Music to wash hands by

Nimbos, the Dr and I went to Westminster Abbey last night. Sat on uncomfortable chairs in front of a memorial to MARTHA to hear St John’s Passion sung, along with several hundred other people.

The singing was good and the acoustics authentic, though I thought it lacked the polish of some other versions I’ve been to. Think I prefer the Matthew one anyway, which is more widescreen and special effects. The John one seems less epic, and more matter of fact about (SPOILER!) the death of God.

But fun, and good for people watching. There was a lot of milling about immediately before, and also during the interval-that-wasn’t. Nimbos felt it might help to shout “Runaround!” – a reference the Dr didn’t get.

One gaggle of ladies felt they had paltry seats so decided to move them. They then did their best to ignore the badged gentleman explaining they’d blocked up a fire exit.

Afterwards the Doctor led us down a gale-force Whitehall to a new good pub discovery. But it had stopped serving food an hour previously, so we schlepped into the place next door and ate gratefully their microwaved fodder.

Point of view

O. writes from the Continent:

“Do you know I always read your blog... and get quite annoyed when there isn't an update for a few days.”

Which inspired me to spend lunch wandering round Manet to Picasso, which is free and until 23 May. I’ve gone on about what follows before (sorry), but it does have the distinction of being almost not-at-all Droo.

I got to know O. when we were doing A levels together, and especially due to one summer’s homework. We had to go to famous galleries dotted all over London, sketch a set list of Worthy Old Paintings and forego all our pocket money for postcards. O. was a good companion for that sort of thing because he has quite different ideas about pictures. We spent many afternoons idling in pubs shouting, “No, you big fool!” back and forth.

The impressionists were my pin-ups. No, I don’t mean J. Culshaw and company – which included D. Tennant on Friday and writing my two of my Droo chums. Heck, wasn’t going to do that…

The late 1800s were rather exciting artistically, with all sorts of clever ideas. These included lightbulbs and photographs and refined chemical processing. And these things had an affect on the hapless, cravat-wearing creatives who flounced around drawing from nature.

Until these inventions came along and spoiled things, an artist’s talent was easy to quantify. The trick was to make what you had drawn look like the thing you were drawing. Even now, there are learned scraps over painted portraiture hinging not on who is the sitter but whether it’s at all a good likeness.

But photography came along and with a point and click reality was caught in an instant (well, it took a bit of time when they first got invented, but not anything like as long as a painting).

Photos also showed up the falseness of the way paintings presented their subjects. Paintings composed the elements of the picture, framing them the most pleasing way. A photo captured the raw immediacy – blurs, blinks and ignoble posture. It could brutally crop parts of the scene, creating a new and dramatic, if troubling, composition. And once snapped, there was little way to correct it. At least canvas could be painted over.

Photos were still in black-and-white, so these painters tended to glory in colour. The brilliant sky-blues and vivid pinks were another technical innovation – colour that’s still stunning a century later. The artists experimented with “complimentary colours”; clashes of blue and orange, red and green, purple and yellow, that made their work more vibrant.

At the same time, electric light transformed painting. It wasn’t just that they could work later in the day, and on less bright and airy subjects. The lightbulb made evident many of Newton’s observations about the spectrum, and without needing to shove sticks in your eye sockets. It made the artists see reality in ways they’d never seen before.

While the impressionists were daring to show optical mixing and coloured shadows, and Seurat contrived scenes out of blobs of coloured light, the hapless, much-moustached physicists just over the border were thinking maybe light travelled in blobs.

Impressionism was then excitingly brash and modern, on the nose of the latest developments. And its proponents got into trouble with the establishment – who still wanted pictures that looked just like the subject.

Scruffy old Claude Monet, who is a bit cool, dared to suggest that my throwing some paint around a canvas at slapdash speed you could still create the feeling of the subject. Not like a photograph in all its detail, perhaps, but something with more of an emotional flavour.

So even before you get to all the politics that the paintings might also reflect, there’s something a bit brilliant to see in all those pictures of the same haystack or cathedral. By painting the same subject over and over, Claude was breaking all sorts of rules, the old punk.

It was on one of these daytrips with O. that I discovered a real dazzler of a painting:


Again, Claude painted lots of huge water lilies – the canvases almost as big as his tiny Japanese garden in a fashionable Parisian suburb. But this one is my favourite, being more yellow than green-purple and with more of the canvas left bare.

It's big: 2 metres tall but 4¼ metres widthways. You need to stand at the far end of the room to appreciate what you’re seeing – up close it’s a mess of unconnected marks and squiggles.

And so (because I’d seen Droo defuse a bomb in Earthshock part two) a question formed in my brain: how the heck did Monet even paint it?

He could have only ever been an arms length away from the canvas. And if that wasn’t boggling enough for you, Claude was also fairly blind when he painted it.

"I've lit the blue touch paper..."

Received in the post from the father-in-law some clippings from the Blackpool Gazette. Front-page news on Friday was that Dr Who will be turning them on.

The web version doesn't show what the clipping does: Tom Baker doing the deed back in '75, all grinning teeth and curls.

I'm especially pleased that Tennant's appearance seems to have been organised by,

"Jackie Potter, Blackpool Council's strategic director of tourism and regeneration."

Have they also booked Michael Sheen?

Small world...

Spent the afternoon being harried round my parents’ garden by two young and tireless nephews. Some attempt was made at teaching them piggy-in-the-middle, and though they enjoyed the chasing they were disappointed that it might involve rules.

The thuggish four year-old was making an impassioned stand against the sectarian – he had on a Superman costume, yet with a pair of Spider-Man socks. And at one point he stopped in the midst of a tackle to share his latest epiphany:

“Uncle Simon, do you know about Doctor Who?”

It seems he was, for the first time ever, allowed to stay up last night. He liked the Things but not the Lady, and shared the absurd miracle that there’ll be EVEN MORE next week – at least, so long as he is good.

(His elder brother had the same response after his first taste of school dinners. He would ask, with great care and when nobody else was listening, whether you knew of such a thing as apple crumble.)

My mum was also impressed with the episode – but she has a weird thing for Roy Marsden anyway, and consultants with good bedside manner.

(Oh, and the title of this post is Sir Sean Connery’s response to an unexpected “I gotta brudda.”)

Return of the Old Adventures

On the flight back from LA a bit more than a month ago, m'colleague Mr Anghelides spoke of lost history. He could not recall, for example, the last time he'd changed a nappy. There was just a time when he wasn't changing nappies any more, but that moment passed unremarked.

Got not-quite through the first of four folders of old fanzino-periodicals today, frantically scribbling the morsels of fact that relate to the development of Benny. It's been fun to see who DWB's nemesis is each week (John Nathan-Turner; no, the executive of the Droo Appreciation Society; no, the editors of Droo's own magazine; no, the folk at BBC Video; no, anyone who dares to write in; actually, let's just go to war with EVERYONE...)

But there's also all the bits of Droo history that kind of passed me by.

"Sylvester McCoy is no longer Doctor Who, that's official. Doctor Who licencees have been instructed by BBC Enterprises to refer to him Sylvester McCoy as the 'former Doctor Who'. The Radio Times itself set the trend in its billing of Sylvester for the Children's Royal variety Performance in May."

David Gibbs (ed.), 'The former Doctor Who'
(news story) in DWB #103, August 1992.

As well as the reviews and letters pages which take Benny's adventures to task, I have also dipped into some of her Old Adventures, to get something correct in "The Wake". And too my great excitement, if nobody elses, I have this afternoon typed the direction:

SCENE 4. INT. CHURCH HALL, CHELDON BONIFACE

Nice work

“Sunday, December 31st [1978] …I listen to the car radio and hear tales of horror from all over the UK. Edinburgh is almost cut off from the rest of Scotland (a fact which the weather only confirms!)”

Michael Palin, Diaries 1969-1979 – The Python Years, p. 519.

Yes, I have been busy. The Dr bought me this for Valentine’s Day (naw) and to read on the plane out to Gallifrey. Which I did, and got something like halfway though. And then mutchwurk stopped me getting much further.

More than a month later, with bits snatched on trains and in toilets, the end is almost in sight. It’s a great brick of a book, with perhaps too much on the weather and what the author was eating, so perhaps this is the best way to read it.

The diaries cover the period from the first filming on Flying Circus to the furore that met Life of Brian. Palin’s a sharp-eyed observer, and even the briefest entries contain telling detail.

In large part, it documents the progress of his work – the late nights, the famous people, the many meetings and compromises, the flights on Concorde that are not half as glamorous as might have been hoped for. With my own current schedule it’s been good to see someone else barely outrunning the snowball. And it’s weird to think of Palin, that funny old man off the telly, being my age when he wrote all this stuff.

But it’s not just the hard graft of the writer that’s of interest. It’s a fun and engaging historical document. As well as definitively telling us what day Brian was first thought of, he notes the world as it changes around him:

“Pre-lunch cocktails with the two neighbours and their three daughters, who bring with them a game called Twister, which involves participants in a grapple on the floor and, in the immortal words of Eric’s joke salesman, ‘Breaks the ice at parties’.”

Ibid.

Palin is, as his later travel documentaries have shown, a sharp and witty commentator, and his remarks on politics and life in Hampstead are often warm as well as comedic. But there’s also more insight into his own life and feelings than I think we’ve ever been prey to. There’s the slow decline of his dad and a fair amount on his poor teeth.

I’ve seen some reviews mutter that it’s not more salacious, that Palin is too nice about everyone. Yes, that’s apparently a bad thing.

Anyway, he can be quite tetchy and is especially impatient with anyone who makes life more difficult. That reminded me of the last of his 80 days round-worlding, when his temper is beginning to fray.

(On this very point, he told Saga Magazine how he can “fly off the handle ... Usually at the most stupid things.”)

But it’s to Palin’s credit that he was seen as a mediator by the Pythons and others he worked with. It’s because he was the one that everyone talked to that his history is so comprehensive.

I shall tell you this

Codename Moose turned up at half eight yesterday, when I had hardly begun making my toilet. Mrs Codename Moose had turfed him out into the street, and were it not for our agreement to get a smidgen of script written, he’d probably have been playing in traffic.

Work proceeded pretty well, fleshing out notes I’d made into three separate sections, with some chipping in and chivvying of additional bad jokes and ever improved ideas. By one, we’d completed something we’re both quite happy with, and felt able to take my second wife, M., out with us for lunch.

Basked in the sunshine and ate a breakfast so mammoth they’d named it after me. (Or at least after my parents’ nickname.)

The trendy elements of Penge straddled by, not all quite complicit in pretending it was summer and that the high street was all continental. The keen waiter seemed most impressed with M. and ignored anything said by me and Codename Moose. M., of course, remained entirely oblivious to this, bless her.

Back home, and while M. and Codename Moose enjoyed Casino Royale I got up to 8,700 words on The Wake. Still have to write up some pre-titles set-up and four key scenes from near the end, but might even have a draft by the weekend. Hooray!

By the time the Dr had gymmed and shared gossip, M. had cooked us a feast. We watched some old telly, and I pointed out the actors from Droo. The Moonstone featured Peter Jeffrey, who was much more lenient this time.

Rab C Nesbitt’s Seasonal Greet included Garron and Commander Uvanov. This, the first full-length outing for Rab back in 1988 (years before we met his Dr Who brother (PDF 80kb)), sees him gobby and Scottish with sticky-up hair, and wearing pin-stripe and trainers…

Can't think who that reminds me of.

Some announcements

Hasn't it been ages? I am up to my handsome eyeballs in various books and scripts, and this 'ere blog wossname has been out-prioritised.

"The Two Jasons" proceeds apace, with the latest draft just in from Dave Stone. It's possibly the most personal thing Dave's ever written, and yet still crammed full of the daftest possible jokes.

I have also recently interviewed Dave, along with Matt Jones, Daniel O'Mahony, Neil Penswick, Gary Russell, Simon Winstone and a bundle of other people about their part in the development of Benny, and the "Inside Story" is coming together pretty well. May even have a cover to show off soon.

The Big Finish website now has details of "Snapshots", including Stuart Manning's rather marvellous cover. My contribution is called "There's Something About Mary", and may be the first ever Dr Who story set in Preston.

Also crawling through the never-ending heap of short story competition entries. Not to be spoken of until we reach the end, though.

A few other fun things can't be spoken of either, hence the mad glint in mine eye. And according to Alex, I'm one of his five thinking bloggers. How badly he is deluded.

¿Cuál es la palabra para "el tejón"?

Back from a much-needed break to Malaga to see A. and J. (we went to their wedding last year). Apart from a quick mooch round the Picasso Birthplace Museum, it was uncharacteristically lacking in being good for me. Yes, even the Dr wanted a holiday. Instead we wandered to nice eateries, ate lots of fresh fish and sampled bars that don't get going before midnight.

In one trendy place that served very good mojitos, J. pointed out the flag hanging above the bar. The Spanish flag is three horizontal bars: red, then yellow, then red again, the yellow band twice as thick as the red ones.

In the dim and disco lighting, it took a moment to realise what was different: this one went red, then yellow, then purple.

This republican flag from the 1930s, J. explained, was banned in Spain under Franco, and even now it's a bit of a shocker. He spoke of the frission of seeing it hanging from the arm of the Philip IV statue in Madrid, in the midst of a political protest.

The nearest I could liken that was to Winston's turf mohican.

(The Internet also tells me of the irony of the purple band: it's not purple, but royal Castilian purpure.)

J.'s own republic sensibilities would be stronger but his king is helluva tough. Our Charles III did something similar, I said, in the first issue of 2000AD.

As well as the politics, we discussed how Bowie's lyrics translate and pretty much everything under the sun. My best effort to explain a reference to badgers was "a sort of mash-up of a boar and a tiger".

No time like the present

I have been to a stag do and to a funeral, and been off to do interviews in between. Also pitching for something and been asked to do something else, and still battering away at the History of Benny and that there short story competition.

One project looks close to completion. One.

I shall look back on this period eventually and laugh.

Not because they are easy

The rather grainy image right is from a few hours after last night’s eclipse. We sat in the Dolphin and peered out the window as the moon turned eerily red. Nimbos nimbly explained why it does that, using empty pint glasses as props. This is the best of my pictures. Oh well.

In timely fashion, I’ve got three episodes into the lavish Tom-Hanks funded dramatisation of the Apollo missions, From the Earth to the Moon.

S. who knows about technical specifications, offered the Region 2 discs cheap having just bought the Region 1 versions. There’s apparently a slightly judder in the NTSC transfer that spoiled the whole thing for him. I explained I forget to change the aspect ratio watching Droo DVDs, and am quite content with Logopolis in widescreen. He went a bit pale at that.

Haven’t noticed any problem with my inferior version. It’s an extraordinarily sumptuous series, the sort of prestigious thing that over here David Attenborough might have commissioned. You can see the money that’s been bunged at it. The first episode is especially grandstanding, a bold fanfare from start to finish.

Hair-raising at times, you can’t help but be wowed by the ballsiness of all those involved. Episode 2 gets is much more involving as things start to go horribly wrong. Death and disaster and steely-jawed jokes really help ratchet up the drama.

It also avoids repeating too much of the stuff covered in The Right Stuff, so – at least to me – feels fresh and surprising. The third episode has also spun a new angle on the format, by telling its bit of the story through the eyes of a documentary team. The hippy director in his rose-tinted specs gives a much better sense of context than the news footage. I also realise now I come to write it that episode two is about two guys eaten up by the system, which helps to convince us of the scale of everything involved.

That said, it’s a pity it’s so US-centric and less about all the players in the space race. There’s no effort (at least so far) to deny that the whole mission is an exercise in pissing higher than the Russians. I’d have liked to have seen more of the Russian programme, comparing their struggles with NASA’s. Appreciate that’s not really in the brief.

In fact it reminds me of The West Wing a lot: brave and idyllic and with exemplary performances, but a little naïve about foreigners. You can play spot the West Wing cast, too.

Bird watcher

K. is staying with us at the moment. Last night we went to see peg-leg P. who suffers with a broken bone. Ate pizza, drank girlie white booze and gossiped outrageously, and then fell into a taxi home.

Prior to the night's festivities, K. managed a brief siesta. She closed the living room door so as not to be disturbed by the cat. But the cat is very disturbing. He clambered up on to his scratch-post / house / wossname and spent the whole time watching K. sleep. In the manner his sabre-toothed ancestors might once have watched sabre-toothed mice.

He is an odd animal.

Write away

The new issue of Pantechnicon is just out, and features a story by me. For the time being at least, you can read "The Bounty Hunters" online and for free.

Writing continues. Was meant to interview someone this lunchtime, but they're caught up in writing of their own. So I've had a chance to get up slowly, drink tea and read Droo's magazine.

It's an especially corking issue, and I'm very pleased with page 63.

"Delivering on its ambitious promises, Time Signature is an exceptionally strong anthology, containing some honest-to-goodness mini-masterworks ... It's the best Short Trips collection since The Muses, and, in its delicate balance between standalone entries and arching plots, a fabulous example of having your cake and eating it."

Matt Michael, "Off the Shelf",
Dr Who Magazine # 380 (28 March 2007), p. 63.

Matt's equally nice about my efforts on "Dalek Empire", calling it,

"...as good a Dalek-themed anthology as you're likely to get",

and describing one of my two stories, "The Eighth Wonder of the World", as,

"a good, well-paced yarn".

To his right, Vanessa Bishop has nice things to say about "Collected Works". Which is all Nick Wallace's work, but I shall take credit what with being the boss. Now off to have lunch in the sunshine. Tra la la.

Cornell writing the news

"Church reveals she is pregnant" says the BBC. How very New Adventures.

Danger, Will Robinson

This was on the wall of our hotel in LA, just down the corridor from our room.

Carrot juice, carrot juice, carrot juice

... is like drinking the dirty water left over from washing up.

Ick.

Mile-high film club

Marie Antoinette is a colossal exercise in missing the whole ruddy point.

It looks nice and is stylishly played, but the emphasis of the script is all in the wrong place. We watch Marie leave one sumptuous court for another. She learns posh gossip and how to excite her husband. She dances about in the gardens and goes to some very good parties. And then some yokels turn up and she’s very brave and won't run away.

Since she’s a bit of a free spirit (no, she will go to the party!), there’s a lot of punk music and typeface. This juxtaposition of the contemporary and historical would be pretty revolutionary, if we’d not seen the same thing before. It’s Casanova, it’s A Knight’s Tale, it’s Britney in the End of the World.

But it’s also pretty dim. You have to fundamentally misconstrue history to see Marie Antoinette as a punk. Rather it’s the mob who tear down her glam lifestyle – and we hardly see them at all in the film.

The film entirely fails to deal with why the mob might have grievances. The nearest it gets is to have Marie protest that she never said, “Let them eat cake!” But this is an age of public flayings and the guillotine. The general violence offended both Casanova and de Sade.

By not dealing with that – by consciously not showing it – the film is more perverse than anything those two got up to. The French court was not merely a fatuous bubble of champagne parties: in context it was clearly offensive.

Flushed Away was fun (though not helped by DWM pointing out how the lead rat looks like David Tennant). It lacks the charm of Wallace and Gromit, and that’s not merely for being set down the toilet.

It’s fast-moving and full-of-gags enough to hide a pretty ropey plot about a posh boy falling for a working class girl. Like the singing mice in “Babe”, there are singing slugs to raise a smile whenever things get a bit unfunny. And, as S. said, it’s telling how often the slugs feature. I laughed a lot, but it’s not one to watch again.

The Prestige was probably the best of the lot, about the rivalry between two Victorian stage magicians. Leads Batman and Wolverine were as manly-tough as you’d expect. Bowie had a nice turn as Tesla, and Michael Caine was as effortless as always.

Unfortunately I sussed the various elements of the ending before we were mid-way through. This may have been due to discussing The Time Travellers all weekend, which turns a few of the same tricks. (Well, it does if you can make the cognitive leap that Hugh Jackman is playing Scott Andrews).

It’s clever and deft from the start, with all kinds of nice palming of plot device. But the real trick of magic is not merely the mechanics of the con, but of managing to disguise them. The audience has to be left mystified.

Lag

Dr Who’s companions never seem to suffer from jet lag.

I assume this is because the TARDIS monkeys with their brains at the same time it learns them Swahili. It stops the whole pink-eyed, dazed and a little all over the place thing. Which wouldn’t help in the stopping of monsters.

Have spent since Thursday in a wonky sort of daydream. LA is the furthest I’ve ever been from home and already feels like a film set. It is much harder travelling back east. Everything feels a bit unreal and two-dimensional when you’re very, very tired and yet unable to sleep.

Gallifrey was everything everybody had enthused to me – generous and friendly and funny. Highlights were Eric Roberts leaping from his chair to come over and shake my hand. “Hey,” he said, “You must be Simon!”

After a moment of open-mouthed gibbering I remembered I had on my name badge.

Was incredibly well looked after, and met some very splendid people. So much keen interest – and even from pretty girls.

My many charms didn’t work on Paul Cornell, who fell asleep in the midst of my hilariosity on forthcoming Muppet movies. Am particularly pleased with Muppet Deliverance (the Electric Mayhem on banjos and the line, “Squeal, Piggy, Squeal”). He missed the Muppet Exorcist and Muppet Blue Lagoon.

(See previously the Muppet Show of Weng-Chiang.)

On the basis that I became a writer so I wouldn’t have to stand up and speak in front of people, my own panels went pretty well. Just talked a lot and quickly until the moderators said time was up.

Our behind-the-scenes-on-Benny film seemed to ignite interest and shift the required stock. Yes, it’ll be on a CD sometime. So everyone can see my sticky-uppy hair.

Pack it in

Am off to LA tomorrow morning for a weekend at the Gallifrey convention. Bought a few new clothes for the occasion, including a stripy hoody top that the Dr really hates. And she never wears anything weird.

(I'm only envious that she got twice as many Valentine's cards as me. One of them was filled with cat fluff.)

I'm doing a number of panels, most notably one with my friends Paul Cornell, Jason Haigh-Ellery, Steve Moffat, Gary Russell and Mike Tucker to celebrate Benny being 15. Have got something exciting to show everyone. And no, not what Minko had.

Also seem to be moderating one about Torchwood, unless I'm reading my instructions all wrong.

Have two scripts to work on while I'm over there, and have been doing my prep on these today. Agreed stuff with some other authors, and now just need to get writing. Hope the in-flight movies are a bit rubbish so I won't be distracted.

Got to go. Beautiful, fearsome wummun is hounding me off the machine.

Doctor Who and the Computers

Hello. There used to be a great, long 5,000-word post sat here but someone has asked if they can publish it, and I get money if I take it down from the Internet. This is ironic considering what the thing is about. But I have done so while it all gets negotiated. If the publishing happens I'll post a link here, if it doesn't I'll put the post back as it was.

Simon, 8 December 2008.

Lemmings

Am a little behind on my American telly. Have seen up to the end of Season 4 of 24, up to the end of Season 2 of Lost, and nothing at all of New Battlestar Galactica – not even the acclaimed mini-series. I blame Scott Andrews, who so spoiled me with lendings of Buffy.

I am keeping up with Heroes (****** is ******’s ***!) and have just finished the sixth season of West Wing.

Like Will, I found Season 5 something of a slog. West Wing could do daft and not-brilliant stories before (like CJ visiting her dad), but the whole fifth year seemed out of whack, predictable, derivative and boring.

In Season Six, Toby is given a bit of advice about how to win over the media. He’s not pretty, so he needs to be smart and funny. It’s this that the show had forgotten.

Season 6 is definitely an improvement, though it’s still much too often Bad Star Trek.

Riker: “The whole universe if going to blow up, and there’s just four minutes left of the episode!”

Geordi: “How about I invent something technobabbly magic?”

Riker: “What, pull a deus ex machina out of your bottom right at the very last minute?”

Geordi: “If I explain it in long words while talking quite quickly, people won’t notice it’s bollocks. I’ll say ‘diagnostic’ a lot.”

Riker: “And whatever made-up old nonsense it is, we’ll say that from now on it’ll be known as the ‘Geordi manoeuvre’.”

While Season Six West Wing can be odd, hilarious and even rather insightful, it still manages to solve issues in Palestine, China and Cuba all in the 40th minute. The implication is that there are quick and easy fixes to foreign policy, if only the US mucks in. This strikes me as a little dangerous.

It would help if it could be less abusive of foreigners. The opening episodes struggle to accommodate all sides on the issue of Israel, and generally avoids giving offence. But a couple of weeks later there’s concern about Turkey, when an adulteress is stoned to death.

Um. No. Turkey is a secular state and doesn’t behave quite like that. Perhaps they were thinking of (or chickening out of) some other Middle Eastern country. Having decided to give up the made-up state of Kumar and instead discuss issues in the real world, you’d think they would be a little less fundamentally ignorant.

Was similarly annoyed by the crudely realised Thatcher-avatar ruling as Britain’s PM. If they’re making a point about British politics, it’s one quarter of a century out of date. And, where previously the eccentric British ambassador had also been brilliant and wise, in this episode he’s an idiot and liability.

Likewise, Bartlett’s Japanese counterpart (played by Mako!) is a rude and mean buffoon. Bartlett can have a serious conversation with him – and heed his warnings about the US economy – but only when Mako has made a fool of himself cavorting too hard on the dance floor.

I suspect this would bother me fewer were the real US administration not so eager to bomb Iran. They say this will make things better and safer for American people. What about the rest of us?

Democratically elected representatives are answerable to their constituencies, and any politician will serve their country’s interests first. But the West Wing attempts such a liberal ideal, I find the self-centred attitude to policy difficult.

When not laughing at Johnny Foreigner, it’s got much better with dissenting viewpoints. It’s perhaps good for the ratings to be more overtly bi-partisan, but it also leads us into some really interesting areas.

These questions are usually asked in high-calibre performances from some brilliant cameos. Penn and Teller burn an American flag as part of a show inside the White House, and so question what freedom is. Christopher Lloyd and Brian Dennehy both play roles that ask what America’s role is in promoting democracy elsewhere. A Sam Cooke song sung by James Taylor is in retrospect all about the Bartlett administration.

It also seems happier to acknowledge that Bartlett’s lot aren’t above doing “necessary” things. Season 3 ended on the cliffhanger that sometimes a President might agree to Black Ops. Here it’s rather taken for granted that the US have spies everywhere. Some stupendous wigs rather a spoil a flashback to Kate and Leo’s first meeting, when neither of them should have been involved in Cuba.

Making leading Republican Arnie Vinick (Alan Alda) so appealing helps to raise the political stakes. He’s wise and funny and middle-of-the-road, and we can see why people would vote for him. There’s a nice scene late on of Bartlett and CJ silently wowed by his speech.

Yes, because Season 6 also sees the start of the run-up the next presidential election. Things are changing for the regular cast, and though it’s nice to see some character development, some of it feels a bit forced. Donna and Josh both leaving the White House does work very effectively. But CJ and Charlie’s promotions feel more plot-convenient than real.

They try really hard to convince us that CJ’s elevation is somehow credible – by showing how difficult she finds it. Yet I still can’t help feeling it’s how you reward a cast member of a long-running TV show does for its, not how a White House administration would work.

Much is made of different characters being asked to step off cliffs. For a show that so loves rational debate, presidency is a matter of faith. Characters choose their jobs and their politics by which contender for office they believe in.

Princess Leia’s adopted dad gets to be another put-upon good guy. Matt Santos is the underdog hero, a man who fights fair and speaks from the heart, and won’t exploit the colour of his skin to win points. Not having MS to lie about, he’s even squeakier clean than Bartlett.

Watching him struggle to get himself noticed is probably the best element of the whole show. It says a lot that by the end of the year, I was disappointed when the episodes were set squarely back in the White House.

Santos being offered the Vice Presidency is a nice moral dilemma. It also, I guess, owes a lot to the 2000 election and the position of Ralph Nader. They certainly pile on the odds, and his winning California really comes as a surprise.

Yet this is also comfort-telly, with everything coming out okay. And by the end of the run we know Santos is going to make it (don’t we?). These obstacles are just about making him more dazzling and perfect. When I get round to borrowing Season 7 off Nimbos, I’m hoping to see Santos fall on his arse.

Weirdos of Oz

J. and H. leant us The Muppets Wizard of Oz, which we'd been sort of avoiding seeing. Had been pretty unimpressed with most recent Muppet efforts for being too twee and safe, and for focusing too much on the guest stars and not enough on the funny stuff.

So am glad to report this is really quite good - though it's got its share of twee moments.

Ashanti is Dorothy and wants to be a singer. But Auntie Em (Queen Latifah) thinks she should stay at work in the family diner in the middle of Nowhere, Kansas. Ashanti misses an audition with Kermit and Miss Piggy who are - er - on a talent-spotting tour through the area. But she hands over an audition tape they seem unlikely to hear.

So far so zzzz. And then there's a storm and Ashanti wakes up to find her prawn is now played by Pepe. And he's nekkid and unashamed. Suddenly things start to brighten up.

Soon they're on an adventure. The songs are a bit rubbish and schmaltzy, especially when compared to the Judy Garland film, and there's too much effort to explain what we're learning as we make our way.

Yet Kermit is fun as the Scarecrow, and Pepe tweaks Gonzo the Tin Man's nipples. There's also something Very Odd about Gonzo's physical love for a particularly good looking chicken.

The Muppets is always at its best when doing stuff no other kids' show could. Such as having everyone getting stoned in a poppy-smoking nightclub to tunes by the Electric Mayhem. Or having a fight scene choreographed by Quentin Tarantino. Or seeing two of the heroes torn limb from limb. Or disintegrating Beaker's head.

It's also interesting that Dorothy's black, considering L Frank Baum's supposed white supermacist thinkings. (Though be careful what you google for: there's a lot of angry people on both sides of the debate.) Whatever the case, it's a fun thing to do with the adaptation.

The confrontation with the wizard involves some really ropey CGI. That's possibly part of the point, but I couldn't help thinking that this must have had a bigger budget than anything the Mill gets on Droo. It's also the same lame gag stretched out for too long, that nobody gets what they wish for. It felt a lot like an advert for the non-physical effects that were so singly unimpressive.

It's not Muppet's Christmas Carol, but it's better than most of the others.

Mashed bandage

Yesterday was good but long, and I got home in time to fall asleep over pizza. Mmm.

Finished off some things today which is rather satisfying, but have lots that still requires attendance. Also had a message from someone lovely I used to work with, who may have some more stuff to throw me.

And while all this goes on, the backside of my mind crashes pop bands together for hilario-comedic effect:

Ned's Atomic Kitten
Beastie Boyzone
Marvin Gaye Dad
The Chemical Brotherhood of Man
The Barry White Stripes

Favouring curry

There are 1,073 stories in from our writing competition - about 10 times as many as we'd been expecting. Have made a start on reading half of them, and already got two maybes.

I have also: locked Dave Stone's "The End of the World" (with its myriad Big Reveals); got everything together for recording "The Judas Gift" tomorrow; written my first scene for "The Wake" (not Scene 1., but a later one that we need well in advance); got lots of research done for some encyclopedic scribbling; tidied up the office; made a party invite for the Dr; chased a few things till they won't be chased no more.

I have pitched some things, discussed the limits of content management in detail, and been sickly green with envy about m'colleague Scott Andrews's news. And in between all that, I've seen "The Muppets' Wizard of Oz" (which I might blog about sometime) and the first episode of West Wing's Season 6. And fixed the broken sofa.

Seriously. That's me doing something remotely practical, and not getting it wholly wrong. Surely an omen of the End of Days.

This and a three-and-a-half-hour journey home from the pub on Thursday (don't ask) mean I am a smidgeon sleepy. So I shall now be throwing together a curry for a couple of chums. One of 'em is a proper qualified chef (and today made Dr Who's lunch), and has never previously dared my cooking.

So no pressure.

To introduce the guest star

Popped round to see Nimbos last night and many shiny treats. As well as the long-awaited Heroes #12 (Eccles!), he showed off the first two episodes of Studio 60.

A long-running, live Friday day comedy TV show hits a bit of a snag. The well-respected front man turns to camera and declares it's all baloney. The network won't dare to be funny for fear of alienating sponsors or bigots, he says, and people should not bother watching.

The network panics, but the sassy new president has an outrageous idea. They admit maybe the old bloke is right, and confront this thing head on. She's offers running the programme to two writers (Bradley Whitford and Matthew Perry) that they sacked years ago.

And these two coked-up, wild-eyed, fast-talking players are unable to resist.

The show is fast and funny, with the same dizzying chase around the sets and one-liners that styled The West Wing. Yet I can also see why Aaron Sorkin's new show has been seen as smug and self-indulgent.

The West Wing was about how the President struggled to see through policy, and issues that affect the whole world. Studio 60 treats with the same gravitas the politics of a comedy sketch show. It really doesn't matter as much.

They ladle on some of the issues, like a lead actress with unshakeable faith. But it's sparky and witty and richly written. It's of great interest to me as a professional writer, but surely it needs broader appeal?

Perhaps they should use their guest stars more interestingly. The woman from Desperate Housewives (and apparently, later Sting) should be seen to play against type. Like the stars in Extras, they'd be the hook for each episode, doing things we've never seen before.

Sting doesn't sing sappy songs about the environment, he insists on having fish and chips flown over from England. That kind of thing.

Though I realise what I've just pitched is a revival of Muppets Tonight. This is not a bad thing.

Scooby swears

Got talking about acceptable swearwords (again) and the origins of words like "bloke".

Scooby Doo's (or rather Shaggy's) "Zounds" is of course a contraction of the blasphemous "God's wounds". In performances of the work of that old potty-mouth Shakespeare, they don't pronounce it to rhyme with "sounds".

So go on then, what's "Zoinks" short for? Bonus points if you are funny.

Grey alerts

After a long day forging sense from the senseless yesterday, I had a chilly wait for the homeward-bound train. Freelancing for such disparate and worthy places, my brain tends to wander off anyway. Was thinking of devious forthcoming Benny things when a bored voice interrupted:

“Customers are reminded not to leave items of unattended baggage anywhere on the station concourse or on trains. Items of unattended baggage may be removed without warning and could be destroyed. If you notice items of unattended baggage at Victoria, please alert the nearest member of staff or British Transport Police.”

I’ve heard this on occasional loop forever, but this time it manages to register. Ooh, says my brain, that’s a bit careless. The same awkward phrase used three times in three sentences.

And what a mouthful it is. You need a punchy, distinct bit of imagery if you want people thinking, “IS THAT RUCKSACK A BOMB?!?”

“Bags” and “packages” are easily imagined. The word “suspect” would add some good jective.

But if you really want us to take notice, how about the one from old 2000AD?

“Be pure! Be vigilant! Behave!”

I realise they don’t want to alarm anyone with something phrased too distinctly. The Evening Standard is more than enough to fill our journeys home with MAD PANIC. But still, it’s not really much of an imperative.

Perhaps sounding a bit bored and management-jargony make us heed the warning subconsciously. Like times tables, it goes in because it’s repeated and not because we have to take any notice.

In balancing the “watch out” with the “don’t start a stampede” it’s a lot like “Inspector Sands”. This openly secret code-word alerts staff when things are kicking off. “Fire!” would start everyone screaming at the prospect of being vividly barbecued. But Sands gets a mention we stay meekly where we are, at most thinking, “Oh, just get on with it.”

There was an Inspector Sands incident at Victoria earlier this week, too. I watched an entire busy platform of subterranean passengers wearily roll their eyes.

Court out

Hello from amid a giddy whirlwind of activity. A festive bout of man-flu suggests that perhaps I should have some sleep, while deadlines and commitments wave cheerily from my peripheral vision.

Got a couple of things I really need finished by this time next week. Especially because it looks like I shall be spending the rest of the year marking competition entries. Oh lor.

Had a nice time in the pub last night, hearing Paul Cornell rabbit on about life. Met some people I've not seen in ages and made several splendid new chums. Judging from the Chiswick-addled scrawl I've just found in my notebook, I've also got press-ganged into joining the British Science Fiction Association.

Declined the offer of clubbing and pottered off for the last train home. Where an interesting letter awaited me. A court summons due to unpaid council tax on somewhere I don't live.

Last night my thoughts were, "You could have written to me before it got this far." This morning it's a slightly less cheery, "Why are you even writing to me at all?"

Ho hum. More of life's litter tray to be double-bagged.

Mike and the mechanics

Am re-watching Michael Palin’s adventure Round the World in 80 Days. It’s, ahem, research for a current writing project, which means seeing things I never before thought of about how these things get made.

Like Verne’s Phileas Fogg 116 years before him (though not actually in real life), Michael has to get round the globe in just 11.4 weeks or forfeit £20. He’s not allowed to travel by plane, and he’s got to make something watchable as telly in the process.

It’s a bit strange to realise he’s now been doing these travelogues 20 years. And it’s also odd to see him not yet the established traveller, taking tips from Alan Whicker on how the job is done.

(Whicker’s advice: only ever speak English, and make sure you’re always comfortable.)

The authoritative baton of BBC adventurer is passed on to the uncertain Palin. I’m not sure whether it’s his doing or just a fact of the times that what follows is a completely different style of documentary. Where telly travel used to be classy and exotic, now it’s a celebration of the primitive and “real”.

We see the hardships and misunderstandings and – famously – the diarrhoea. Crucially, it’s at its best as telly when things are most going up tits.

It’s part of the special character of the piece that Michael must also plot his own course, struggling to find transport that will keep him on schedule. Spurning air travel means how he gets there is as much of the story as what he sees along the way.

The world in 1988 seems a very alien place, at once unsophisticated and innocent. Communications are by chunky, squawky phones and its tapes of Bruce Springsteen on a fat old Walkman that show Michael to be the technophile Westerner. There’s a passing reference to war in Iraq, and they don’t even yet mean Gulf War One.

Palin offers an insightful and generous perspective on the world and we’re with him every step of the way. But the makers seem uncertain of him on this first venture. There’s some oddly judged gags worked into the editing. A sound effect added to the scenes in Venice suggest he’s fallen off the quayside just out of shot.

It’s not needed – there’s plenty of laughs from Palin’s onscreen antics, the unfolding story and all the odd things they really see. The Dr was delighted to see her precious Venetian lions being used by a tramp for a bed.

As I said, a current bit of work means I’m all eagle-eyed for detail about the mechanics of how it got filmed.

For example, at Bombay Michael leaves a dhow (though only old colonials call these little boats that). He’s taken off in a little launch, and we watch him from the dhow he’s just left.

What happened to the cameraman who shot that sequence? Presumably he got a later launch and had to catch up. Or did Michael’s launch come back for him, after they’d filmed that bit?

Often the camera is ahead of Michael. We’re watching from across a busy office as Michael first steps inside. Did they all negotiate to set up the camera, then get Michael to duck back outside the door, telling the workers to pretend they’ve not seen him before?

When buying train tickets in Bombay, we see Michael struggling to find the right queue, and then getting to the window to buy his single ticket. This is a conceit because we already know he’s travelling with his own "Passpartout" – a cameraman, a soundman and their director.

What’s more, we watch him buy his ticket from the other side of the ticket kiosk, looking over the shoulder of the seller and at Michael’s face peering in at the plexiglass.

Presumably the filmmakers have negotiated to get inside the ticket office, and so they must have explained what they were up to, where they were going and sorted out tickets for the four of them.

Because of that trickery, you start questioning other things. They say they’ve not got reservations on the train they want, but are merely on a waiting list. And Michael later tells us that someone’s claimed his seat.

But there’s no footage to corroborate any of that, and when we do get to see him, he’s rather comfy in first class.

It's all a tissue of lies!

Yes, of course I can see how it makes for a more engaging picture. But I’d kind of assumed that documentaries were about veracity. In fiction, you can’t get away with such cheats in your storytelling.

Like Chinese Girls in YOLT

Full of cold and feeling stupid, so here’s one I started elsewhere.

“Full of challenging ideas you want to argue with,” is how Joan Bakewell described “Straw Dogs”, which J. leant me over the festive period.

John Gray’s book collects together various writings about mankind, our position on the planet and our future, and it’s not exactly comfort reading. Gray pulls down authority after authority, concluding that we’re frankly a bit rubbish.

He talks, for example, about how machines and computers are obviating humans in industry, so that,

“we are approaching a time when ... almost all humans work to amuse other humans.”

John Gray, “Straw Dogs: thoughts on humans and other animals”, p. 160.

He continues:

“Contemporary capitalism is prodigiously productive, but the imperative that drives it is not productivity. It is to keep boredom at bay. Where affluence is the rule the chief threat is the loss of desire. With wants so quickly sated, the economy soon comes to depend on the manufacture of ever more exotic needs.

What is new is not that prosperity depends on stimulating demand. It is that it cannot continue without inventing new vices. The economy is driven by an imperative of perpetual novelty, and its health has come to depend on the manufacture of transgression. The spectre that haunts it is glut – not of physical goods only, but of experiences that have palled. New experiences become obsolete even more quickly than do physical commodities.”

Ibid., p. 163.

(The Granta website also lets you read the chapter, “Science versus humanism”.)

I suspect the book is meant to be contentious and provocative, especially given its habit of generalising that “Everyone thought…” or “Christians are…”. Some of it certainly made me cross (though not as mouth-foamy as it got Terry Eagleton in the Guardian).

I found myself often disagreeing with Gray, but in doing so articulating ideas I’d not been conscious of believing. Humans are different from animals because of the footprint we leave behind us. As Dr Bronowski says in the opening episode of “The Ascent of Man”, other species leave behind fossils of themselves, we leave behind things we have made.

That doesn’t make us better, though. Just different. And with a moral imperative to do better. That we know ourselves to be the most aggressively destructive species on the planet is really not enough.

It also raises the old chestnut that atheism and science are to blame for Nazism and the Holocaust – which I shall address another time, when I’m not feeling so bleurgh.

Late as ever, but...

Alerted by m’colleague Paul Cornell, I have paid my 79p to iTunes and now own Neil Hannon singing Murray Gold’s “Love Don’t Roam”. It’s the song from the disco in the recent Droo Christmas special, and it’s just possible that if more people can say “Yes Paul” it will be in the Top 40 on Sunday.

The wheeze is that Droo fans might influence the UK pop chart what with its new rules about downloads. Must admit I am curious to see it happen, and merely for the same price as a litre of milk and not quite a loaf of nice bread.

Next week will probably be the turn of Hannon and Gold’s “Song for 10” from the Christmas one before, which I think I prefer anyway.

And after that perhaps m’colleagues’ entirely extraordinary “Children of Tomorrow”, as featured in Saturday’s “The Horror of Glam Rock” (hear it on BBC7’s listen again service until Saturday). It’s by Tim Sutton and Barnaby Edwards, belted out by Stephen Gately and Clare Buckfield, and it’s one of the maddest and most amazing noises ever to flood my head.

The same story's glam version of the Droo theme tune (by Ron Grainer and originally arranged by Delia Derbyshire, since I’m doing credits) is pretty spanking too.

For tortoises

It has all been a bit hectic recently, with people's birthdays amid a leviathan of work. The best mate, whose birthday it was on Saturday, tells me I look pretty crappy and so I've planned a morning off. He also bought me my very own spongmonkey, which was swiftly claimed by the cat.

Have a story to finish and a script to edit, two websites to rebuild and a proposal to make sexy, a new encyclopedic gig and some additional need from the regular employment.

In the meantime, I've had a novel rejected after providing extended synopses (though my friend S. has been commissioned, so hooray), and I've agreed some decisions that will radically change my working life in a few months' time. There might be some sort of announcement round then, so I shall keep it now.

And then there's two projects that I'm keen to make happen though they both face impossible odds. They are begun and I merely await the lashing of the Fates.

It would help if I could get this all done by the end of January as then I've got the new writing competition to co-mark. 282 x 2,500 words in already. Will give up sleeping for Lent.

Getting the builders in

Being a Big Boss, you often get to tell at your legions to Jump.

"How high?" they will say. Or more often, "How many words, by when and what is the money?"

One thing I've tried to do with Benny is give clever authors a bit of a framework in which they can invent and build. On the Benny books, this has basically meant coming up with a frame that requires no linking material on my part. I come up with the rough sort of wheeze and the authors go off and do the hard bit.

Which is like being told "Jump" and going off to construct a complex network of interlacing trampolines. And then watching in horror as I tear through the springy mesh with my unflinching, unforgiving red pen.

Two such eager swots are Nick Wallace and Phil Purser-Hallard, who really went overboard in contriving Collected Works. And all to it's benefit, of course.

Phil has just posted the Quire background material he and Nick worked our between them. Surprisingly, it's chock-full of them spoilers.

Pass the sprouts

Have been comparing the post-Christmas tummy with m’learned colleagues, as well as sharing methods for working it all off.

One chum restricts himself to 10 units of booze this month, another has joined a gym. I have cut down my nights out significantly and will be gyming again once some work deadlines are seen off. No, Dr, honestly.

Golly I didn’t half eat well over the festive season. Some people say we miss the true meaning of Christmas these days, usually so as to remind us about that Jesus fella who was born on 25 December 0000 in a snow-strewn stable in Bethlehem to a blonde and blue-eyed mum while robins and holly looked on. Oh, hang on…

Christmas is, of course, a pagan festival co-opted by the Christians – who have a thing for nicking parties. Even Santa Claus as we know him today owes more to anglo-germanic traditions of the green man than he does to the real St. Nicholas of Myra. We celebrate with trees, the threat of punishment to naughty children and enchantment from mistletoe.

In more primitive times, it was good to have a knees-up around the shortest day of the year, when the world seemed at its bleakest. I wonder if Celtic man would follow the feasting with a vow to lose his new porkage, making a virtue of the lack of thrilling food for the remainder of the winter.

Anyway. This made me think about the Prime Minister’s recent interview with Sky News, where he,

“admitted he would be reluctant to pressure people to stop taking overseas holidays – or indeed to stop flying himself. He explained:

‘I personally think these things are a bit impractical to expect people to do. I think that what we need to do is to look at how you make air travel more energy efficient, how you develop the fuels that will allow us to burn less energy and emit less.’”

Number 10: “Tackling climate change begins at home” – PM, 9 January 2007.

This answer was described as “muddle-headed” by Jonathon Porritt, chair of the Sustainable Development Commission (oddly not capitalised in the BBC News account), and came up again at the Prime Minister’s press briefing:

“Put to him that the Prime Minister therefore believed that the threat of global warming [...] could be dealt with without consumers really affecting their lifestyles, the PMOS [said that we had to] find more effective, energy efficient ways of doing what we do. Hence the investments that were already being made in energy efficient measures and hence our overall energy review, and the emphasis placed on both renewable and cleaner forms of energy such as nuclear. What should not be done was to address climate change by harming the world economy.”

Number 10: Morning press briefing from 9 January 2007.

The argument seems to be that we can’t expect people to give up their fun stuff for the sake of not breaking the weather. And anyway, Science has come up with some pretty neat tricks which will sort things out.

This thinking depends on two very wrong assumptions:

• That Science will continue to come up with innovations as and when they’re needed
• That the stuff Science comes up with can be implemented almost immediately

But worse, it assumes that we need not do anything to curb our rapacious behaviour because the boffins are on the case. We must not stop consuming.

People are not merely consumers, as some would have us believe. A “consumer” is just a mouth, and to concentrate on just the part of the process implies, wrongly, that there’s no consequence to stuffing our faces.

The mouth is just the start of the process, which leads through digestion to excretion. I guess in this model digestion could be seen as “value” – measured by the ratio of what it is being eaten to the benefit to the body doing the eating. As a consequence of that equation, the less that’s pooed out the other end the better. It is more elegant that way.

A rich and varied diet means lots of fibre and roughage to help clear out the system, because just eating cakes and sweets and Breakfast 3s from the local greasy spoon ends up clogging up the system until it drops down dead. This ends the consuming process once and for all: a bad thing.

That’s not to say we must never eat cakes, but there needs to be some balance. Ideally, we feast only sparingly, and match the excesses with leaner periods. Say, for example, following Christmas with a diet and the gym.

Likewise, when our lifestyles affect the weather, we do damage to ourselves. If the floods and thunderstorms don’t kill us, they at least damage the economy because of the excessive insurance claims, breaks in supply chains and general ensuring misery. The evidence seems to suggest that we either curb our eating habits voluntarily, or Nature (aka cause and effect) will have to do it for us.

TB’s view of consumption (dyswidt?) seems to be that people can’t be expected to mend their ways. But he’s also campaigning against obesity, and Government policy has targeted drink, drink-driving and smoking with considerable success. So sorry, but that’s bollocks.

There’s an argument that we cannot be forced or coerced into behaving less like walking cancer. But I also know a fair few smokers who are glad of the forthcoming English ban on smoking because it gives them the last resolve to quit. They knew they ought to, they had even given it a go, but the new rules make it easier by removing the temptation.

This is how I feel about air travel – which I haven’t half exploited in the last couple of years. There’s offsetting programmes, and the justification that it’s for work to some degree, but it would a lot easier if the flights weren’t quite so doable, and more of luxury.

Back in the mists of time when this post began, I said I’d stuffed too much recently. This gorging included a sizeable volume of Brussel sprouts, which are rather yummy. (They’re best when they’re cooked to not-too-sulphurous softness, and you can also serve them with bacon. Mmm.)

Though I like them a great deal, they don’t half carry a penalty. The Dr and I have held wars of attrition, attempting to asphyxiate one another. Which is why I’m only allowed sprouts in the festive season. It would be too dangerous any more often.

To finally get to the point, flights are like sprouts. Our actions have consequences, and you ignore the ensuing noxious emissions at your peril.

One man can make a difference

Blimey, this is my 400th post.

The Mission Song is another corker from John le Carre – not exactly a huge departure from his previous work, but a thrilling and intelligent read.

Salvo is a Congolese-born translator of various African languages, living in England and enjoying life – and a wife – at the top. She’s a high-flying journalist, white of the old stock, and gives him everything materially and socially British he could ever hope for.

No sooner does Salvo start cheating on his Mrs than he’s invited to a top secret meeting out in the North Sea. The future of his own country is being decided and they need someone who speaks the right language… But Salvo, who has begun to question the virtues of his English luxury, isn’t sure that what’s on the table is what is best for Goma.

"A good man knows when to sacrifice himself, Brother Michael liked to say. A bad man survives but loses his soul."

John le Carre, The Mission Song, p. 303.

Like a lot of le Carre, the book is at its best pitting one man against the whole system of spies and files and heavies. Salvo’s a richly drawn character with a distinctive narrating voice (and Le Carre’s first black protagonist, or at least the first I’ve got to). He speaks with the precision and good vocabulary of someone to whom English is a second language – and much is made of his never quite being fully assimilated.

The rest of the very varied cast is well observed and often funny, Le Carre’s stuff has always worked well in adaptation because he always gives good character actors something to get hold of. Often they leap off the page like Dickens – though that does tend to make his baddies rather comic-book villainous, with nothing to redeem them but their immaculate table manners.

The book is about the rape of Africa’s resources under the cover of humanitarian work. As such, it’s a highly emotive story with plenty to play for. Like The Constant Gardener (which it reminded me of a lot), the officials aren’t too worried about the deaths of a few thousand natives if help sustain the profits.

It paints a pretty nasty picture of institutional abuse abroad, but is also highly critical of the attitude of not only UK foreign policy but of the people of Britain too. Racism is monotonously widespread – Salvo treats it as a given and is not proved otherwise – and much is made of how unnewsworthy Africa’s troubles are.

But le Carre is also good at showing how what happens over there directly impacts on us, and why the fate of Africa is so close to British interests.

"Why else does coltan have place of honour in my head? Go back to Christmas in the Year of Our Lord 2000. Play Station 2, the must-have electronic toy for every rich British kid, is in desperately short supply. Middle-class parents are wringing their hands, and so is Penelope on the front page of her great newspaper: WE SET OUT TO NAME AND SHAME THE GRINCHES WHO STOLE OUR CHRISTMAS! But her anger is misplaced. The shortage is not due to the incompetence of the manufacturers, but to a tidal wave in killing which has engulfed the Eastern Congo, thereby causing a temporary interruption in the supply of coltan."

Ibid., pp. 136-7.

The real trick of the book, then, is to involve us with a character and politics of apparently so little interest to the common Westerner. It certainly makes me feel ashamed of my paltry knowledge of the region, and connects a lot of dots I’d sort of understood.

I’m curious how much was influenced by Mark Thatcher’s alleged coup, and by those well-meant Live 8 wristbands that seemed to promise a solution to all the planet’s ills.

I made this

Things you can do with your Doctor Who Money, as made available at the fun-packed official website of official fun-packed Dr Who:

Happy Phil Collinson :)

Sad Phil Collinson :(

(Sorry about the rubbish photos. Am getting a new phone soon.)

"It kind of makes sense but yet is completely wrong"

Today's heading is from my friend and one-time colleague R., in response to a post on the Outpost Gallfrey forum. I've spent a lot more time there recently, answering queries about our writing competition.

And R. perfectly sums up what it can be like.

So, blimey. 2007.

2006 was a bit crappy, all told. And busy and full of calamity. I'm not telling you this year's resolution yet because certain people need to know first. All in good time.

The new year started well with a fun night out in Dundee, and a text to say two chums are getting married. Hooray! Was feeling all chipper and chilled and ready to get back to business.

The train to London was then appallingly packed and we had to stand the whole five hours. Got in, dumped bags and hurried off to a birthday drinks in a rather spiffing new pub down the road. And probably made no sense to anyone for being so stupidly knackered. Went home early 'cos of work the next morning, and arrived in the office as if I'd never been away, only with more acheing limbs. Bah.

And then things started to happen...

M'colleague S. has got his first novel commissioned and is suitably over the moon. The Dr and I have heard back from various things we've applied for, and all of them saying "yes". And there's more of that in the works.

I've had a cheque for something I wrote 2½ years ago and thought would never happen, and I'm due some more cash in the next few weeks because 1,009 people borrowed "The Time Travellers" from libraries.

Eddie Robson's "The Empire State" arrived in the post this morning, ending my first year as King of Bernice Summerfield. Here is a picture of the Big Finish things I worked on last year. Eight books and 10 CDs, and I need to rethink my shelving.

I said things had been busy...

Oh, and in a showbiz exclusive, I'm off to LA next month as a guest at the Gallifrey convention. At which I hope to meet lots of the mad gaggle who fill the OG fora.

And what do you do?

Sci-fi futures, even those set only a few days away, are often without a monarchy. The only one I can think of that’s not got some comedy king is the opening panel to 2000AD’s Invasion, in which a hairy-lipped Charles III exhorts his people to resist the not-quite-Nazis as they spill onto our beaches.

Otherwise there are rather feckless kings with little real power who seek petty praise and parties and miss the glory days. Sci-fi that can be so reverent of even the most hokey-religions still tends to think monarchy-of-the-future vapid and redundant.

Jeremy Paxman’s book, “On Royalty”, addresses this thorny problem (well, he doesn’t exactly explore the science fiction angle). It’s about the modern state of monarchy: its appeal, its limits and its future. But Paxman also addresses kingship in history, and the fact that as far back as there’s evidence, there seem to have always been kings.

“There is a story in ancient history, sometimes told of Philip of Macedon, sometimes of the Roman emperor Hadrian. While travelling on a journey he was approached by a woman who demanded he listen to her. The woman was insistent. But the emperor replied that he had no time, he had to be on his way. To which the woman replied, ‘Then do not be king!’ The emperor stopped, turned around, and listened.”

Jeremy Paxman, On Royalty, pp. 219-9.

The book is highly engaging, full of great stories and insights. It’s told very simply, too – a wealth of hard work and research deftly concealed from the reader.

Paxman has been quoted widely (including by me) on his research into the meaning of royalty having swayed his own republican views. And his reasoning is pretty persuasive.

The divinity of kingship may just be a childish story, a reaction to the misery of tribal existence: we deify the biggest bully because it makes us feel less like saps. It’s not very rational to have kings and princes, but the we are not entirely rational beings (for all we’ve made slow increments to make our lives more so).

So what harm is there from our royal family? The problem, Paxman argues, is for a constitutional monarchy to find a role.

The Windsors live reasonably modest lives – their Tupperware being famous – compared to other chieftains of state, while at the same time producing their weight in national loyalty, glee and hope. Paxman talks to the army about exactly why they’re more unswerving in their allegiance to the crown than they would be to a career politician. He also explores the many charitable and worthy works that gain column inches and merit by association.

“It would take a very bleak view of human nature to argue that this promotion of causes which fall between the paving stones of ordinary life was anything but a good thing.”

Ibid., p. 230.

And the problem for republicans is to show how we’d be better off without them.

Look at the tawdry bureaucracy and corruption of secular states – those ordinary folk in charge still have their sumptuous palaces. I’ve spoken before about why Holyrood’s palace has made a mockery of why it was built in the first place.

Homely, unostentatious for all they have castles, the Windsors fare rather better.

Paxman’s argument seems to be that theirs is largely a problem of public image – and one they’re themselves horribly aware of. A candid interview with the Duke of Edinburgh reveals some fascinating stuff about how his changing relations with the press. As the Duke sees it, the press are rude and intrusive in the same way a man hunts a tiger, thinking, ‘If I can shoot a tiger then I’m as powerful as a tiger.’

And because they’re not given any right to reply, the Windsors are very easy targets. At least tigers can bite back.

It’s not helped that the royals’ love lives and opinions on brickwork are constantly, endlessly raked over. They’re treated as easy page-filler, like any other tinsely celeb (in Stephen Fry’s definition: “Celebrity: someone you recognise but don’t quite know why).

Celebrities are not real people like you and I – just being in the paper to be read about puts them above all us riff-raff. That grandeur means there’s a “story” in them doing the most ordinary things: snogging someone, having a meal, maybe drinking too much. We can enjoy accounts of their weight gain and haircuts as we once did a new look for Barbie or Han Solo toys.

Because these people are an escape from our mundane lines, a princess can’t be allowed to have just died in a car crash. That’s too depressingly ordinary. No, it must have been a plot by her in-laws and the Government and a few groups of evil space alien…

And it’s why, throughout the book, people are surprised on meeting the Queen that she seems so very “human”.

I’d no great particular love for the trappings of monarchy, but I’m compelled by Paxman’s own argument: they are people doing their best in the circumstances. And let’s see you do any better.

The Canterbury Tales… in space!

M’learned chums keep on at me r.e. books I have not read. This is not entirely unfair, as I’m on at them back about The Sparrow and Riddley Walker, or Kim Stanley Robinson’s wintry new threesome.

But I have finally read Hyperion, and it was not all I’d been led to believe.

A gang of unlikely priests, mystics and warrior women out of a sci-fi B picture are on their way to the strange planet Hyperion, home of the mysterious and savage Shrike. Each pilgrim has an agenda for being on this pilgrimage / suicide mission, and they take it in turns to tell why.

For example, a priest had been to Hyperion and made contact with a primitive tribe – but it was he who was inducted into their strange religion. Or a non-nonsense soldier kills thousands of baddies, but his dream girl is more of a nightmare, and she’s part of the sinister planet…

Some of it is very good indeed. I especially liked the scholar’s tale, which felt a lot like The Time Traveller’s Wife (I was going to say “which is reminiscent of”, but Hyperion was written a decade earlier). In it, a young girl visits Hyperion with her boyfriend then starts to age backwards, losing another day’s memory every time she wakes up.

She forgets her boyfriend, who sets out to find a cure only to return to an unrecognisable and pre-pubescent child. She stops recording herself messages after playing back too much loss. And the worst part is that the story’s told by her put-upon father, while he cradles a baby.

Another favourite is the consul’s tale, which is so bitter about the cost of expansionism.

"I laughed and locked the wheel in. ‘Nobody gets beyond a petroleum economy. Not while there’s petroleum there. We don’t burn it, if that’s what you mean. But it’s still essential for the production of plastics, synthetics, food base, and keroids. Two hundred billion people use a lot of plastic.’"

Dan Simmons, Hyperion, p. 444.

It’s nicely in contrast to the usual sci-fi stuff in which humanity eats space up like a cancer. Yet the stuff about oil also makes it feel oddly close to home, and not sufficiently distant to convince of the 29th century.

The recommenders have usually mentioned Simmons’s brilliance at world-building. It’s certainly a complex and layered envisioning, but I found it all a bit contrived (the problem with any story about heroes who share the same convoluted destinies).

Simmons builds his world by chucking pretty much everything into the mix – private eyes, AIs and a robot clone of Keats, with rich pickings from Starship Troopers and The Mission. But rather than being convinced by the richness of the culture, I thought it too often too much of a mess.

Throughout, Simmons keeps off-handly mentioning all kinds of futuristic technical kit, the usual way of sneaking in the props that build a complex new world. We don’t need to know exactly what these things are – the very fact that we don’t understand them shows how primitively twenty-first century we are.

But such constant attention to these sci-fi doodads is also oddly fetishistic. Which is hardly helped by how, whenever we meet anyone (though especially when we meet women), we’re treated to a long, descriptive paragraph itemising their physical attributes.

We’re also dutifully informed on every instance of the hardening of women’s nipples, with all the matter-of-factness of pornography.

Chaucer was making a polemic point with his variously cipherous pilgrims, but these here in space are meant to be real, 3D people, and not just convenient avatars.

The ongoing mysteries are intriguing – enough to keep me reading to the end – but the reading experience is not aided by it being slow and clunky and often deadly serious, and told in very long chapters.

The pissed, sweary poet is an unlikely pilgrim and I assume is meant as comic relief. He is neither of those things.

When Simmons gets the characters right – people whose motives and emotional responses we really understand – the book is very effective. In the case of the scholar and the private detective, we really care about what’s going to happen to them.

And then Simmons cheats again with the ending...

(SPOILERS for)

(SPOILERS anyone)

(SPOILERS still)

(SPOILERS reading)

(SPOILERS this)

The whole thing is a great big set up for something that’s then never delivered. Having explained why they’re all on this ludicrous mission to face down mad and miserable certain deaths, they then walk down a hill… and that’s it.

I’m sure that’s sort of the point, but it still feels rather like cheating.

Cor, that’s all a bit whinging, isn’t it? I’ll speak of one I did enjoy next!

Man of mystery

Hope your Christmi were as splendid as ours, brimming with red wine and roast goose.

In amongst the exciting haul of goodies from yesterday, the Dr has left me a condundrum. My Droo Stoyrbook 2007 is signed by a mysterious stranger.

Anyone any ideas on whose hasty handwriting this is?

Off shortly to see Night at the Museum (it's research so the good Dr says). Expect an answer by the time I fetch back.

Not now, Bernard

“‘ People like to read about someone who is deeper in the shit than they are,’ [Bernard] said. In fact the real reason for his popularity was much less cynical and cruel: people like to read about someone who broke all the rules, who drank and smoked far too much, who was rude about feminists, homosexuals and ethnic minorities, who was politically utterly incorrect, who behaved outrageously, and yet who somehow survived and even managed to surround himself with an ever-increasing harem of beautiful women.”

Graham Lord, Just the One – the wives and times of Jeffrey Bernard, pp. 229-230.

I was first made aware of Jeffrey Bernard by reading a newspaper obituary. In the photo, a glut of uncommon celebrities jostled one another at the wake. And in the background, ignoring the camera, Tom Baker propped up the bar.

Tom was one of many contributors to Graham Lord’s 1992 biography. Jeff had just turned 60 when the book first came out (the link above is to a posthumous reissue), and it’s telling with what surprise his acquaintances saw him to lesser decades. He really did himself no favours.

The book is a catalogue of stupid and greatly pissed behaviour – Jeff being sick on the Queen Mother and shagging the wives of his mates. I struggled with a tale about a Christmas tree that got taken on a pub crawl because I kept expecting it to be some sort of euphemism. No, they really did mix a tree’s drinks.

Rude, snobbish and just as much lazy as pissed, Jeff spent years stumbling between jobs that would pay for his drinking before finding a role as a writer. He stuck broadly to just the two topics for all his subsequent career: racing and the “low life” of being out on the lash. Lord argues that really it was all just one topic: Bernard on loss as a loser.

One editor, Alexander Chancellor, says of him in the book,

“‘I can’t think of anybody else in journalism who writes only, only about themselves. It’s a considerable achievement, I think, to (a) do nothing at all except drink, and (b) be able to write about it ever single week and still be interesting.’”

Ibid., p. 230.

Most boozers just couldn’t do that. That you got something – a joke or a smile or an article – explains how Jeff persevered. He’d scrounge hand-outs and floorspace off anyone, and sex off girls who could surely do better.

For all he’s a monster and alienated his friends, Jeff knew how to turn on the charm. Irma Kurtz said he had a smile like

“‘a little devil caught out in an act of charity.’”

Ibid., p. 255.

Tom who, flush as the fourth Droo, bought him a couple of suits, says that Jeff at least sang for his supper. Bernard, not the drinking, was witty and exciting. He was an exception to the borish, dull alkie – a bit apart from the other self-destructing regulars. His writing can be keenly observant and hilarious, and even Jeff is often bored by his lifestyle. He is less a role model as a warning.

Yes, there’s something salaciously thrilling about someone who breaks all the rules. But I also think there’s an appeal in the distance – he’s funny so long as he’s happening to other people. Jeff could make those near him miserable, and was not very fond of himself.

It’s also affirmative and good for finger wagging to see the depths that beckon a man who won’t bother with bills and a mortgage.

(As well as talking to Tom himself, the book also makes mention of Jon Pertwee (p. 126) and David Tennant (p. 79).)

Do not fear fluffiness

Our Bumper Book of Daleks is just reaching people, a hair's breadth prior to Christmas. Hooray!

As a special bonus, you can read online for free - yes free! - the story I pinched from based on the Dr's own PhD. Mrs Guerrier, she so proud of me.

To read "The Eighth Wonder of the World", click on the link immediately below the book's cover at the webpage given above.

Babel-fish pizza

Entertaining, boozy meet with chums in Paddington last night, where I may have veered into ranty. Sorry, R., who will be reading this.

Much joy in translating the pizzas. "Fiesta del carne" sounds more posh than plain old "Meat feast".

But you could also read it as "Flesh party".

That’s no moon

Escape is a fixture in escapist fiction. Our heroes look sly and resourcedul when they can break out of cells, baddie bases and countries using only bits of tin can and their shoelaces.

In fact, it’s a bit of a cliché. One not uncommon criticism of my own “The Time Travellers” is that the austere detention centre on Byng Street is daringly escaped-from twice. (I argue (not entirely winningly) that this is in keeping with the spirit of Old Show.)

I guess escapology’s appeal comes from real escapes, most famously those during wars. Until recently, I’d always associated them with the second world war – and even the Imperial War Museum’s escape show last year focused on Steve McQueen’s moped and Colditz.

But Winston Churchill’s first dalliance as national hero was in 1899, when he escaped from a POW camp in Pretoria.

• “I escape from the Boers” – chapter 11 of Churchill’s “London to Ladysmith via Pretoria” (1900), as available off Project Gutenberg

More recently, Neil Gaiman admitted that he and magician Penn Jillette are working on a film version of a real First World War escape. Hilary Bevan Jones – whose Endor Productions won awards for the fab “State of Play” – spoke of it, too, a few years ago:

“My big ambition is to make the film of my grandfather's book, ‘The Road to Endor’. It's a true story of how he escaped from a Turkish prison camp during the First World War. David Lean had it optioned for years, but it's back in the family again. I only just feel grown-up enough to make it now!”

Liz Hoggard, “All my own work”, The Guardian, 21 March 2004

On Gaiman’s recommendation, I sought out the book via Abe.

Lieutenant EH Jones tells of a plucky confidence trick, played out over more than a year. As much from boredom as anything, the imprisoned Jones fakes a Ouija board session, and pretends he’s in touch with the spirits.

But rather than making his comrades laugh, they start to take him in deadly earnest. Jones, you see, can remember the board even blindfolded…

"The growth of a belief is difficult to describe, for growth is not a matter of adding one piece here and another there. It is not an addition at all, it is a process; and the most that can be done in describing it is to state a few of the outstanding events and say, ‘this marks one stage in the process, that another.’ … In any investigation each point as it is reached is subjected to proof. Once passed as proved it forms in its turn part of the foundation for a further advance in belief. It is the part of the investigator to make certain he does not admit as correct a single false deduction. If he does the whole of his subsequent reasoning is liable to be affected.

It is particularly easy, in a question like spiritualism, to allow fallacy to creep in. There is a basis of curious phenomena which certainly exist and are recognised by scientists as indubitable facts. But the investigator must be careful, in every instance, to assure himself that he is in the presence of the genuine phenomenon, and not of an imitation of it, and, as a matter of fact, this is sometimes impossible to do."

EH Jones, "The Road to En-Dor", p. 23.

Soon the Turkish warders have been snared in the scam, Jones and partner Lieutenant Hill winning small allowances for the other POWs. The camp itself is the former home of now-missing Armenians – the book speaks of the massacre quite openly. So Jones uses the promise of hidden Armenian treasure, and the threat of the spirits’ revenge, to attempt a brilliant escape.

Eric Williams (who wrote the best-selling “The Wooden Horse”) introduces the whole thing as, “for sheer ingenuity, persistence and skill … second to none among such books”.

It’s certainly a funny book, lively book full of vivid characters and set-ups. I was also surprised in the footnotes by how many of those comrades mentioned tried their own escapes – and went on to write their own books about them.

The mechanics of the trick and the ways they fool doubters are explained in some detail, and I can see the appeal to a mage like Jillette. The plan does not all go swimmingly either, and several times nearly kills the two tricksters. As a result, it becomes less about the scam but the steely determination with which the two blokes see it through.

That said, the telling is often disjointed narrative, jumping back and forth between years and incidents, so sometimes not easy to follow. There’s a hell of a lot of place names and people to remember, and the tangents and asides could have been more effectively edited.

Part conman’s handbook, part military history, part pot-boiling shocker, it’s a compelling – if not always easy – read. And cor, there’s a brilliant movie in there. So do get a shift on with that, Neil.