Chance Would Be a Fine Thing

Elvis Costello once said he’d never hang around to witness his own artistic decline. Perhaps he wasn't looking, but I’m sure we all noticed when he did that piece of absolute tosh for some horrific Hugh Grant vehicle a decade or so ago. But it raises a point: is it better for something to end on a peak, or does the law of diminishing returns allow for the odd gem?

John Cleese thought it best not to chance it when he called time of Fawlty Towers after 12 episodes. Sometimes ratings ensure it, as has happened to Human Target, a favourite show of mine that was canned at the end of its second season. My own verdict is that this is a good thing: much as I loved it, it had come to some kind of natural conclusion and stopped before sliding too far into predictability.

Based loosely around a DC comic, Human Target sees top bodyguard Christopher Chance at work to help desperate people who are set for a meeting with the reaper. The term ‘loosely’ applies here as in the comic, Chance would use cunning disguises to become the target and face the assassin down. Indeed, I've wondered whether the show was pretty much put together first and the studio decided to use the license to lure in casual viewers with some interest in comics. Like me.

Naturally, Chance has a shady past in so much as that he used to be on the other end of the game, being one of the world’s top hired killers. But guilt is a powerful motivator (perhaps Chance is Catholic) and it’s only the bad guys who need fear his wrath now. Initially, the show circled around the three man band of Chance and his two friends (of sorts), ex-cop Winston and fellow former member of the Assassination Bureau Guerrero.

Though a secondary character, Guerrero is my favourite. Hiding behind long hair and specs, he’s a borderline sociopath with expert skills in martial arts, hacking and torture, his relationship with the more strait-laced Winston is often the highlight.

For reasons possibly related to getting higher ratings, the second season saw the introduction of two female characters: wealthy widow Ilsa and young thief Ames. They provided mixed blessings, as Ames seemed to exist purely for aesthetic values, once being told to “strip down, grease up” to get through an air duct in a pretty blatant piece of fan service. Guerrero's general attitude of annoyance towards her pretty much reflected my own.

The story curve stuck to Ilsa (trying to find out who killed her husband and why) which worked a bit better and her decision to finance the operation afforded us amusing moments when she realised the legal grey areas the chaps often inhabit. Somewhat predictably, a romance subplot was hatched between her and Chance, which I personally could have done without. After all, a show about an ex-killer turned expert bodyguard should focus on what it does best: guns, chases and witty banter. The first series had this in spades and worked well because of it, the second generally maintained it but lapsed at times in to soap-like drama.

Which means that it was perhaps for the best it was put to bed when it was, before it lost sight of what it was supposed to be about. As it stands, I reckon I’ll pick up the first season on DVD and muse that it’s always sad to see something you like go through a steady decline.

I Came and Set Fire to Your Shed

And, I return. Not to talk about Christmas, either, because that’s gone now and it’s just about all back to normal. Another holiday in the past then. Arse.

No. Instead, I’ll tell you about a top night out I had the other week, watching Birkenhead's finest Half Man Half Biscuit at the Ritz in Manchester. First of all, however, I’ll point out this was despite the venue, which had a crap sound and crap overpriced beer. The latter point, I’ll concede, is a downer in just about every live band venue in town (Band on the Wall excepted). Paying the best part of a fiver for a pint of Red Stripe strikes me as nothing else but a bit of legalised thievery topped only by being asked for pay four quid for a can of Carlsberg at the Liverpool Student Union back in the summer.

But the band: Nigel, Neil, Ken and Carl put on a top show, as you’d expect from a bunch of hardy pros such as they. The new songs sounded top and they were in good humour. I particularly enjoyed Ken putting his foot up on the monitors during the “woh-ho, Black Sabbath, bam-a-lam” break in Left Lyrics in the Practise Room and Nigel’s assertion that he “used to look like Judd Trump, now I look like Japp Stam”. Bonus entertainment points for him showing off a guitar shaped like a caravan.

Though he speaks a mammoth amount of tosh a lot of the time, Andy Kershaw was bang on when he described HMHB as the best English folk band since the Clash. Their songs, to this lad anyways, sum up a lot of life in a Northern town. I've tried to explain them to people from distant shores, to much confusion I imagine: would a line like “no frills, handy for the hills/that’s the way you spell New Mills” mean much to someone from Russia or Mexico?

It’s pleasing that the band have managed to continue to work their own little niche for the last 25 years or so. Somebody once wrote that the English love a talented mediocrity, and HMHB perhaps fit that bill as well as anyone. Blessed with an exceptional writer in Nigel Blackwell, they've remained on the small Probe Plus label, never engage in ‘proper’ tours (Nigel likes sleeping in his own bed every night) and have probably performed on TV a handful of times. Indeed, in the eighties they once turned down the chance to appear on the Tube as Tranmere Rovers were playing at home that night.

Blackwell, a man capable of referencing Ian Curtis, Leadbelly and Thomas Hardy, may in fact be one of England’s great lyricists. There was a point he might have crossed over to the mainstream. Their debut Back in the DHSS sold a fair amount and the single Dickie Davis Eyes even threatened the pop charts. In reaction, Blackwell split the band for a few years to dedicate more time to watching daytime TV.

Ever since returning in the early 90s, they've put out an album every few years and play a few gigs in decent sized venues to a loyal audience. Half Man Half Biscuit as pop stars? I doubt the charts could take that much wit.

Take a Rest, Fella

As it's Christmas, this here blog is taking some time off. I'm back in the motherland, emptying my parents' home of all their food and alcohol. Yes, I know it's tragic for someone nearing 31 to do so, but it's been a long, weird year and I needs my rest.

So Merry Christmas and Happy New Year/Rõõmsaid Jõule ja Head Uut Aastat/Hyvää joulua ja onnellista uutta vuotta/Joyeux Noël et bonne année/Fröhliche Weihnachtenund ein gutes neues Jahr/С наступающим Новым Годом/God jul och gott nytt år/즐거운 성탄절 보내시고 새해 복 많이 받으세요

Apologies if I've missed any of your languages off. Or mispelled them. You can blame dodgy internet translators for that. Have a good one, y'all.

Where Do The Hours Go?

I've been holding back on reviewing Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim for the simple reason that it’s a game that you can’t appreciate until you've put some time in. So that’s what I've done: 70 hours and counting.

Yes, 70 hours, and that’s before I’m anywhere close to finishing it. In fact, I’m still not even sure what the actual ‘aim’ of the game is, as I've spent so long wandering around the somewhat huge world doing odd jobs and killing wildlife for kicks.

Like it’s predecessor, Oblivion, Skyrim sees you start out in a bit of trouble. But while the past instalment saw you locked up before Jean-Luc Picard helped out, we’re in worse straits here. In fact, the opening sees you minutes away from being given a severe haircut with a large axe. Luckily, for you, a dragon then appears to provide a helpful distraction, allowing you to escape while the town and its people are incinerated.

With that, it’s into the world and as has been noted by many others, it’s an incredible one to look at. Walking along, you spot a stunning snow topped mountain in the distance: whereas in the past it would be a forever distant bit of backdrop, in Skyrim you can wander up there and do a bit of fell walking, though you may want to be armed first as all manner of wolves, bears and bandits won’t think twice of leaving you dead by the roadside.

Though I've not engaged too much with it so far, the general jist of the story is cut between two issues: one is a brewing civil war between the powerful Empire and a ‘Nord’ splinter group that wants independence for Skyrim. Though I've managed to avoid it thus far, I’m under the impression I’ll have to take sides on this one eventually. Secondly, there’s small matter of big-fuck-off dragons swooping around and we all know that swooping is bad. By chance (ahem), we discover early on that we are ‘dragonborn’, making us very good at killing the ugly buggers and absorbing their souls.

This is quite useful, as doing so allows you to unlock the power of your voice, meaning a mere shout can unleash a fireball in the direction of anyone you don’t like. Must make domestic arguments (yes, you can get hitched) pretty unfortunate.

I’m fully aware all of this must sound horrifically boring to anyone with no interest in games. Indeed, I can state the evidence of one person who’s seen me playing this game on a few occasions and rolled their eyes so much I wonder if they've been possessed. Additionally, the medieval setting wouldn't normally be my bag either – I much prefer the post-apocalypse setting of Fallout, made by the same company.

But, and this is a huge but, the vibe of the game more than compensates for any lack of interest in the setting. By allowing you to improve your skills through practise, you feel your ability to do things rise in a satisfying way. If you like to go charging into battle, waving your sword and shield, then your skills in those areas will go up. Personally, my character is more a ninja-esque dude prone to sticking an arrow in someone's head from distance, but also good enough waving a massive fuck-off axe for when things get personal.

It's this kind of plus that makes Skyrim so essential despite the minor flaws - some of which will be fixed once I download the patch - like certain missions not allowing a huge amount of scope for options. No matter: I'd recommend it to any seasoned gamer, as long as they don't mind potentially losing their job, relationship, all vestiges of a life...

Inside Your Head

Outside of cartoons (and I’m very excited that the fourth series of Venture Bros is out over here now), I've never dug that much American television comedy. Seinfeld left me cold, as does Curb Your Enthusiasm. They may raise the odd smirk, but nothing to explain the plaudits they get from nearly everyone I know. And Friends is just one of those things that will probably cause humanity to be wiped out if we’re put on trial by omnipotent aliens and asked to justify our existence.

Some notable exceptions to this would be Police Squad! and Cheers. A new addition to that list will be Psych – currently into its sixth series over in the States. I've no idea quite how I came to it, random Wikipedia surfing probably, but I’m very glad I did. Having just finished the first series DVD set I picked up for peanuts, I’m very keen to see more.

Outline: as a child, Shawn Spencer was brought up by his cop dad Henry to follow in his footsteps. To wit, pop trained son to hone his skills of observation, memory and lateral thinking. Sadly for Henry, Shawn elects not to join the force and becomes a slacker, drifting across dead-end jobs and earning pocket money by taking rewards for crimes he solves watching TV news reports.

Such skill, however, earns the attention of straight-laced Detective Lassiter, who comes to the conclusion Shawn must actually be behind the crimes and moves to arrest him. To dodge this bullet, Shawn announces he is in fact psychic. Managing to convince the local PD with some quick tricks, he’s taken on board as freelance help, brought in to solve tricky crimes. Aiding him is lifelong best friend Gus, who often despairs at Shawn’s laidback manner. It’s the chemistry between the two actors (James Roday and Dulé Hill) that is a big part of why the show is so ace: Hill is particularly great at portraying the straight man, annoyed by his friend’s tendency to mess around, but also proving more than able to play a big part in solving the cases.

Spencer Senior also appears regularly, despairing of his son’s occupation (hating both private detectives and ‘psychics’) but also trying to encourage his boy and helping out on occasion.

Across the first series, we get to see comic conventions, American Civil War re-enactments and speed dating, all of which see Shawn jump in head first much to the continuing chagrin of Lassiter, who reminds him of what happens when he interferes with a crime investigation, to which the quick (and correct) retort is ‘the crime gets solved?’

Like Cheers, Psych is perhaps helped in worming into my affections by having an insanely catchy theme tune. Performed by the creator of the show’s band, no less – what a talented man! It’s also one of those gigs that you watch and wish you lived in the States, so pretty the town of Santa Barbara, California looks. Then I found out it was actually filmed in British Virginia. So I guess it makes me wish I actually lived on the West Coast of Canada…

Magnetic Personality

Lying down in a machine being surrounded by very powerful magnets is an odd way to spend a Sunday morning, but that’s what I was up to yesterday.

I don’t know the science behind a MRI scan, but I was a bit disappointed when my GP told me it didn't involve radiation. Having spent a large portion of my childhood reading Marvel comics, I’m of the mind that radiation=superpowers. I had daydreams of being put into a machine, the Doctor suddenly noticing something very wrong, but it’s too late and I emerge with the ability to fly, dodge bullets and the strength of ten tigers. Though I always thought if I was going to be in a comic, it would be as ‘Apathy Man’, whose incredible lack of giving a toss is enough to drain any villain of the will to take over the world.

Alas, it was not to be. Instead, the NHS paid for me to have a much safer option. This involved me having to put on a set of industrial headphones and lying still for 15 minutes, which is a lot harder then you’d think. When I told my old man this, he reckoned that it would be a piece of piss for me, as I’d be used to lying around doing sod all. Very funny, dad. But Playstation controllers don’t move themselves and anyways, the second you’re told you have to be still, you can bet it’s the exact moment your entire body breaks out in numerous itches begging to be scratched.

Once in there, you’re treated to a series of strange noises that make you feel like you’re attending an Einstürzende Neubauten concert inside a coffin. At one point, my foot started moving in a kind of beat (in a kind of ‘stare at a blank wall long enough and you see pictures’ thing), which got the nurse worried for a sec, as she thought I was having another seizure. Thankfully not, and now it’s a case of waiting for the head doctor to study the results and let me know the score. I’m hoping he’ll let me keep whatever picture of my brain he has just to prove (obvious joke alert) to people that I do indeed have one.

Open All Hours

You know we're in the festive season when the tabloids begin their “Christmas Outrage!” stories. In previous years, we've had numerous recycles of the “Winterval” non-event, until it was (hopefully) finally put to bed recently as the complete load of bollocks it was.

Instead, 2011 sees the first shot as “Church Fury” as a branch of McDonald’s drafts in some Muslim bod to manage the place on Christmas Day. I had to think this one over for a good while when I first read it. But no matter how many different ways I thought of it, the only conclusion I could come to was: So. Fucking. What.

As it turns out, the purveyors of fine foods are opening about 60 stores across the nation on Crimble Day. Also as it turns out, the story is a classic example of that tabloid trick of headline over content. The “fury” turns out to be from some local Reverend nobody has ever heard of, and I’m sure he’ll be overjoyed to find out he’s been promoted by the Daily Mail into a “church leader”. Nevermind that an actual leader of the church, the Dean of Derby, has been quoted in the same story as saying he has no objections whatsoever.

Finally, let’s consider that there are people who have to work on Christmas Day – such as those in the emergency services – who might be feeling a bit Hank Marvin at some point. That they would want to eat at McDonald’s could be seen by some as a sign that they’re not mentally fit to work such jobs, but hey, it’s nice to have the choice.

Still, any excuse for readers to have a right good moan about the decline of Christian values and all that guff. As long as they forget that when they need some milk on December 25th and pop down to the local 7-11 which is open thanks to those nice people who don’t mind working that day. As for the Rockin’ Rev? Maybe he should chain himself to some railings outside the McDonald’s in question. Careful now.

(As an aside, it’s not even that much of a new thing. When I was a wee laddie in Whitehaven, the local petrol station was open 24/7, including Christmas Day. And my pop worked that day himself on several occasions, being on shifts. It was bloody frustrating having to wait till he got home around 3pm to open your presents, I can tell you.)

Philosophy Football

So. Farewell, Sócrates Brasileiro Sampaio de Souza Vieira de Oliveira (don’t you love names from that part of the world?). Your passing brought up many pundits talking about the Brazil team of 1982 that you captained. “Best team to never win the World Cup,” they say, and they may well be right. I've watched the game that was their downfall, when Italy’s Paolo Rossi goal hanged a hat-trick past them, creating the start of his own legend in the process.

Commentator John Motson made an astute point on that game, that with the score at 2-2, which was enough to send Brazil to the semi-final, the South Americans were still looking for another goal. This attitude, along with some inept defending, ensured they went home empty-handed. Some have said that they've never had that wonderfully cavalier attitude since. A sentiment I can relate to after staying up till silly o'clock to watch the 1994 World Cup final.

Sócrates was the heartbeat of that 1982 team. Watch their second goal in the above mentioned game, where he picks the ball up in the middle of the park, plays to Zico and bursts through to pick up the sublime return ball, still having the skill to put it past Dino Zoff from a narrow angle. He was one of the icons of that tournament, bearded and gangly, socks rolled down.

My own personal connection to him also comes down to appearance. He was pretty much built the same as me: tall (six foot four) and rake thin, he gave lie to the cliché that “big men” couldn't be graceful on the pitch. The line “he’s got a good touch for a big fella” would suggest that once you get over about six foot tall, you’re incapable of acting in any way except like Frankenstein’s monster.

He was perhaps one of the last of the top footballers who went through higher education. He put off turning pro until he’d finished his studies to become a doctor of medicine. Of course, we've had Engish players with degrees (former Man United players Steve Coppell and Alan Gowling spring to mind), but not many had the charisma of the Brazilian. He campaigned for democracy at a time when his country was ruled by a military dictatorship – perhaps he realised that his status allowed him to say things that most others could never get away with.

Plus, of course, he came from an era where you could get away with playing football at the highest level despite liking nothing better than puffing away on cigarettes and swigging bottles of beer on a pretty regular basis, a lifestyle which may not have helped his chances in the longevity stakes. From interviews I read, he didn't seem to give a fuck. Blackburn fans may wish to add Simon Garner here.

This brings us to the present, and the good Doctor’s expiration. We could do with more characters like him in the game, people who can construct sentences that don’t require “you know” placed in them somewhere. But maybe Sócrates was a one-off. If you’re a fan of football, check out clips of him and his Brazil side on youtube – talent like that deserves to be remembered.

Wheels Within Wheels

I've always had a thing about comedy shows that interject a totally different show within them, like a mirror facing a mirror. Or something. Out there, there's probably a TV show about a TV show that has a TV show within it. It makes you go down the whole Truman show route and wonder if me being sat here typing is part of some messed up reality show. And if it is, and you're watching it, how sad are you?

For now, five of my favourites of this ilk.

Drunk in Time
Appearing in one of Alexi Sayle's sketch shows in the early 90s, this meant nothing unless you were familiar with dodgy 60s sci-fi show The Time Tunnel, which I think was being repeated on Channel 4 at the time. The credit sequence is brilliantly parodied, with the sands of time in the original being replaced in a more unique manner.

Sayle and Peter Capaldi (with less swearing) play a couple of drunken scousers who fall into the vortex of time, causing disaster wherever they go. The always lovely Jenny Agutter plays the scientist trying to get them back. A top scene sees them crash in on the assassination of Rasputin, who they mistake for Alan Bleasdale – when the Russian generals shoot him and exclaim “bullets have no effect on him!”, Capaldi notes “he’s used to criticism”.

Nosin’ Around
Obnoxious student Rick in the Young Ones is excited that the BBC have finally woken up and made some minority programming, produced by amateurs and of interest to a small handful of people. Despite the imminent demolition of the flat, he plonks himself in front of the TV, demands silence and awaits the momentous show.

Instead, what we get is Ben Elton dancing badly and exclaiming that this was a show “For young adults, made by young adults” and concerning the issues that young adults face. Apparently, this is mainly that while at 16 you are old enough to join the armed forces, marry and have children or “have intercourse with the partner of your choice” but yet cannot drink in pubs.

Rick is left to kick in the TV in disgust, screaming “The voice of youth?! They’re still wearing flared trousers!”

Invitation to Love
As with just about anything involving David Lynch (except, obviously, The Straight Story), Twin Peaks was completely off its head: a successor to the madness Patrick McGoohan brought us with The Prisoner.

In several scenes, characters would be watching a spoof of the kind of dire American soap that we used to get on Channel 5 in the daytime. Maybe still do – I couldn't say, having not been unemployed for several years. You know the sort: acting more akin to a first year infant school nativity, background sets apparently made from recycled Corn Flakes boxes.

However, Invitation to Love also played a role in predicting future events in Twin Peaks. A shooting, or when a character appears who looks exactly like a previously departed one. It put me off watching Coronation Street, lest I see my own life occurring a few days in advance, and I have enough bleakness going as it is.

History Today
A regular highlight of both the Mary Whitehouse Experience and Newman and Baddiel in Pieces, in which two stoical history professors begin on some dry topic before quickly descending into schoolyard insult throwing. Naturally, the term “that’s you, that is” soon became heard all across the nation as a put down: “see that Joey Deacon? That’s you, that is”.

There were also some other top lines, such as “see a pair of 3D glasses you might get free on the cover of TV Quick? That’s your new Ray Bans”. It was often suggested that the intense animosity between the two characters reflected the feelings between the two comedians. If so, it was no surprise that they stopped working together soon afterwards.

The Bureau
In the world of The Day Today, The Bureau is the BBC’s latest hit drama, in which Steve Coogan's Hennerty ruthlessly tries to maintain “a high class Bureau de Change” in the face of colleagues squabbling, being the victim of homophobic hate crime and committing suicide. The latter is so shocking, that Hennerty drops the bombshell that “I’m closing the Bureau. For 20 minutes.”

Though the show was a big hit in Italy, falling ratings back home ensued the cast were forced to tour the country, performing episodes on the back of a flat-bed truck. Is it only me that wishes Coogan had revisited Hennerty elsewhere in his career?

Link to a Very Long List

It would be amiss of me to not mention that this week No Ripcord are running a huge feature of "The Best 100 Debut Albums of All Time". Essentially, they asked every contributor to send in their top 40 and went from there.

Yes, I know - I don't understand why they didn't include all the ones I picked either, but "democracy" takes precedence. Go and take a look at www.noripcord.com to see a few of my contributions.

At Least They Tried

Being a football fan is all the extremes. It’s what we remember – seasons that stick in the mind tend to be when you’re either going for the championship, or clinging on for survival against relegation. Nobody really talks about the time you came 13th and had nothing to play for after you got dumped out of the cups in the first round.

So it is with players too. Heroes and villains, geniuses and donkeys. Every club has had the reliable type, usually a centre half or full back, who plays 300 games with distinction, but it’s more likely that in the pub we’re talking about the enigmatic winger who can win a game on his own, or the liability of a goalkeeper who throws a few in every season.

In terms of the latter camp, we all enjoy a cheap laugh at the expense of some poor sap who just didn't click. They may well have been good, even very good: the likes of Alan Brazil, Kleberson and Neil Webb played at international tournaments and had plenty of success elsewhere. But for whatever reason (injury, pressure) it didn't work out for them at Manchester United. Here’s my top five Old Trafford failures in my time supporting the club.

Ralph Milne
To give him his dues, Ralphie was a big part of why Dundee United enjoyed some success in the mid 80s. A quick, skilful winger, he’s still their top scorer in European competitions and should have been a Scottish international.

Should have. Ah, the fatal kiss of promise, how bitter the taste lingers. Sadly, a penchant for a drink saw young Milne binned off to Charlton in 1986. But as they were a top flight team at the time, there was still a chance to turn it round. Alas, a few months later, he was shipped off to third division outfit Bristol City, having failed to set English football on fire.

Then, in a show of bizarre transfer dealing that would become a trademark, Fergie elected to give him a chance on the big stage again.

At £175,000, it was probably a gamble worth taking, but replacing as he did Jesper Olsen – an erratic player, but one always capable of a flash of flair – the sight of a prematurely aging Scotsman lumbering down the left wing was never going to prove popular with the Old Trafford faithful. He managed to hold down a place through most of the 1988/89 season, which proved to be our worst since relegation in 1974. Over the summer, Danny Wallace was brought in to take the 11 shirt, and with Lee Sharpe also making a name for himself, poor Ralphie was left to hang out in the reserve team for two years before he was given a free transfer to obscurity.

Jim Leighton
Sorry, Scots readers. I don’t want to be seen to be Jockophobic, but “Slippery” Jim’s name has long gone down in Manchester United history as a byword for erratic goalkeeping and disaster between the sticks.

But how was it so? After all, the man had long established himself as a top player both with Scotland (in the days they always qualified for the World Cup) and Aberdeen (in the days you didn't need to be called Celtic or Rangers to win something in Scottish football). With Gary Bailey retired, Gary Walsh too inexperienced and Chris Turner lacking in quality, he seemed the perfect man to improve a team that had finished second in 1988.

Instead, we endured two years of mid table mediocrity in the league during which he became a target of derision for fans: Red Issue magazine produced a spoof advert for the Jim Leighton Condom (“Catches nothing!”). Come the 1990 FA Cup final, he didn't look at all steady on his toes and it was only a late Mark Hughes goal that earned a reply. In a ruthless, but correct, move, Ferguson dropped the man he’d taken from Aberdeen to the World Cup in Mexico for Les Sealey, who was on loan from Luton.

Les, who gave truth to the adage of goalies being mad, played well in the replay and kept the shirt, earning a European Cup Winners Cup medal and the love from the fans that his predecessor never had. Poor Jim played one more game, against Halifax in the League Cup before drifting back across the border. To his huge credit, he re-found his form with impressive spells at Hibernian and back at Aberdeen, proving good enough to once again play at the World Cup in 1998.

Eric Djemba-Djemba
“So good, they named him twice!” was the joke at the time. Originally, it wasn't ironic, as his sorting of Sol Campbell on his Charity Shield debut earned many approving nods and having the same first name as the King also seemed some kind of omen.

With Roy Keane nearing the end of his days as linchpin of the midfield, a somewhat desperate search to fill the midfield began. Liam Miller and Kleberson were also brought in to different levels of failure in a search that wasn't really ended until Owen Hargreaves arrived in 2007. Of course, that solution turned out to be somewhat fleeting.

Poor Eric, meanwhile, turned out to be hopelessly out of his depth in the Premiership. My abiding memory is of his freakish goal against Leeds, where he managed to half-volley a cross into the roof of the net, after which he seemed as surprised as we were. We were equally surprised when he was offloaded to Aston Villa. One can only assume Martin O’Neill owed Fergie a huge favour as he was soon packed off on loan to Burnley.

His contract at Villa was later ripped up, and he seems to have found his level playing in the Danish league.

David Bellion
Proof that just being really, really fast isn't enough to be a top footballer, the career of David Bellion also showed that the lesson of Franz Carr was forgotten very quickly.

That aside, the reason we signed someone who hadn't exactly done the business at Sunderland baffles to this day. The term “headless chicken” doesn't quite do justice to David’s style of play, in which concepts such as a ball control, positioning and passing were thrown right out of the window. The highlight of his two year spell was scoring past Arsenal in the first few seconds of a League Cup tie, albeit helped by the keeper spooning his soft shot into the net.

Like Djemba-Djemba, the biggest surprise was not only that we managed to offload him, but that it was a top flight side that came in for him, and he returned to his native France with Nice. After a spell with Bordeaux, he's back there now, which shows somebody obviously rates him.

Bebe
We conclude on the most odd of the lot. Signed despite Fergie having never seen him play, all the stories at the time were that he’d pretty much been living in a cardboard box a year before. More annoying, especially given that most cruel of mistresses, hindsight, was that for the same money we could have had established international Rafael Van der Vaart.

The whole transfer was covered in mystery, with plenty of rumours that I probably shouldn't repeat under advice from my lawyer*. Needless to say, nobody saw us signing some random kid who had only played a few games for minor teams in Portugal. In terms of shock factor, it was a biggie and at the time, this hack wondered whether a stroke of genius had been pulled off. Sadly, in turns out that all those stories in football comics that I read as a kid, where some guy is spotted playing in the park on Friday and on Saturday is hammering in the winner for his favourite team in the cup final, turned out to not have any basis in reality.

Early on, he managed to bluff a couple of goals, which suggested he might have something about his game. But then came the fiasco against Crawley Town, where United laboured to a 1-0 victory against a non-league team. Nobody came out of that one with honours, but Bebe especially managed to perform as if the ball was some strange object that could cause lethal illness if touched. Subsequently, he was kept far away from the first team and was loaned out to Turkey in the summer. Only a few games into this fresh start, he broke his leg. Ouch.


*I don’t actually have a lawyer. I just wanted to say that to make myself sound “in the know”.

This is Real Life, You're Telling Me

Comic books based on a world I can identify as being this one haven’t generally interested me, unless there’s a good hook. I like a bit of escapism in this respect, whether it be Dr Manhattan walking around Mars with his dick out or Frank Castle mowing down rows of gangsters despite being well into his 50s.

Despite that, I found myself enjoying Alex Robinson’s Box Office Poison, even though I essentially thought most of the characters were incredibly unlikeable. Set in mid 90s New York, we initially follow Sherman, recently out of university and working as a clerk in a bookstore, a job which he initially dislikes and later hates.

Sherman, to be blunt, is a bit of a fuckwit and his misfortunes throughout tend to be of his own making. Though we can be sympathetic to his childhood problems (father walking out, mother dying of cancer), his habit of engaging in unsuitable relationships is the root of his inability to get happy. Throughout, I found myself questioning not only why he stuck with his girlfriend, a borderline alcoholic journalist, when he clearly wanted away with someone else. That it apparently came down to some issues with his old man, who seems to have a problem with monogamy, left a feeling of “is that all?”

Our man is also an aspiring writer – but lacks any kind of experience to make it. The one time we get to see his work, it’s a mediocre effort making in-jokes of his job. Also wanting to make it in the creative scene is Sherman’s best friend, Ed, who has long dreamed of working in comics. He gets a small break as an assistant to bitter old man Irving Flavor, who signed a bad contract as a young man and sees dollar none when one of his creations later becomes the star of a hugely successful film franchise. Ed, one of two characters I found myself hoping come out of things OK, takes it upon himself to find some “justice” for his boss, and this becomes one of the main plot strands in the second half of the book.

Where Robinson has his best writing moments is the portrayal of New York as a cruel, harsh place. Albeit one that is apparently nearly entirely occupied by white people, so it seems. We occasionally see two teenage runaway girls in passing (shoplifting, spying on Sherman having sex with his girlfriend) and think little of them until one is left alone by the other and meets a violent fate. The depth of this moment is not made clear until near the end, whereupon it hits hard.

Literary cliches aside, the art is great throughout. It being in black and white suits and some of the scene shifting is brilliant, all of which makes up for scripting shortcomings. Real life might not be as exciting as whatever Batman gets up to, but it's nice to read about people who have lives just as fucked up as your own.

Covering Yourself In Glory

Back in the 60s, when bands were under pressure to knock out an album (or two) every year, cover versions were almost essential to pad out the vinyl. But as time went on, they tended to be more in the realm of dodgy b-sides and album fillers, created in a mindset of “fuck, we’ve ran out of songs/dodgy remixes”.

Now, it tends to be the tool of the X-Factor contestent and crappy indie acts who want to show they know their history. So, in contrast, here's five of my favourites.

Al Green – I Want to Hold Your Hand
Recorded at the start of his career, when he was still prone to getting up to a bit of sauciness rather than preaching the good word. The straight-ahead pop of the Beatles is given a complete makeover in Memphis, making for a giant soul workout of a number.

After the death of Otis Redding, it was Green who took on the mantle of the best male voice in Southern Soul. Motown may have had Marvin, Smokey and Stubbs, but Al was the equal of any of them. His later work would take on a Motown-esque sheen at times, but he’s raw as can be here. The impression that’s given is that while he wants to hold this girl’s hand, he’d like her to hold something else entirely.

Stevie Wonder – We Can Work It Out
At this stage of the game, young Steveland didn’t need to rely on outside sources for material, but we can be glad he did on this occasion. Taking the jangling guitars of the Beatles original and bringing in a healthy dose of funk, young Wonder creates an anthem for the Civil Rights movement.

As with the Al Green number above, it’s testament to the genius of Lennon and McCartney that their songwriting carries off so effortlessly to other genres. Also, is Stevie Wonder the only person in popular music who can make the harmonica not sound like a seabird being sucked into a jet engine? Genius manifests itself in many ways.

The Beatles – Twist and Shout
I listened to the first Beatles album yesterday and while some of it comes across as twee or showing that they were still hedging their bets on becoming the “all round entertainers” that Epstein wanted them to be (as would later work for Cilla Black, sadly), they still managed to keep some aspects of their time as pill-popping, leathered up lads who played mammoth sets in Hamburg.

Twist and Shout still sounds thrilling, and will do until the end of time. In terms of sound and attitude, it’s as punk as anything the Pistols managed. John Lennon, croaking at the end of an all-day recording session, managed to crank out a screaming vocal. Blowing away the cobwebs of Cliff bloody Richard, this was the birth of British Rock and Roll as we know it.

Billy Bragg – Walk Away Renee
Slight cheat here, as it’s not a straight-forward ‘cover’. Instead, Johnny Marr picks out the basic melody of the original Left Banke/Four Tops (this being the b-side to the Levi Stubbs’ Tears single) number while our Bill laments a relationship with a girl.

Of course, this being Bragg, it’s equally funny and sad – when she speaks to him the first time, his nose begins to bleed. It starts well, but she “started going out with Mr Potato Head” and after a spell lamenting, “she cut her hair and I stopped loving her”. Never has the occasional shallowness of love been so brilliantly conveyed.

Top line: “I said ‘I’m the most eligible bachelor in town’/She said ‘yeah, that’s why I can never understand all those silly letters you send’”.

Slowdive – Some Velvet Morning
Forgot the atrocity that was the Primal Scream version, in which Bobby Gillespie finally managed to remove any trace of integrity by wheeling out Kate fucking Moss of all people.

No, Lee Hazelewood’s good work was much better done by Reading’s finest. Neil Halstead sings the verses as if in a dense fog before Rachel Goswell lifts it out for the chorus. Slowdive were amongst the least "pop" of the shoegazers, but here they show they could do something you could (almost) sing along with.

Game For An Idea

I had the misfortune the other week to watch the Max Payne film, living out a peculiar kind of self-masochism by seeing it out till the end. For those who don’t know, it was originally a video game from a decade ago that wasn't too bad. Though the storyline was clichéd beyond belief at times (man loses wife and child, goes mad, discovers huge conspiracy, goes madder still) the gunplay was fun.

On film, however, it doesn't work. You feel detached from the action and matters aren't helped by the fact that Mark Wahlberg isn't really much of an actor. It’s not the first to fall flat either. Quite how anyone thought Super Mario Bros would work as a film is beyond my ken and the end result would suggest everyone involved was equally confused. Same goes for the Street Fighter effort, which wasn't helped by having actors of the pedigree of Jean-Claude Van Damme and Kylie Minogue trying to lift it out of the mire – though I remember seeing an Anime version that took a totally different approach to much more impressive returns.

As an action film, Hitman works fairly well. From the perspective of someone who loved the games, it doesn't, as we despair that Agent 47 engages in shoot outs rather than use stealth. And herein lies the rub: gamers dismiss the film as crap because it’s not like the source material, everyone else has no emotional connection with the characters. No matter – as long as video games are making money, there will always be some lazy arse in the film industry with no decent original ideas who’ll snap up the rights. But wither the Metal Gear game?

From the opposite angle, the film-to-game route is nearly as old as video games themselves. Indeed, when I got my first computer, a much-beloved Sinclair +2 (128k of memory!), it came with a bundle of games called “Screen Heroes”, which was actually mainly dubious versions of TV shows: Miami Vice, Street Hawk and Knight Rider, I recall. But alongside the legendary Daley Thompson’s Super Test and the most baffling game of all time, Frankie Goes to Hollywood, was an incredibly average fighting game built around the-then contemporary Highlander film.

Mercifully, the limits of technology spared us the paradox of a Frenchman playing a Scotsman and a Scotsman playing a Spaniard and instead offered the chance to shuffle around in 2D trying to cut some guy’s head off. But this and others like it set the tone of buying up the license to a current hit film and slapping any old tosh out to try and cash in. One somewhat desperate example was a game for Moore-era Bond flick The Spy Who Loved Me being put out over a decade after the fact. Maybe the rights were going for 20p and they needed a title for a mediocre shooter.

Around the end of the last decade, games seemed to be trying with all they had to actually be something they weren't. The term “interactive movie” was bandied around like Billy-o and the Wing Commander series (itself turned into a wretched film) was a forerunner to this. Entering the world in the early 90s, it gave us very enjoyable space shooters with (for the time) a strong storyline and characters. The first two instalments rank up there with some of the best gaming experiences I've had, and then number III came along. Mark Hammill, Malcolm McDowell, John Rhys-Davies and Thomas F Wilson (Biff to you) stood in front of a load of blue screen and tried to keep straight faces, seemingly swallowing up the entire budget in the process, judging by the quality of the actual parts where you had something to do.

Thankfully, we seem to have dropped that particular craze and settled instead for just using the voices of famous thespians, which seems to be a better way of working. Though the technology used in LA Noire, where the actor’s facial movements are recorded may yet have some legs, even if the expressions used by someone who is lying don’t need the skills of Derren Brown to work out. More on that title when I complete it.

To conclude: games are games, films are films, and let’s not try to get them all mixed up. Hollywood, use your noggins and come up with new concepts. That said, I happen to know of one obscure game from the early 90s that I reckon could make for a great film. If any big shot producers want to throw me fifty grand, I reckon I could knock out a script in a couple of months…

Behind the Wheel

Contributing to a No Ripcord 'Top 100 Debut Albums' feature, I wrote a short piece about Joy Division’s Unknown Pleasures (I’m sure it’s not a major spoiler that it features) and commented that it was a great album to soundtrack driving around a city very late at night.

Driving just for the sake of it is a dying pastime, and for good reason. Petrol prices aren't going to stop rising and the death of the motorcar as we know it surely can’t be far away. It won’t be until a new method of shifting lumps of metal and plastic at a decent speed is discovered that we’ll be able to just head out for a drive.

Thinking of this not only reminded me how much I miss both my car (sob) and driving (cursed health issues), but also how much I used to like going out at 3am for a spin. Bouts of insomnia do have some good points.

Manchester is a particularly good city for this kind of thing. Though extensive renovation and redesign has taken a lot of the grime out of the city, there’s still enough bleak greyness in the flyovers to create a certain atmosphere as you speed through with Shadowplay in the background. Driving down an empty motorway can have a similar effect - it’s almost like you’re living in the front cover of the Comsat Angels’ Waiting For a Miracle album. Hypnotic to the point you need to constantly be aware of what you’re doing and not slip into some kind of trance state.

In contrast, driving out in the countryside on a sunny day offers a totally different experience, though no less pleasing. You swap the Chameleons for Teenage Fanclub, open the windows and put your shades on, if you’re feeling brave. I found the Peak District to be most enjoyable for moments like these, especially when you get off the main roads. There’s something exciting about making it round a corner when one mistake can send you shooting down a somewhat major drop.

But of course, there’s always the bigger risk that you get stuck behind some old git toddling along at 30mph in some piece of crap. “Flat Cap Brigade” was what my dad always called them, and the only plus point is getting a cheap laugh from spotting the inevitable tartan blanket in the back when you finally get past.

As a 17-year-old in West Cumbria, getting a driving license was a must, if only to enable you to get out of town to more exciting vistas. Even though the only wheels I had access to were my mother’s Vauxhall Corsa, it still meant I could go tear-arsing round the numerous country back roads only minutes from home.

I think this side of me can only have been borne from playing games like Out Run when I was an impressionable youth. The image of motoring along in a Ferrari with the ocean by your side remains one I want to live out before my time is up, though I’m a bit flexible on the type of car. I mean, I’d settle for a Porsche 911 or a Lamborghini.

Silver

I’m just too young to remember a time before Alex Ferguson managed Manchester United - in fact, perhaps we should refer to any year prior to 1986 as BF – but I was there at Old Trafford when he marked 25 years in the job and I was in the stand that from that day on bears his name.

What I can, just about, remember is the state of the club in the late 80s: full of players with drinking problems, injury problems and not-good-enough problems. He made some vital early signings (Brian McClair, Steve Bruce), not so vital signings (Viv Anderson, Jim Leighton) and cleared out the dead wood, despite some being fan favourites (Paul McGrath, Norman Whiteside). But he also brought back Mark Hughes, a move he described as giving the fans their “hero” back.

Despite finishing second behind Liverpool in his first full season (albeit by a huge distance), a slip into the mid-table mire followed. Much has been made of the FA Cup 3rd round tie vs Nottingham Forest in December 1989 and the subsequent run that saw our first bit of silverware under the Fergie regime. But for this fan, it didn't say that much. Sure, it was nice to win something, but from watching my “Official History” video, even the nine-year-old me knew it didn't say too much: previous wins in the same competition in 1977, 83 and 85 hadn't led to further glory.

No. The real turning point was a few months later, in a League Cup tie at Arsenal, at that point in the height of their George Graham-inspired powers. League title winners in 1990, they would do it again that season and were known for their rock solid defence and ability to grind out 1-0 victories. And we drubbed them 6-2. I've always been of the belief that the team that day, which featured Irwin, Bruce, Pallister, Ince, Sharpe and McClair, all of whom would play a part in bringing the title home after 26 years, gained a lot of their subsequent confidence that day, a feeling that they could at last compete with the best. Sad to say, Man City’s recent hammering of United could have the same effect.

The rest of Ferguson’s achievements are well listed. I remember when we won the league in 1993, some joker at school put up a load of posters listing the events that had happened in the years between that and our last championship: Berlin Wall coming down, man on the moon, Nelson Mandela being freed etc. The last line read something like “remember, United, it’s not winning the league once that’s important, it’s keeping hold of it”. 12 titles in 18 years has firmly put that one to bed and nearly knocked Liverpool “off their fucking perch”.

Nearly? Well, there’s still the matter of European Cups. We have three, they have five and it’s something they still hold over us. If not for the small matter of Barcelona being the best club in the world, we may well have equalled it, and I sometimes wonder if the pursuit of further glory in this competition is what drives the man on still.

At times, I've despaired at some of his decisions. Getting into a fight he could never win over some horse spunk with some Irish businessmen did nobody any favours, not least because they owned shares in the club which they subsequently sold to the Glazer family, miring the club into debt for the first time in years. That he should then come out in support of the parasitical fucks on several occasions is more depressing still.

Despite that, the man is a football manager and in that regard, he’s the top dog. Even Jose Mourinho, a man not known for his humble nature, stated that he didn’t call Fergie “Sir” or “Mr Ferguson” – he calls him “the Boss”.

Do The Right Thing

Right, to set the scene, I'm moping around Manchester Academy, waiting for a friend to arrive so we can go see Throwing Muses. Across the road, I spy a group of maybe 20 people waiting for the bus. Only I know they’re wasting their time, as that bus isn't coming. And it’s dang cold out there, let me tell you.

How do I know this? Because an hour or so earlier, I'd caught the bus going the other way (heading towards the city), which had taken a huge diversion, missing out about half the usual route. Somewhat baffled by this, though I ended up pretty much where I wanted to be, I glanced at a bus shelter and spotted a small note informing us that services where being changed as the road was being closed down the line due to some Eid-related festivities.

Fine. Only this note wasn't exactly put in a place people would notice it, and was worded in a way that students new to the town would understand – given it listed “Wilmslow Road services” rather than 143, 142, 42 etc etc. It’s stuff like this, and stupidly expensive tram services that are getting another price hike, that make me think GMPTE should be slapped with a wet haddock until they see sense.

Back in the moment, instead of being typically English and minding my own business, I jaunted over the road to explain the situation to the hapless travellers, telling them they had to walk five minutes back down the road to find a bus. Most were confused, especially the aforementioned students who had no idea what or where Rusholme is. But they were soon on their way and hopefully out of the cold.

The reason I'm telling you this is because it actually gave me a palatable sense of well-being to do something, well, something nice for people I had never met before, or doubtfully will meet again. I’m not looking for congrats or kudos – it's just that doing something good is, umm, good. And it reassured me that I’m not an evil clone after all, because if I had been, I'd have just stayed inside, at the bar, pointing and laughing at the poor saps waiting for a bus presumably driven by Godot. Which isn't that bad, I agree, but I assume an evil clone of me would be as equally unmotivated to do anything as I am.

After all that, Throwing Muses were mighty and I came to the conclusion that not only is Kristin Hersh a fab guitar player, but she's also blessed with one of the best screams in rock. I've seen her play before as a solo show and also with 50 Foot Wave, but I found her best of all with her original band. David Narcizo and Bernard Georges were a good a rhythm section as I've seen in ages and a top night was had.

Clone Ranger

Here's something: I have an evil clone.

Really, I'm serious. He’s been in Manchester at least as long as I have, as I can remember only weeks after my arrival my bezzy mate Nicky telling me she’d seen me in the city with some blonde woman. At the time, I dismissed it as mistaken identity, as I'd not been round there for a few days. Then, a year later, while slumped in a pub with my then-girlfriend, her friend turned up looking shocked at my presence.

“I just saw you walking down the street with some girl.”

She was very adamant it had been me. Same style of dress (all black), same style of walk (slouched over, headphones dug firmly in). But as I'd been sat in the exact spot for about an hour, barring trips to the bar, the only answer that came to mind was that I had an evil clone. Naturally, this weighed heavy on my mind, as did the fact that my clone was obviously something of a ladies man. There’s nothing worse than the idea that your clone is having a better time of it than you, trust me, though that train of thought probably explains why that relationship didn't go very far.

A second theory that came into my mind was the possibility that it was actually me, thrown back from the future into my present. This scared me even more, as I knew from the Jean-Claude Van Damme film Timecop that if we ever occupied the same space, we’d die a somewhat horrific death. However, I reasoned that if I ever was thrown back into the past, the first thing I’d do would be to dash to the bookies and place large sums of cash on football results that I already knew the results of.

So after making my mother swear that I had in fact been the only me born that day, the evil clone theory seems the most sound. Despite a few more sightings over the years, he’d slipped my mind until the other day, when my girlfriend spotted him not two hundred feet from the flat and now I'm worried I'm going to get blamed for his villainous doings.

But then I saw an episode of Futurama where Bender meets his own evil clone, Flexo. However, the twist is that it is Bender who is the evil one. What if this is the case for me? Perhaps I’m the one who is supposed to grow a moustache. It would certainly make sense of all those dreams where I rule the world.

Descent into Mediocrity

I know I moan about the fact I’m getting older a lot. Hey, I can’t help it – being fully aware of the futility of existence in a godless universe ruled by chance and indifference, the lost spectre of my youth weighs heavy on my mind.

That, and wondering whether they sprinkle Cheerios with cocaine to make them so addictive. I tell you, I got through about six bowls of the bastards yesterday. I’m glad I haven’t got a dentist, or they’d be giving me a right telling off for that.

1. Last week, whilst passing by the university district of Manchester, I never once got offered a leaflet for some horrific student-related event. Not a big thing, on the surface, but this means that I no longer look young enough to be a student. When I first moved here, I would have all manner of flyers offering cheap shots and a thinly-veiled suggestion of copping off with some young lady fresh into town. I could tell myself that this change is because I’ve perfected my "fuck off and leave me alone" glare, but the harsh, harsh truth is too loud to ignore. Soon, the only stuff I’ll be getting handed to me is inviting me to join SAGA.

2. I have absolutely no idea who anybody is when I happen upon any kind of modern pop culture on TV or newspapers. Essentially, I have turned into my dad circa 1997, when I would be watching MTV2 and he’d ask "who’s that bunch of crap?" unless it was a band from before 1980. People at work talk about singers and actors and I have nothing to offer except a blank look of utter incomprehension. I mean, at least a few years ago I had some vague idea of what the top 40 sounded like.

Partly this may be because I hardly watch any contemporary drama/comedy/film, with the exception of NCIS. I think I watch that because the lead character, Jethro Gibbs, is a silver-haired fox of a man and as my own greyness ascends, I need to find new role models to ensure I don’t become a fat old bastard as I speed into middle age.

3. I just cannot be arsed with new things. My mobile is about six years old and is a piece of crap, frankly, but it’s too much like hard work to get one of those fancy "Smart Phones" that everyone else I know seems to have. Yes, they have all these fancy tools and suchlike but it’s a telephone, and all I really need it for is to talk and send short messages to people. Friends insist I need to invest, and show me all manner of gadgets, like a way it allows you to make the perfect piece of toast, or something, but I remain cold. I’ve only got a flatscreen TV because it makes my Playstation games look better.

Of course, all this may be because I’m still depressed that on my 30th birthday, my hand didn’t start to glow and a young Jenny Agutter didn’t appear to send me off on some mad adventure. Curses.

European Campaign

I’ve been feeling a wee bit more disillusioned than usual recently. This wasn’t helped this morn when I stepped into a newsagent to buy some milk to ensure I had a constant stream of coffee keeping me awake till noon. The front page of the Express had one of their poor hacks "occupying" the garden of one of those protestors down in the Smoke.

Well, I say "poor" hack, but if you take a job with Richard Desmond, then you lose all rights to dignity, self-respect and being able to hold your head up in public.

Although I, and countless others, raised this point, it struck me that the narrative was well and truly set. These people are lazy bums. Although some are actually quite wealthy, as it turns out they bugger off and sleep in hotels every night. Apparently. Oh, and they like drinking coffee and using laptops, so they’re all a bunch of massive hypocrites anyways.

Not that it matters, I suppose, as the story has now moved on to whether we should have a referendum on being in the EU. I felt a bit dirty for agreeing with William Hauge when he said it was "the wrong question at the wrong time". If I didn’t know better, I’d think it was an attempt to move matters on from the economy being screwed, or at least a shot at the "it’s not our fault! It’s their fault!" angle.

But as I say, disillusionment. I think that seed was planted back in 2003, when I happened to be on that march against war in Iraq. To be honest, I was there because I was in London that weekend, visiting a friend and checking out the fantastic Robert Newman’s show. But the day itself was a hell of a sight – I doubt I’ll ever see as many people in one place as I did in Hyde Park that day. I missed Tony Benn’s speech, which pissed me off, as he’s a personal hero of mine.

As history shows, it was all for jack shit, setting in motion a series of thoughts that led to my current belief that we all essentially do as we’re told and accept whatever shite is shovelled into our faces by the press. This means if we did have a vote on the EU, a lot of the thought process of the electorate would be taken wholesale from whatever the Sun or Daily Mail says.

In much the same way, I’m of the belief that the planned strike action by public sector workers is doomed due to how people see them: i.e. lazy, overpaid and in need of sorting out. Whatever the actual issues are about is moot, minds have been made up in the editorial meetings and it trickles down to the street. Which makes the idea of allowing us all a vote on something as complicated and critical as EU membership seem a bit absurd – and I’m including myself in this, as I know jack about the fine points of the matter.

Which means it becomes a question of not just making a decision, but also where you get impartial data to make any kind of informed choice. Answers on a postcard…

The Rock and Roll Years

As anyone who has been in a band before will tell you, it has this way of taking up all your time. Even when you’re not actually directly doing anything to do with it, you end up musing on plans, songs and such. It’s equally exciting and exhausting.

Despite having taken up actually playing music instead of just listening at the age of 16, fired up on a diet of Peter Hook, I never actually got my arse in gear properly till I was in my mid 20s. The university I attended was curiously short of musos, so instead I settled into a routine of heavy drinking, browsing the local record store for cheap vinyl and the odd spot of DJing at the student union. Happy days.

On arriving in Manchester, however, I decided it was time to sort myself out. For the first time in my life, I had a bit of cash to spend, so I bought a decent set-up and stuck an ad in Affleck’s Palace. I got two replies, the second of which came so long after I’d put the note up that I’d totally forgot about it. Luckily, the guy could play guitar really well – without hyperbole he was the best I’d heard.

Not that things started happening overnight. Indeed, there was a period of two months where I didn’t hear from him and I started jamming with another band. But they seemed to be heading in the direction of Oasis-lite and I took off on holiday wondering if the whole idea had been a mistake. Another few months later, the guitarist from before rocked up on my doorstep, stating he wanted to try again. He’d been playing in some wretched punk band and wanted something more. Being a bit older, with a decent record collection, I guess he thought I was the guy. He stated he’d front the band and I agreed, which in hindsight was a mistake, as he was armed with a thin voice that just managed to stay in tune.

Over the next three and a half years, playing in the band was my primary focus, the one thing that got me through the tedium of workdays. We wrote a load of songs and armed with a second guitarist who was limited to Johnny Ramone shapes and a drummer, we managed to play some gigs around town. Some went great, some were in front of ten disinterested students. Before each, my nerves would go into meltdown and I’d wonder what the hell I was doing getting up on stage.

In a stroke of good fortune, our singer/guitarist was also a bit of a whizz when it came to using his 10 track recording unit. When our drummer quit, stating he was going deaf from the volume of our songs, we spent a summer recording an album of songs. Watching them take shape was a huge buzz, as he dropped in little bits of synth, sampled noises and the like. When it was finished, I was proud as hell. It sounded great, and I felt I could state in confidence that we were streets ahead of any other band out there.

When we found another drummer, we got back on the circuit, but it was growing increasingly frustrating as we never seemed to be getting anywhere. As I remember it, our second-to-last gig was to a few hundred people who happened to be there and we went down well to the point we had to play a few ropey covers to satisfy demand for us to play more. Then, weeks later, we were stood in front of a few bored looking punters.

As happens, we argued about new songs. I figured we should push ourselves further – the rhythm guitarist had started using more than barre chords, which was a start. The others figured we should be more punky, as it was “what people wanted”. It wasn’t getting anywhere, certainly with my defining character trait being ‘stubborn’. Eventually, the singer decided to pack it in with vague words of staying in touch – I got the impression his mother saw me as a better influence than his friends back over in Salford.

I was fairly despondent about years of work leading up to not much. Then I found out that the singer and guitarist (who grew up on the same street) had got in another rhythm section and were carrying on under the same name. Finding this out led to a terrible few months where I barely wanted to talk to anyone about anything. In the end, I think they played two more gigs before splitting up, though that knowledge didn’t help sate my anger/depression.

In Head On, Julian Cope talks about the sacking of Mick Finkler, the original guitarist in the Teardrop Explodes. Having spent a couple of years seeing him every day, writing songs and touring with him, he only spoke to him two more times. “Bands are like that”, he says, and he’s dead on. In the three years since I got kicked out of the band, I’ve spoken to the rhythm guitarist once and none of the others. I did hear that the singer was trying to get my phone number, but I wasn’t interested, holding a grudge being another trait of mine. Especially against those who can’t show loyalty.

Now I’m going back in to that world again. Perhaps it helps this time that I’m surrounded by people I can have a conversation with. Having someone who can actually sing fronting the band helps too. Maybe it’ll all turn to ashes again, and I know that if we ever get to the stage of playing gigs, I’ll be hidden away in a corner beforehand, crippled by nerves. But the process of writing songs remains the thrill it always was, and it gets me out of the house, right?

"Romanes eunt domus"?

Monty Python’s Life of Brian is, of course, a work of absolute genius and I heap nothing but scorn on those who disagree. I’m a bit like that, you see.

Therefore, I was keen to tune in and watch BBC4s feature-length Holy Flying Circus, a retelling of sorts of the fuss made over it on it’s release in 1979, for which we can thank George Harrison, who stumped up the cash personally to ensure it’s completion. For that alone, his post-Beatles career is more worthy than any of the other three. Ringo gets second place for narrating Thomas the Tank Engine. George had the best Simpsons cameo too.

Moving back on topic, Holy Flying Circus wasn't an entirely serious portrayal, perhaps fittingly so. Where it was accurate was having Michael Palin shown as the Nicest Guy In The World, which he obviously is, with only Dave Grohl perhaps challenging for the title. His struggles to make sense of the growing madness around him was brought into sharp relief by getting the actor portraying Terry Jones to also show up as his wife. Quite what Mrs Palin thinks of that would be interesting to know.

A lot of the key scenes were between Palin and John Cleese, who was nailed down brilliantly, albeit by an actor a tad too short (talk about nit-picking…) It was noted by the programme itself that this performance was more playing Cleese-as-Fawlty than the man himself, but I was reminded more of some of the man’s Python creations. Especially brought to mind was how his contrary attitude was like his role in the Argument Sketch*.

The rest of the team were less seen, but still well acted. Steve Punt as Eric Idle may be a bit old, but got some great lines, including one where he mentions to Tim Rice that he’d like to write a musical someday. Graham Chapman was written as a thoughtful, quiet individual, Terry Gilliam as slightly unhinged, thinking up animations. The best of these was having the Python’s thinking up jokes about Jesus to amuse Satan, though Chapman manages to cross even that line.

It all builds up to the one section with a steady basis in reality, with Cleese and Palin debating their film with a bishop and reformed pisshead Malcolm Muggeridge. As has been said many a time, the Python chaps treated the whole thing very seriously in defence of their art, while the God Squad remained condescending. In 2011 it’s easy to see them acting like a right part of bellends, but I’m not entirely certain the verdict at the time that Python "won" was as clear-cut as was made out here.

Where the film did fall down was some of the peripheral characters. Getting a bunch of oddballs to play those protesting on religious grounds seemed a bit of a cheap shot, and their "revelation" at the end was a scriptwriting cliché we could have done without. The producer of the debate show was also constantly irritating, unfortunately reminding me of the boss from the IT Crowd in every worst possible way.

*No it isn't.

Stoned Love

It’s finally happened, then. The Stone Roses will haul their creaking bones on stage at last, and bash through their significant back catalogue to hordes of 40-something men whose Joe Bloggs t-shirts and baggy jeans will need serious readjustment to fit their, ahem, more ample current frames.

Actually, I’m being a tad harsh there. I know a fair few people my own age (and younger) who’ll be hitting "redial" constantly on Friday morn, and the band themselves were a vital part of my musical education – I spent many hours learning the basslines from the first album, which still stands up to musical scrutiny.

All the same, when I think of the band as a working concern, they seem to belong to a very specific moment in time. 1989-90, to be exact. It’s not exclusive to them, of course. One of the reasons why I always reckoned Paul Weller never reformed the Jam was that they had their moment in time (77-82) and to try to recreate it in a different world would be ridiculous.

On a human level, it is nice to see that they all buried the hatchet, kissed and made up. At their peak, the band were three incredibly talented musicians fronted by a guy whose lack of vocal skills was made up by space age levels of charisma. It’ll remain a constant shame that they couldn't follow up their superb early work, due to record label issues, and that the long wait resulted in something as average as Second Coming. Despite the odd strong song (Ten Storey Love Song), the main thing I take from it now is that if the band write new material, John Squire shouldn't handle lyrics. See also: Seahorses, the.

But I’m selfish. I liked the Stone Roses to exist solely in the past, in the memories of listening to the first album for the first time and being captivated, wanting to play songs like that. I’m not sure seeing a bunch of guys knocking on 50s door is really something I want to add to my mental picture – although, to give Reni his due, he looks in really good nick.

Reading all this back, I've just come to the conclusion that the whole affair is essentially about a group of people reliving their younger days, and another group channelling that same feeling. Is it really about the music? Probably not. So that just makes me a miserable sod who should get over themselves. Arse. Ah well, there’s always the Smiths, hey?

Welcome to the Occupation

There’s an excellent post over at The Downward Spiral about the people currently engaging in the protests at Wall Street. It notes that these are people of a certain generation, the one after Generation X, that have done all they were told to: they studied hard, they went to college, only to be told "ah, there’s no jobs, no money, so…erm, hard luck."

And to give those folk over in New York and elsewhere in the world their due, they’re doing something about it. It may turn out to be a futile gesture, but there’s always the hope momentum gathers. All of which gave me pause to thought, and what I did conclude was: "Hold on, this is my generation. Those are my peers, sort of, sleeping on the streets in protest."

See, I’ve always found it hard to connect with my own age group. Growing up, the three things that mattered to me were a) football b) computer games and c) music. With the first, nobody else at my school supported my team. The second involved not needing other people, in the main, and on the third, I took my cues from friends of my dad, who wisely steered me down the route of listening to the Smiths, Joy Division and Motown. They all seemed streets ahead of whatever the NME was pushing at the time.

But anyways: thinking about the whole "Occupy" movement and the possibility of the collapse of society into a kind of Mad Max scenario, I’m sorry to say the main thought that came to my head was "fuck, how am I going to play the latest Fallout game if there’s no electricity?" and began to run through the maths of how big a windmill you need on the roof to power a 32 inch TV and Playstation. Has to be that, as it’s not like you can go down the solar power route in Northern England. That’s not right, is it? A sense of perspective is desperately needed at times such as these.

All the same, it has been fun to see how the right-wing sections of the press react to this. They seem torn between dismissing people sleeping on Wall Street as a bunch of bums who need a wash and a job, but at the same time needing to discredit them before they grow into anything a tad more serious.

Which reminds me, to return to an issue I brought up the other week, of how amused I get when I see the word "Marxist" thrown around – I’m sure it would amuse old Karl to see that some thoughts he had 150 years ago can still cause ripples of fear amongst the great and good. More amused, I’m sure, than Eric Blair would have been to see the term "Orwellian" thrown around without due care by people whose knowledge of 1984 may have been gathered from skimming the plot synopsis on Wikipedia.

Happy Engine

Possibly as a flipside of often getting easily irritated by minor things, I'm also very easily pleased. Look at that picture on the left - it's completely brilliant. The wee train has a smile and everything. I could look at that pic for ages - smiling at the happy folk disembarking: the woman with her shopping basket, holding her daughters hand, the fella with the bowling hat and another holding some flowers - is he off on a date? Who knows! But I'll spend a good 20 minutes thinking about it. It's also got that late 70s/early 80s drawing style that has a wonderful charm and innocence to it.

I found that picture on a blog of a guy who decided to visit every station on the Merseyrail network, which I also found fantastic. You can find him at merseytart.com, if you're a bit like me and can spend an hour reading about how pleasant (or not) a railway station is. I'd be half tempted to do one for the Manchester Metrolink if I had the energy. And if it wasn't for the fact that the Metrolink is expensive. And shit.

Wind Turbines Of The Mind

Because I had the sense to book Friday off work, I’m half way through the working week, which is something of a relief. During a tedious meeting discussing matters such as "corporate restructuring", the issues of which may as well be about nuclear fission as far as I'm concerned, my mind wandered. From what I remember, I went over the following:

1.
I’m a sarky fucker, a facet of my personality I’m proud enough to own up to. “Sarcasm is the lowest form of wit” come the words of the sanctimonious. Well, comes my response, that’s good, as a lot of the time I can’t be arsed thinking of anything too heavy, especially when I’m trying to piss you off.

2.
Clearly, black is the coolest colour to wear. This is why Captain Black from Captain Scarlet and the Mysterons is one of the top 10 style icons of all time. And if you wear a large black overcoat, then you’re automatically kick-arse, unless it’s leather, in which case you just look like Herr Flick from Allo’ Allo’ (the Punisher being the notable exception).

3.
Having picked up a copy of Tiger Woods PGA Tour 12 on Sunday, I attempted to create a version of me that could compete for the top golf prizes in the world that exists in my Playstation. Looking up from her book, the good lady noted I looked like a crazy redneck serial killer. Tragically, she was right and everytime he/I takes to the tee, I expect the distant sound of banjo.

4.
I can’t help but wonder how much I’m mellowing with age. On Sunday, while leaving to go check out Stockport Vintage Market, there was a somewhat abusive and obnoxious note pinned in the hallway from one of the other residents stating the above mentioned good lady had been amiss with her parking, ensuring others were unable to enter/exit their automobiles with ease.

Putting it to the back of mind until our return, I first checked the apparent problem. It became immediately obvious that there was enough space to park a Transit van and still have space to unload a pair of sumo wrestlers from the side door. Somewhere in my forehead, a vein twitched.

Now, ten years ago, I think I might have exploded in rage and demanded an audience with said note writer to regale them with my thoughts on their attitude, parentage and relations with their mother with a healthy dose of Anglo-Saxon. But being over 30 years old, I instead keep the blood pressure low and informed the letting agency of the incident. That’ll learn ‘em.

5.
I've no idea why I’m writing this blog. I really don’t. I only started it up because a friend started one and wanted a “follower”. I notice she abandoned the concept a long time ago, but I've stuck at it for reasons totally beyond my ken. Partly, I think, it’s to keep my hand in the whole “writing” thing until such a time comes where I feel I’m capable of doing something more constructive.

That said, I’m constantly amused when I see the far-flung places people who pass by are from, such as Russia, South Korea and India. I like to assume it’s the same person from each of those countries every time and make up little stories in my head about who they are. Unless you're one of the readers from either Australia or Canada - I know exactly what you're like...

Quiz Whizz

When the dark clouds of boredom begin to gather in my living room, I’ve recently found myself more and more looking to the Challenge channel as a source of cheap and cheerful laughs.

For those not in the know (i.e. all you bods not from the UK), Challenge seems to have taken it upon themselves to repeat the game shows of my youth. This is, of course, absolutely brilliant, as it allows us to look through a window back to a time where being on the box was something of a novelty, instead of something any lunatic can get away with. Our choice cuts include:

Bullseye
Darts-themed antics with top "comic"/racist Jim Bowen. Teams of two gathered from the country's top pubs compete for various prizes from "Bully’s Prize Board" before deciding whether to gamble on the big mystery prize, which would generally be a holiday or a speedboat/caravan. The latter has since been the subject of jokes from Peter Kay, who nicked it from a routine Frank Skinner was doing in the mid 90s. Key aspect was the reassuring tones of scorer Tony Green, a man whom David Baddiel believed was the ideal figure to sort out any international conflict, such was the calming affect he had.

Catch Phase
Presented, at it’s peak, by top "comic" Roy Walker, in which we were urged to "say what we see" from a series of badly drawn computer graphics featuring the ever-affable Mr Chips. Silver-haired fox Walker would often throw out never-overused catchphrases of his own ("Say what you see" "It’s good, but it’s not right"). Perhaps more infamous now for a animated graphic that appeared to show the robotic Mr Chips ‘buffing the happy lamp’, as they say, which can be viewed on YouTube.

Family Fortunes
Still going in crap celebrity format presented by Boltonian twat Vernon Kay – it was much better when hosted by top "comic" Les Dennis* in the late 80s-early 90s. Two family groups of five would risk eternal grudges by attempting to guess the results of surveys on various topics. The winning team would then run the gauntlet of the final round, where they could win a few grand and potentially a car that looked like a knock off version of a Ford Sierra. Often appeared as a vehicle for the host to show off his Mavis-from-Coronation-Street impression.

What I take the most from watching these is that all the members of public appear genuinely surprised to be on television, often looking at the camera from the side of their eye in a confused/nervous manner. Compare that to these days, where it appears that everyone has some kind of emotional trauma ("My dog was serving as a sniffer for the Marines in Iraq and was killed by a suicide bomber cat") that merits them being on the show and not knowing that Queen Victoria didn’t have her head cut off. They almost appear like they think they deserve to win, when if Ray and Vera won £250 on Bullseye, they considered it a "great half days work" and state "we’ve had a lovely time".

So thank you, Challenge, for reminding me of a time of bad jumpers, bad facial hair and bad beer bellies but also one where the game show was one of true human interest and entertainment. Now, I’d be grateful if you could start showing Blockbusters again, but this time at a reasonable hour.

*I’m actually being a wee bit harsh on Les here, as he showed himself to be a great sport when he appeared on Bang Bang It’s Reeves and Mortimer in their "The Club" sketch as a special guest who has to flee when Chris the Bouncer’s "fat mam" breaks loose and wants to have sex with him.

"Is a Dream a Lie If It Don't Come True?"

I first became vaguely aware of the concept of "Peak Oil" in my teens, when reading an old interview with Joe Strummer from the Clash's heyday. He informed the interviewer that there was only 70 years of oil left. So, the interview mused, 70 years to find an alternative energy source? No, said Joe, 70 years to rock and roll.

Sadly, Strummer never lived to see whether he was on the money or not but his (perhaps semi-serious) attitude seems to have been taken on wholesale by many major world governments. By all estimates I've ever seen, we've hit the peak production of oil. Much as it pains me to say, as a lover of 80s sports cars, but we're never going to be paying less than £1 for a litre of petrol ever again (non-British readers may wish to use a currency converter to compare - last time I checked it's around £1.33 per litre).

The comedian and novelist Robert Newman made an excellent stand up show The History of Oil that also worked as a documentary about our relationship with that particular fossil fuel, including an interesting angle that World War One was fought, in part, over oil supplies.

More recently, I've been reading up on a blog entitled The Downward Spiral, by some American guy who isn't Bill Hicks. Though he doesn't have the wisecracking humour of the dead comedian he isn't, he does have the same line of indignant anger at those running his country.

His blog is subtitled "A Requiem for the American Dream", which is interesting in itself, as that concept is one that often appears something of a cliche to us left behind in the old world. Being British and brought up in a land where the class structure still means something, it appeared to me that the States had just replaced that with a new breed of ruling class. Instead of essentially telling people to know their place and shut up, Americans got fed the idea that they too could one day rise to the top.

With economic hardships continuing to tighten their grip, this hack wonders whether our friends across the pond will start to raise their heads above the parapets more to question just what the fuck is going on. It may be a long road, but the man behind The Downward Spiral shows that there are voices out there. I recommend taking a read.

Taking a Chance

Anyways, so it goes like this: Gill Grissom is chasing after the Green Goblin, because the latter has been knocking up funny money in Los Angeles. All the while, the band who told everyone to "Wang Chung tonight" soundtracks matters with their own unique brand of 80s rock.

Alright, not the best synopsis. But as I've recently mentioned To Live and Die In L.A. a couple of times recently, I thought I’d jot down a few words. To surmise in a tad more detail: Secret Service agent Richard Chance wants to snare expert counterfeiter Eric Masters. Both are a bit "on the edge", as a doctor would say: Chance base jumps off bridges for kicks, Masters creates works of art, then burns them. There’s probably some kind of metaphor at work here, and you may have also spotted the symbolism with their names – Chance takes chances while Masters is a master at his work. Brilliant.

Chance’s state of mind isn't helped when his best friend and partner decides to go snooping round Master’s workshop without back up and catches a bad case of ‘Shotinheaditis’. Not that he was helping his odds by being three days from retirement and stating at the start of the movie (when he and Chance saved El Prez from a terrorist) that he’s "too old for this shit". Honestly, a bit of genre savviness could have saved everyone a lot of trouble.

Now even more unhinged and determined to catch Masters, Chance is teamed up with idealistic rookie John Vukovich, who he drags along on his increasingly desperate plays. These include leaning on his ex-con informant/reluctant lover, whom he threatens to revoke their parole unless she keeps coming up with leads.

This was seen as a return to form for Friedkin, who’d entered a bit of a slump following his 70s peak when he directed The French Connection and The Exorcist, and as he captured the feeling of a freezing New York winter, he gets a feel of a smog-ridden LA down pat. He’s also helped by two great leads: Petersen gives his character a feeling of self-belief bordering on thinking he’s invincible. After a car chase, and surrounded by armed mystery men, it seems as if the game is up for Chance: instead, he ploughs the wrong way down the motorway, much to the screams of terror from his partner.

Better still, however, is Willem Defoe as Masters. He’s in full-on creepy mode here, as a man who has no second thoughts of killing anybody who gets in the way of business. Despite that, there’s a sense of realism as he gets a few good hidings when he does try to act the enforcer, being saved by luck or his henchman.

The support cast is solid, with my particular favourite being Dean Stockwell as Masters’ sleazy lawyer. At one point, he explains he got a client off a serious charge by stating the search warrant had the house colour incorrect. He waves away this, as well as his work with a murderous counterfeiter, as "just business" that somebody else would do if he didn't. John Pankow is also great as Vukovich, the hapless agent caught up in Chance’s insanity, slowly getting in way too deep as matters move towards an inevitably messy conclusion. It’s also a bit of a shocker, one of the few times I almost jumped up in surprise from a film.

Over the weekend, I re-watched L.A. Confidential, and at times To Live and Die seems a spiritual prequel/sequel – showing the city 30 years on. The music, by Wang Chung, is certainly a far cry from Dean Martin, all harsh keyboards, crashing synth drums. They do a good enough job, with the title track especially standing out as a classic bit of 80s pop.

But mostly, to compare the two films shows how faster life got. Richard Chance seems to be constantly moving, in need of another rush. Strangely, the car chase itself appears only speedy by the nature of it’s editing: the cars themselves are bog standard saloons rather than exotic sports cars, perhaps playing on expectations after earlier sightings of Masters’ Ferrari.

As a package, it screams "1985" in the same way an episode of Miami Vice might, but manages to overcome it's period details. In fact, I'm a little surprised that it hasn't been remade. Surprised, and probably very glad.

Fresh Meat is Murder

If, like me, you were once a student in one of the many venerable establishments of higher education across the United Kingdom, then it’s easy to slip into a kind of revere about a halcyon time before the grim reality of real life came along.

Absolute crap like Fresh Meat appeals to this. It’s been given the red carpet treatment on account of being from the biros of Armstrong and Bain, the guys who wrote Peep Show. I never really bought into the fandom for that show, but they did also work with Chris Morris on Four Lions, which I did enjoy. Plus anyone who has The Thick Of It in their credits earns plenty of respect from me.

But this? It comes across as something they’ve knocked out over a few liquid lunches while picking up some cheques to fund other projects.

Obviously, we get a cliché or two. There’s the geek, of course, who’s also useless at trying to pick up the cute girl from his course, there’s the lecturer desperate to be seen as hip by the students and there’s the obnoxious fuckwit who thinks he’s a lot funnier than he is. In an inspired piece of casting, the last one is played by Jack Whitehall.

Add in to that the posh lads who deride the people of Manchester as "sweaty Shaun Ryders" and the ditzy girl who pretends (?) to forget she has her own car. Really, chaps, is this the best you can do?

The root problem, I would suggest, is that the second you graduate you lose all touch with student life. You have to adjust to not being able to go on the piss four nights a week as you have to haul your sorry arse into work. Plus, as I found to my cost, you actually get older and your body decides to extract grisly revenge on three years of abuse. Also, you end up getting really pissed off with students for filling the buses up every morning after you’ve enjoyed a summer of relatively easy travel. By being a lot older than the main characters in the world they’ve created, the writers are limited to using pre-existing stereotypes.

The plot for the episode, such as it was, centred on the organisation and execution of a party. That it doesn’t go as well as planned is to be expected. It would appear that in the first episode, simmering sexual tension had been established between two characters. But oh no, the female half of that would-be-coupling actually has a boyfriend that she’s kept quiet about. And he’s a right bit of rough-and-tumble with an aggressive stance against students. That’s because he’s working class, and they’re not, I guess. The whole set-up was tiresome from start to finish: I would have been more impressed if the student chap had stuck the head on his would-be love rival.

Instead, we had to make do with yet another horrific cliché as he tried to drown out the sounds of their rampant shagging the next morning with the radio. But guess what? All he hears is more stuff to remind him of his sorry situation – an advert raising awareness of unplanned pregnancies and an Aerosmith song.

It would have been more excusable if this had been one of those Channel 4 Comedy Lab experiments that give a couple of new writers a chance to prove themselves. But this is the work of supposedly leading lights in British TV comedy. Comparisons to The Young Ones are entirely misleading: that was a show that used a vague pretext of student life to put a set of caricatures into absurd situations (finding a nuclear bomb in the kitchen, being held hostage by a psychotic bank robber). Fresh Meat just comes across as the work of two middle aged guys trying far too hard to appeal to a young demographic. Perhaps viewers aged 16-21 will find something to enjoy here, others may find themselves shaking their heads and muttering "student wankers".

Everybody Do The Knee-Jerk

It’s been highly amusing in the last week or so to see certain sections of the media get themselves in a right state about a supposed "BBC diktat" ordering staff to stop using BC and AD when referring to a year in favour of CE and BCE. That’s Common Era and Before Common Era, apparently.

Naturally, the story is a load of complete unadulterated bollocks. No surprises there. You’d think they would have learned a lesson after the whole Jeremy Vine non-scandal the other week – a devout Christian, he’d joked on his Twitter feed that he’d needed permission from his bosses to play a hymn on his show. Cue meltdown from sections of the press, the readers of which also tend to be the same reactionary lunatics who call up Vine on a weekday afternoon. You get the feeling they’d be equally unhappy if the BBC hadn't allowed someone to play a selection from Marching Songs of the Third Reich. Political Correctness gone mad.

Lessons weren't learned in any case, and so the AD/CE story rolled on. My favourite quote was one infamous hack stating that this was clearly evidence of a "Marxist plot to destroy civilisation from within".

Fantastic. I mean, seriously, you could almost admire someone for writing that, submitting it to the subs and collecting his pay – all with a straight face! I’d have lost it at the first stage, probably at the point where the sub raised their eyebrow and said "seriously?" However, the writer in question would appear to be very serious indeed, so instead I just feel sorry for them.

Why pity? Well, I can dig a good conspiracy theory as much as the next open-minded fellow. Hell, that was half the point of the Deus Ex and Metal Gear Solid games. But Marxist plot? In reality? Really? I’d have been more inclined to give them the time of day if he’d instead written it was a scheme by Martians to soften up humanity’s spirit before an invasion scheduled for 2015 (CE, natch).

Maybe it’s because I live in the grim North, and not down that London, where the cocaine is fair trade I’m told. Maybe there is a ruthless cabal of hardline Marxists who have taken up positions of power and influence in the media and government. Before you know it, they’ll be coming for us to send us all off to the gulags they’ll set up in the frozen wastelands of, umm, Scotland.

Or, instead, it could be the rantings of somebody whose sanity filter is on the blink. Personally, I wish there was a bit more of a left-wing feel to British politics but being born in 1981, I've yet to see much of anything but us swinging more and more to the kind of ultra-capitalism that’s gotten the States into the mess they’re in. Utilities and railways sold off, university education going from costing nothing to tens of thousands of pounds, cuts made to local authorities. Aye, the spirit of Karl Marx is doubtless sat back somewhere, probably at BBC HQ, rubbing his hands and whispering "yes, yes… it’s all coming together".

Actually, so far away are we from any kind of Socialist Nightmare that I’d not be surprised if before every commercial break we got a shot of Davey Cameron saying "Listen up, peasants: spend your money on some of the crap you’re about to see. I’m not asking, I’m telling, or else I’ll stick another 10p tax on those fags and tins of cheap lager I’m told you’re all so fond of."

At least there’s still the NHS, thankfully. For those unaware, a few months ago I had a random fit at work, collapsed in a heap and was carted off to the local Accident and Emergency. Since then, efforts are being made to ensure there’s nothing wrong with me and it was just the kind of one-off event that can happen to anyone. A couple of days ago, as part of this, I had an ultrasound scan of my heart, which pretty much works in the same way as the scans they do of a baby in the womb.

To say it was weird seeing it pumping away inside my chest is an understatement. Like most, I try not to think too much of what’s going on underneath my skin a lot of the time. Beneath this devilishly handsome and toned exterior (cough) is a lot of soft, squishy stuff that can easily go wrong and inevitably will do at some point.

For now, though, my heart seemed to be ticking over quite nicely and seeing it do so gave me a strange sense of calm. I even wanted to wave at the screen and say "Hey you! Thanks for keeping me alive and all". But I didn't, because the nurse would have given me a strange look and maybe even sent me off for some psychiatric evaluation.

To surmise the point of this anecdote: the NHS is bloody great, as I don’t even want to think about how much my insurance premiums would have gone up if I’d been American. Here in Blighty, it’s not a problem. Of course there’s problems with it – an organisation that size is never going to be perfectly efficient – but it’s there when you need it and you don’t need to fret about expense if you’re not rich and get really sick. So nice one and thanks, Nye Bevan.