pirates and so not mucking around here. It also doesn't help that my computer is acting up.

Sometimes it doesn't start up properly, and you just get a waiting blue screen. Sometimes it does start up, and then the keyboard doesn't work. Sometimes it starts up, the keyboard works, and then the Internet doesn't do anything. Oh it connects, and it says it is doing something, but then nothing webwise loads up. Lost three and a half hours to that today, though I got some pirates written on a laptop. Arg.

Nimbos suggests it might be something to do with USB ports, since the keyboard and Internet both come in from them. So I have something to investigate the next time it falls over. Joy oh joy oh joy.

"Or could it be," I suggested, daring to imply that I have any idea, "that I'm still running Windows Millennium Edition?"

Nimbos considered carefully before explaining that I live in the Dark Ages. Have not let on that my keyboard comes with rubber keys.

Otherwise things progress. Spent an hour at Deej's taking pictures of his books and rummaging through his magazines. This will greatly help Alex as he zips along in finishing the Inside Story of Benny.

Speaking of which, I had a fun leaving do on Sunday to mark the end of my regime (though I've still two books and two audios to deliver, as well as the ones being pressed and published now). Somehow, completely accidentally, I managed to drink some beer.

Well, not exactly "some". Text message to the Dr from 01.22 says:

"I love you. Sorry. But you are quite good. Phwoar."

Ho hum.

But she is quite good, and today has word that her book is going to be published. More news on that as and when it is appropriate, but we have reason for opening fizz. Just think, both of us will now be tearing out hair out and swearing, rather than just me.

My brain hurt like a warehouse

It is five years today since I left full-time employment to leap aboard the kayak of freelancing. The me then, with his hair and cappucine and basement flat in Greenwich, wasn’t entirely sure it would all work out. And the hair and basement flat really didn’t. But the kayak is still going and things are, you know, quite good.

Blimey.

The Dr, who has been successfully kayaking for a year herself, and I are celebrating tonight with fish and chips and fizz. And then booking hols to LA and Australia.

Received my copies of Snapshots this morning, which includes my story "There’s Something About Mary". It owes something to an idea I had for a Doctor Who novel, which I sent the BBC a few months short of five years ago. But it owes something more to The Iron Giant. And the pop video Mary watches, that’s Gail Ann Dorsey in Bowie’s Dead Man Walking.

I’ve also received a copy of Malcolm Hulke’s Writing for Television, having been prompted by m’colleague Peter on my post about Harry Potter 7.

“If it’s a kids’ show, and the story includes a ship sinking at sea, save the ship’s cat.”

Malcolm Hulke, Writing for Television (1982 edition), p. 243.

Like free admission to a library

M kindly plus-oned me into a screening of The Bourne Ultimatum yesterday morning – on the basis that he’d not seen the first two Bourne outings and I might help with any questions. I was a bit giddy with excitement as we arrived in Leicester Square. The following contains some minor spoilers, but won’t give the game away. But no, Ian, there weren’t any lions.

The film picks up immediately from the end of The Bourne Supremacy with ex-assassin-on-the-run Jason wounded and in Moscow, having just fessed up to a girl. The police are after him, he’s in bad shape and it’s all a bit exciting. The fast-cutting, low-fi, hand-held look is just as from before, as is the fantastic music.

For newbies like M, there are flashbacks early on to what has gone before and a CIA board meeting where people explain the plots of the last two films to gnarly boss Scott Glenn. His, “You couldn’t make this stuff up,” is a bit awkward and knowing, but any newcomers are quickly up to speed.

The hook for this one is that the Guardian have got hold of the story. Yes, really. There’s exciting scenes of the Guardian offices as they fight they good fight against conspiracies. M, what knows those offices himself, found this especially funny.

Soon Jason is chasing the story himself, racing to collect clues about what he used to be a part of, while baddies try to eliminate the evidence. We dash quickly all across Europe: Turin, London, Paris, Madrid, the CIA merrily ignoring local laws and civil liberties as they struggle to keep hold of their secrets.

It’s as brutal and fast-paced and thrilling and smart as its predecessors, with Matt Damon using his brains as much as he uses martial arts, one man against hopeless odds. There’s some fun gags as he calls the police on his pursuers or turns up where they’re not looking. I am struggling not to say more, but note how it’s the women who help him and act as his conscience and the boys who use too much brute force.

So if you like the last two, you’ll be very happy. What’s more, the film has enough similar shots and situations to make it feel like this isn’t just another add-on to the franchise but part of a cohesive whole. That’s most obvious in the final scenes: the last lines from Bourne and then what happens next.

M not seen any of the previous two (I leant him them on DVD) and loved it too, though in the drizzle outside after he felt unconvinced by it as satire. I suggested, though, that this “it’s not the institution that’s at fault but some rogue elements within it” is no different from James Bond. I suppose there’s an argument to be made that this genre is all adventures with extremists.

Speaking of Bond, there’d been some speak last year that Casino Royale owed a great deal to Jason Bourne (though I’ve argued that it owes more to 24). So how would Bourne respond: would it break its winning formula in trying to up its game? No, it offers more of the same, only faster and more intense and with some bigger set-ups. (I also thought the rooftop chase in Tangiers reminiscent of The Living Daylights, though M. thought of the political Battle of Tangiers).

There are a small number of tiny niggles, too. Where does Bourne get his money from? How does he break into what should be such secure places? The film works hard to give Julia Styles a reason to be there, but it’s still a huge coincidence that she happens to end up in Bourne’s way again. Especially given what we learn about her past: yes, she might have reasons to be there, but that’s why her bosses would ensure she couldn’t be.

There’s also the customary British actor playing the villainous big cheese. At first I thought the bloke glimpsed in the flashbacks was an excuse to bring back Brian Cox, and wonder if Albert Finney got cast entirely for that reason.

Filmed at Pinewood, the film makes use of London’s own American actors – Von Statten and the US President from Doctor Who are in it, though I felt cheated there was no Mac McDonald. (Only this weekend M and I devised a game for watching Secret Army, where it’s one point for naming an actor, two for naming another role they’ve had, and five for who they played in some form of Doctor Who).

But anyway. I was buzzing all day after seeing it and am already booking to go again.

Why I can't walk on water

To the horror of politely brought-up ladies everywhere, I have been wearing shorts. Rest assured, they are long enough to hide my especially knobbly knees. Yet great heavens! It might be a few months late but it looks like it might be the summer.

Summer means lots of different things: the smell of cut grass is the most potent one for me, a sure sign we’d soon be allowed on to the field at break times, back in primary school. These days it more often means people asking if I’m enjoying the sunshine when they know I’ve spent all day working on a thing.

Today, incidentally, has seen 5,000 good words and so can be considered a success.

Also, summer means blisters from the not-quite flip-flops that I bought in the States on my honeymoon. The Dr had long been aghast at my being content to wear shorts with shoes and socks, and plotted with my newest auntie in Livonia to find me something else. So you know it’s the start of summer ‘cos my plates look like I’ve been crucified.

“Hah!” I said to the Dr yesterday when showing off my weeping stigmata. But she was not to be convinced that this is another example of the all-evil wrongitude of shoes. No, it is an excuse to buy more of them.

She speaks in whisper of Birkenstock.

Proof positive

A nice chap called Brax interviewed me this morning for the autumn edition of his finely named freezine, Shooty Dog Thing. M'colleagues have already been interviewed in the issues currently and freely available. I've seen the cover for the next one, and it is delicious.

Have agreed a final version of Missing Adventures, and just need to make the necessary changes and then it can go to lay-out. Also dared to wear shorts when going down to the production office to collect the first lay-outs of the Inside Benny Story. Alex Mallinson has done wonders. There's still plenty to do, but it looks marvellous, in all its 288-page stonking glory.

As well as gazing with lust at these first-proof pages, I have been quite busy. Have spoken to my mum and tried to call Italy, have been to Homebase and to the bank, have played a bit of Scrabulous on Facebook and done the washing up. And I went to the gym.

Also worked away on The Pirate Loop doing valid work. Yet, despite all I've written, it seems to have fewer words than it did this time yesterday. No, I don't understand either.

Blog of a nobody

I am surely too old for acne. But I seem to have caught a blinder recently, and one prominent on the bulb of my nose. The Dr has been morbidly fascinated by this and keeps peering at me up close. This, after three years of wedded ennui, is something quite out of character.

The spot has been cleaned and burst and cleaned again, but is now a livid red “o” of raw skin. And itchy.

“Maybe it’s not a spot at all,” suggested a colleague. “Maybe it’s cancer. Or small pox.”

Disquieted by this suggestion, I spent my lunch hour in the queue at the Post Office. The teacher in front of me fretted about whether she’d properly filled in her passport form.

“I’ve been teaching people how to fill in the same forms for years,” she told me. “But I never looked at the questions before.”

Eventually got to weigh my letters with Cashier #10. Excitingly, my change included a brightly shiny 5p piece, the first 2007 coin I’ve seen.

Am off to the Portrait Gallery’s posh upstairs bar tonight for a colleague’s leaving do. Our gift was getting a portrait of him hung in the pub where we lunch.

Otherwise the scrawling continues. Done lots, and am reasonably happy with it. And there are several very exciting things maybe in the offing. But I cannot speak of them any more than vaguely, hence the pooterish post.

Prevention of cruelty to monsters

There are monsters down my road. No, really.

Well, strictly speaking, there are monsters down my road, over the railway bridge, right, left, right again, left again and then sort of diagonally left round the artificial lake. But, for monsters, that’s pretty close. And I do go to visit them often.

Until five years ago, the monsters looked a bit shabby and uncared for, but a recent programme of repair has done them some good, and repaired the exposed strata of rocks that helped explain them in context. Excitingly, as of two days ago, they are now monsters with Grade 1 listing.

(I started writing this post two days ago, but things keep getting in the way.)

Anyway, this is a good thing.

The monsters are made of brick and concrete – the Victorian equivalent of CGI. They are fat and cumbersome and the iguanodon is wearing his thumb on his nose. They’re not dinosaurs, because we know better now about what dinosaurs looked like: Victorian palaeontologists only had scant evidence to guess from, and we’ve got a bit more to go on now.

The information boards nearby helpfully explain the differences between what Richard Owen – who supervised the monsters’ construction, coined the word “dinosaur” and wasn’t terribly lovely – thought and what palaeontologists now think today. Dinosaurs were really quick and slender, and in fact they didn’t die out. Instead their descendents are those feathered things cluttering up the sky.

(I have this vision of an avian Quatermass and the Pit, with an owlish Andre Morell explaining to the masses that in fact, “We are the dinosaurs.”)

The monsters are then a folly, a bold statement of ultimately not-quite-right thought. Cumbersome and somewhat cuddly, you could clearly out-walk them. I find them especially endearing because of that. And I’m glad the powers that are have come to agree.

Beacuse they ahhhhr!

The BBC's official Doctor Who website has announced details of three thrilling new Doctor Who novels, due to be published on 27 December. One of 'em is by me.

Doctor Who and the Pirate Loop
by Simon Guerrier

The Doctor's been everywhere and everywhen in the whole of the universe and seems to know all the answers. But ask him what happened to the Starship Brilliant and he hasn't the first idea. Did it fall into a sun or black hole? Was it shot down in the first moments of the galactic war? And what's this about a secret experimental drive?

The Doctor is skittish. But if Martha is so keen to find out he'll land the TARDIS on the Brilliant, a few days before it vanishes. Then they can see for themselves...

Soon the Doctor learns the awful truth. And Martha learns that you need to be careful what you wish for. She certainly wasn't hoping for mayhem, death, and badger-faced space pirates.

You can pre-order the book from Amazon. And really, also, you should.

Swiss Army flip flops

I had rather woefully underestimated how much work might be involved in the Benny Inside Story bibliography. Thought it would take me a morning and it's taken all weekend (and there's still a couple of details to check).

Still, that and sourcing pull-quotes and quotations to start each chapter means I've read the book over for the first time in just more than a month. And I'm pretty happy with it. Just as well, as it's well into lay-out and there's no time to change too much.

As reward for all that endeavour yestereve, I gadded across Stockwell to R. and C.'s housecooling. Stood out on their roof terrance drinking much Pimms and generally learning cool stuff. R's colleague Jo showed off some particularly good flip-flops, which have a bottle-opener embedded in the sole. Truly, we live in the future.

Taxi home at some point late, where me and the Dr bickered - to the great amusement of the driver. Despite eating bellinis and wild boar sausages on sticks all night, was rather in need of food. So did bacon and cheese and mushroom crumpets.

Woo

I have some depressingly clever friends.

Spent yesterday morning fighting badger-faced pirates and the afternoon laying out Benny. Mr Alex also showed me his rather exciting Dalek movie and film of him stinging spikes up his nose (which he has also shown Sylvester McCoy, he said proudly). I have got him talking to Nimbos and Codename Moose. Shall see if we can't Think Up A Project.

Then ambled smokewards for the customary pub. On the way, I spotted Clemmo's new book looking big in a bookshop window. It's the Oxfam halfway between the British Museum and Forbidden Planet (as is Clemmo's writing, arf).

Managed not to see the person I'd gone to the pub to see (oops), but met some old chums and some new. There's even the glimmer of a hint of a vague possibility of some work off one of the latter.

We’ve regenerated!

M’colleague Mr Ainsworth has just made live the new-look Big Finish website. It is brighter, spanglier and some acres more dashing than previously, and includes updates on things of mine.

There’s the cover for this month’s Benny novella collection, Nobody’s Children –which went off to press today. You can also download the six-page contents list for the Inside Story of Benny (PDF 64kb) – off to a lay-out meeting tomorrow on that one. The new home page sports Mr X-Bam’s fine Flash banner of all Big Finish things new, and includes a sneak preview of the cover to this month’s Bernice Summerfield Jason Kane play, The End of the World.

More on that one next week.