Space Issues

Perhaps the first game that showed me the possibilities of video games as a storytelling device, and therefore one of the most important games in my life ever, was Wing Commander, released in 1990 as a project from the mind of one Chris Roberts.

It was originally released in 1990, but I came to it a few years later. Despite that, it still took me back with it graphics and the way the action held together. In brief: you were a rookie pilot doing your bit for the people of Earth in a huge war in space against the ruthless Kilrathi, who were anthropomorphic cat folk with a tough line in tradition and honour.

In hindsight, the story was incredibly linear, but by simple virtue of being able to choose your own name and "callsign" it offered a layer of immersion that was very rewarding for the time. You were thrown right onto the front as part of the crew of the Tigers Claw, most the "storyline" taking place in the bar.

Drink helps with the space shakes, I'm told.

Here, your fellow pilots would offer advice and inform you of the how the war is going, while the old guy behind the bar would regale tales of his own days of action. The chalkboard kept track of your kills, while medals and promotions were up for grabs if you showed your style. It may seem all very quaint from this distance, but it was well-written and offered new opportunities for the medium.

The success of Wing Commander meant a sequel quickly followed in 1991. In this, our hero finds his hero status relinquished due to odd circumstances, and he's packed off for ten years doing nothing work. Obviously, he finds his way back to the action to earn a chance to clear his name and save Earth, again. I can only assume Roberts got a bit excited, as the storyline offered more depth, with romantic interludes (yuck!), a Kilrathi defector on the crew and a human traitor in the ranks. Larks!

Instead of denying it, why not embrace death? It is your only friend now.

There was a fair bit of skill needed in the games: one hand on the joystick with a finger and thumb needed for guns and missiles, with your other hand on the keyboard ready to issue commands to your wing partner, swap weapons and chose targets. The different mission types, ships and colleagues all added variation and during the debriefs, it felt good when the Chief offered congrats for a job well done.

Unfortunately, for the third instalment, Chris Roberts fancied himself as George Lucas and wanted to make the scenes between missions all Full Motion Video. FMV had the double issue of being incredibly expensive and it took bloody ages to load up every scene. Also, within a few years as technology moved on, it all tended to look a bit ropey. Another of my favourite games, Gabriel Knight: Sins of the Fathers, went down the same path with the second in the series, The Beast Within, which has dated ten times worse than the older game.

At least 1994's Wing Commander III managed to snare some decent acting talent: Mark Hamill, John Rhys-Davies and Malcolm McDowell all rocked up to do credible jobs to the degree there were additional sequels. I had lost interest, though - the appeal of the first two in the series was that the main guy had MY name and I read his lines in MY voice. Suddenly, he looked and sounded like Mark Hamill and was called Christopher Blair, which is a frankly shite name for the hero of a space war hero.

Back in space again, eh? Bloody typecasting!

There was an attempt to launch a film franchise, of which we'll say no more.

Take a Rocket Ship to Mars

Tags are so often misleading. I love a lot of the Shoegazing bands of the early 1990s: Ride, Slowdive, Lush, Pale Saints... but one band is often lumped in with them, with no real reason beyond journalistic laziness.

Sure, on a casual listen, Catherine Wheel's first album Ferment almost fit in with that. It had loud guitars that droned at moments and Rob Dickinson's vocals could at times be a little dreamy. Yet, there was plenty to separate them from that whole scene, which may explain why they outlived many of their contemporaries and also the relative success they enjoyed in the States that others didn't.

For starters, the band were from Great Yarmouth, Norfolk - hardly rock and roll heartland, and miles away from London or the then-hip Manchester or Thames Valley heartlands. Dickinson at least was well into his mid 20s by the time their debut came out in 1992, having spent time working designing for Lotus prior. Perhaps this prior experience came out in the song Black Metallic, the video for which got some play on MTV and was lyrically written about the love of a car. 

Where the quartet, Dickinson alongside Brian Futter (lead guitar), Dave Hawes (bass) and Neil Sims (bass), had was the ability to properly rock out from the dream status of their contemporaries. It also helped that in their quieter moments, they were guided by Tim Friese-Green, who had helped Talk Talk make some of the most amazing music of recent history. 

The band were huge fans of Talk Talk, and under his guiding hand made a wondrous entrance to the world. I Want to Touch You showed the band could do sexy and the title track put down their abilities to create quiet/loud dynamics. I've long been keen on putting that song on compilation albums for people, chuckling to myself that the innocent receiver will crank up the volume, only to kill their ears at the moment the sonic assault cuts in. 

As they would frequently do, the band toured North America extensively, and perhaps toughened up their musical muscles as 1993's Chrome shoved the band as far away from any perceived roots - though those paying attention to their b-sides including covers of Husker Du might not have been surprised. Producer Gil Norton wiped away a lot of the density of their earlier work in favour of a more, well, metallic sound, though Show Me Mary was a great hit single that never was. 

With the double hit of Ursa Major Space Station and Fripp, the band hit heights that surely blew any competition out of the water - Dickinson sighing that "I'll follow you through time, 'till it's not worth living" over a crescendo of guitars and drums that demand to be heard loud is a frankly sublime moment . That it never crossed over to a bigger audience seems unjust beyond words. 

1995's Happy Days had a very American Alt-Rock edge to it, much more in kilter with bands like the Smashing Pumpkins. Opener God Inside My Head featured some very heavy playing and some uncharacteristic metal-eseque grunting from Dickinson.

At it's best, it was magnificent, as with the quietly fuming Eat My Dust You Insensitive Fuck, the funny Shocking and the hook-filled Judy Staring at the Sun, which featured Belly singer Tanya Donnelly on vocals, and might have done better as a single not for the fact it was about a drug addict. Another single, Waydown got some MTV notice with a somewhat literal air-crash themed video, but mainstream acceptance remained out of reach.

A tendency to place as many "new" songs as b-sides had created a fair old amount of non-album material over the years, and the compilation Like Cats and Dogs was released to warmer reviews than Happy Days. Featuring most pastoral material, it set the tone for the next album, which would turn out to be their masterpiece. They even made Pink Floyd sound good, with a version of Wish You Were Here.

Adam and Eve, out in 1997, should have been "the" album. As usual, it didn't work out that way. Not that they were getting much help - legend says Rolling Stone were all set to give them a high score in the review, only for it to get marked down in the edit. Quite why remains a mystery, as in terms of music in 1997, for me, only Mansun's Six comes close. OK Computer looks like a bunch of teenage angst in comparison, as while both have a hint of prog, Adam and Eve manages to keep things interesting, even when all but two of the 13 songs clock in at over five minutes.

I simply cannot emphasise how essential the album is. If you have an interest in rock music, alternative or mainstream, seek out Adam and Eve now. It is perhaps a complete a piece of work as can be imagined. The entire band is on top form and I can't write anymore than to suggest you go listen to it in one sitting and wonder how you did without it beforehand.

But, when all came down perhaps they knew the chance had gone. It wasn't until 2000 before they reappeared. When the band took up things again, they had dispensed with bassist Hawes and got Friese-Green back in the producer's chair to make Wishville. Sadly, it was a lax effort and not long after, the band went on a hiatus from which they have not yet returned. 

Subsequently, Dickinson released a solo album (Fresh Wine for the Horses) in 2005 but more recently spends his time with his Porsche 911 renovation business in Los Angeles, going back to his original trade. Video footage suggests he looks annoyingly good for his age and takes great pride in his work. On a more musical tint, he appeared on two tracks of the 2011 album These Hopeful Machines by US electro artist BT. 

Past Amusements

Finding myself in a nostalgic mood, I thought back to days spent in amusement arcades. My hometown only had one, and it was full of fruit machines, one-armed bandits and the like. I had no interest in them. I had to wait for our holidays to Butlins in Ayr for those kind of kicks.

Back in the 1980s, home computers were still rather basic. My faithful old Sinclair +2, with it's massive 128k of memory, brought me many hours of gaming joy, but an arcade offered kicks on a whole new level. In the days of HD gaming with a Playstation and a decent sized TV, it seems like a different world that we had to leave the home to get gaming with full colour and amazing sounds.

As an aside, one time we swapped the joys of Ayr for the Pontins, in Southport. While in the arcade, playing what I remember as a kind of Spy Hunter clone, I was pushed aside by a bigger boy (I was seven) who took my turn. I was found in tears by my cousin, who was nine years older than me and a bit more "handy". Within minutes, I had my turn back and a few extra 20p pieces for my trouble. So, for you, big man, my hero ever since, here are my choice arcade classics on which many a coin was spent.

Out Run

Bloody Sunday drivers!

You see, living in a small town in the back end of nowhere, we didn't have much in the way of glamour. Out Run offered a whole warehouse of it. Drive a Ferrari, with a girl beside you, racing across exotic locations at high speed. What more could I want?

The selling point, I think I can state with authority, was the soundtrack. Talk to someone (OK, a man) of my age and play Magical Sound Shower and you'll see them glaze over.

I remember the first time I played Out Run. It was in Blackpool, on a day trip, and you had to sit in a car shaped cabinet in which my feet just touched the pedals - lucky I was tall for my age. As it happened, I wiped out on the first corner and stormed off in a sulk before my dad told me that didn't mean it was game over. Alas, the wasted seconds did mean it soon was.

Rampage

High rise living ain't too bad. Unless this happens.

So, some bizarre accident turns you into a huge monster. The obvious response is to destroy just about every city in the USA. I'm sure we can all relate to the premise that Rampage brought us.

Playing either a giant ape, lizard or wolf, the mission was to just destroy as much as possible, while avoiding the unwanted attentions of the military, who don't take kindly to your attempts at town planning. 

I'm not sure how "new" it was that you could have three players going at the same time was, but it felt amazing at the time. It meant my moaning brother could join in, though my dad remained constantly useless and would generally skulk off back to the bar area after being defeated early doors. On the plus side, it meant random strangers could join in - nice way to make friends amongst the usual "entertainment" that a holiday at Butlins involved.

Operation Wolf

What this had, which I'd never seen before, was a copy of a Uzi submachine gun attached to the cabinet. You had to aim with this to kill all the mooks that were unfortunate enough to cross your sights, which seemed revolutionary at the time.

Another quiet trip to the shops ruined, then

Needless to say, there was a lot of killing to be done if you were to rescue the hostages that had been taken for a reason I can't remember, if there even was one. All that mattered was that they were there, and about 5000 soldiers needed to be slaughtered to get to them. Not that I ever got to the end. No, I saw this instead:

Shouldn't have had that kebab last night, eh?

At least they were polite about your death. 

Power Games

If, like me, you live in the United Kingdom, you'll be aware that we currently have a bunch of tossers in charge. A load of inept arseholes who couldn't tell you time of day without a full committee investigation first.

Yes, the opposition are doubtless no better. But they're irrelevant for the moment. David Cameron, George Osborne, Iain Duncan Smith, Michael Gove and the rest of the mob are essentially about as welcome as a nasty rash on your penis that develops just before you're set to go on a date you're certain you're going to get a result on (female readers may wish to alter this analogy to fit).

Despite that, it is good to have a bit of a laugh at them now and again. With that, I had a fair old of a chuckle at this short game.

Tally-ho, chaps! Smash the oiks!

Made in the best traditions of Super Mario Bros and Wonderboy, Super Tory Boy allows you to play as either our glorious leader, his financial whiz-kid chum Gideon or the blonde bombshell that the people of London somehow saw fit to elect Mayor, Boris Johnson.

Give it a go - you only use one button, so anyone can have a decent shot. Shut down public services and be sure to crush those unemployed layabouts, all in the name of Britannia! I managed a score of £10,416,087 - anyone do better?

Summertime in a Stadium

Point One
I hate stadium rock gigs. I hate the idea of them. Tens of thousands of people crammed into somewhere not designed for music, and therein lies the problem. Too many people, which isn't a great environment for a misanthropic miser like me.

Yet there I was, last night, in Hampden Park, Glasgow, surrounded by people, some of whom had quite clearly been on the piss all day and were refreshed to a great degree. A lot of them weren't happy with their position in the crowd and tried to force their way past others. Naturally, this created tension and security were needed on several occasions.

Point Two
All of the above becomes irrelevant when you're at a Bruce Springsteen concert, because he is The Boss and that negates any bad vibes.

Point Three
30 songs over three and a half hour is a lot of work for everyone. But the man himself states that we, as the audience, will leave with our feet and backs sore, our throats hoarse. He's not wrong.

What you find is the day after, when you weigh up the whole experience and look for negatives, is that he didn't play a few of your favourites. Where was Hungry Heart, Bruce? Where was The River and Born in the USA? He can't please everyone though, can he? What he did do was provide a strong mix of his life's work, sticking with what he'd recorded with the E Street Band (I don't recall anything from Human Touch or Lucky Town, for instance) except for two tracks from his wonderful acoustic album Nebraska - but even Atlantic City and Johnny 99 were re-imagined as rockers, the latter revved up into the kind of thing you'd expect from Jerry Lee Lewis.

There were no encores of any of that shit. The band - now including a four piece horn section, backing singers and a percussionist - come on at half seven and don't stop till eleven, when they all leave the stage so that the man we're here to see can do a "rock and roll lullaby" that is Thunder Road acoustic, with the crowd singing the sax solo at the end.

Point Four
Clarence Clemons and Danny Federici are gone, but their band leader keeps their memories living on. Clemons' nephew Jake now plays in the band, which is a cool touch and at one point, during Dancing in the Dark, Springsteen grabs a girl who had a sign saying "I want to dance with Jake" and lets her do so. In the spirit of Courtney Cox, naturally.

What this does show is that the man seems to, at least, give a fuck about us punters. You hear nightmare stories of Dylan, for example, being a surly sod all through his gigs, never playing the hits. Springsteen appears to demand of himself that he has to guarantee everyone who bought a ticket a classic night out. The man does not stop throughout. When he does Twist and Shout and you think his voice is about to give way, he steps it up for one last time and blasts out Shout. If rock and roll needed a single representative to explain it to an alien race, this is the man.

Point Five
There's a story that when Elvis Costello was asked about whether he'd ever had a religious experience, he answered that he hadn't, but he had heard Al Green sing. In the same way, Don Draper once stated that Jesus is "either lives in your heart, or he doesn't". Jesus has never lived in my heart, but when I see Bruce Springsteen do his thing, giving it all he's got like it's his last gig ever, then I think that's I'd take the Boss over JC anytime.

Frank Talking

As I pointed out not long after I decided (why?) to write this blog, Frank Castle aka The Punisher is one of my favourite comic book creations.

As any geek knows, attempts to get Frank on film have been mixed. The 2004 one with Thomas Jane wasn't too shabby, suffering perhaps by changing the location from New York to Florida (due to being cheaper to film there), but Jane did a fine job. He was better still when he voiced the character in a video game the following year.

To his dues, he backed out of a sequel due to feeling the script wasn't any cop. Judging by Punisher: War Zone, he was right. As a fan of the character, it must have been a bit of a downer. Still, he got to play a guy with a massive penis for a few years in Hung, so at least the work was still rolling in. Until last year, where he  decided to revisit the terror of criminals everywhere in a short film.

Dirty Laundry was apparently made for very little, with Jane and Ron Perlman putting their time in for free. It's a sign of how out of the loop I am that I only got round to watching it. My verdict? It's pretty damn good, with a level of violence straight from the comic books. There's rumours of a Punisher TV series in development - if Marvel or whoever has any sense, they'd get Jane involved. The man looks the part to a tee. The issue comes with whether any TV network has the balls to not shackle Frank down with PG standards. We want to see him cutting the guts out of sex traffickers, throwing people from the top of skyscrapers. Stuff like that.

You can Dirty Laundry it on youtube. Be warned though, there's some pretty extreme punishment to be seen.

No Strings Attached

As seems to happen at the end of the year, a few notable folk have shuffled off their coils. Notably, Jack Klugman threw a seven only days after I'd written about him on this here blog. James Roday may want to feel nervous about now.

However, it was the death of Gerry Anderson that touched me most. Kids today may find it hard to believe, but even in the early 1980s, a TV show featuring a bunch of puppets could still bring a sense of awe from a youngster.

Thunderbirds is the one most people remember, and it was ace, as was Stingray. I did think Joe 90 was a load of tosh. But the best by some distance was always Captain Scarlet and the Mysterons. It was totally fantastic and even today, if by chance it happens to be on somewhere, I'll make an effort to see it.

For one thing, it had a heavy sci-fi element, which has always had a sway over me. To whit: at some point in the future, humanity has managed to jaunt over to Mars. Seeing alien buildings, the idiot astros panic and open fire, somewhat understandably pissing off the locals to the degree they declare war on Earth and take one of the hapless humans as their unwilling slave.

The trick the Martians (only ever seen as glowing rings of light and a deep voice) have mastered is being able to identically duplicate anything - but first, as the introduction states - they must DESTROY. Thus, they quickly knock off top SPECTRUM agent Captain Scarlet, recreate him as a slave and send him off to assassinate the World Prez. However, the plot is foiled and the Cap somehow regains his human consciousness, surprisingly being welcomed back into the fold by Colonel White as our main weapon in the war against the Mysterons - mainly because he has now become "virtually indestructible", an ability that would see him meet and brush off various grisly fates.

What we never got a sense of was how Scarlet felt about all this. After all, it seemed clear to me that he was nothing but a duplicate of somebody who has been killed - an idea later revived (ho ho) in Red Dwarf with the character of Rimmer. Yet never once did we get any sense of existential despair from knowing that his memories weren't actually his.

Perhaps it's reading too much into it. In any case, the show looked great and had some top storylines. A lot of these featuring around the man the Mysterons gang-pressed into their service: Captain Black. Always dressed in dark clothes, eyes that looked like he hadn't slept in weeks - if they ever make a film version of the series, then I would humbly suggest myself for the role.

I was born for the part!

On top of all this, it always had a superb theme tune. Check it out and sing along at home:

"They crash him, and his body may burn

They smash him, but they know he'll return -

TO LIVE AGAIN!"

We Are Detective, We Are Select

Or so said the Thompson Twins, in their slightly odd 80s hit. Liars all, for we now know they weren't detectives at all, but pop stars. The following is a list of people who weren't crime fighters either, because they don't exist. However, they do all feature in some top TV shows.

Ironside
Sure, you may be San Francisco's top cop, but a bullet in the spine is always going to put a crimp in your day. Despite his jogging days being over, Robert T. Ironside dons his wheelchair and carries on cracking down on crime, assisted by (alongside a top Quincy Jones theme tune) the slightly bumbling Ed, posh girl working with plod Eve and young neer-do-well trying to turn good Mark.

Initially running in the late 60s, Ironside had to deal with the changing times. One episode had the team visiting a house full of hippy layabouts, one of whom describes our hero as "fuzz on wheels". To his credit, the man doesn't call on a bunch of cops armed with bats to crack some skulls and keep all their stash to help with his pain management.

Some 20 years later, the cast all got back together for a dodgy TV movie made not long before Raymond Burr shuffled off his mortal coil. It wasn't very good.

Quincy
Your favourite coroner, however, had no time for the modern fashions. Infamously, Quince once put down "punk rock" as a cause of death in an episode worth watching just for cheap giggles. Seriously, see it sometime soon.

These people are punks, apparently. Well, except Quincy. Obviously

Despite not having a first name, Dr Quincy M.E. managed to balance his personal life of pissing about on a yacht with young ladies, his normal work duties of cutting up corpses and solving a neverending stream of murders on the streets of LA.

This was lucky for his cop friends, Monaghan and Brill, who were so inept they made Chief O'Hara from Batman look like Sherlock Holmes. Every week, they would dismiss the Doc's suspicions of foul play, only for the evidence to stack up. Luckily, Quincy's boss, Dr Aston, tolerated his extracurricular activities, despite the growing number of dead bodies stacking up down the morgue.

KITT
Can it, Hasselhoff! The car was the real star of Knight Rider, and my five-year-old self will hear no different. The guy in the stupidly tight jeans was only needed to go round up the bad guys when it involved going indoors.

For one thing, KITT (or the Knight Industries Two Thousand, if you weren't around in the 1980s) was probably the coolest looking car ever seen on TV. See?

Cool as fuck

Plus he had the best theme tune you could wish. Brilliant. And you could play Pac-Man with him. I mean, what more do you want? He solves crime, has a line in banter, and he can get you home from the pub when you're totally blasted.

Jethro Gibbs
Silver-haired fox Gibbs takes no shite from nobody: as a former Marine sniper, he's probably ventilated more heads then you've had hot dinners. Subsequently swapping the uniform to solve crimes in the US navy as part of NCIS, you can be assured that if you're a dead sailor, he'll get to the bottom of it. And pray to your god if you've been mean to a little kid, because you'll be in for a heavy duty smackdown.

Gibbs may well be on this list because I aspire to be like him - as my hair greys, he's proof that it's a look that can be pulled of and like me, he has a weakness to red haired women. All I need is a team including a wisecracking womaniser, an ex-Israeli assassin, a computer geek and a perky goth covered in tattoos and I'm away.

Shawn Spencer
Save the best till last. Star of the best show of the last 20 years (Psych), Shawn uses his outstanding skills of observation and deduction to doss a living from solving crime.

Why is he great? Well, he's an idle git who'd rather be lazing in bed, listening to Tears for Fears while waiting for the Royal Rumble to start. What's not to like? Luckily, in terms of his career, he has a supportive best friend, Gus, and an ex-cop dad able to help under, albeit under some duress.

Add 80s pop reference here

It's all brilliant, and I seem to find myself recommending it to everyone I meet. Sherlock? Get away with you! Psych is funnier, brilliant guest stars (Cary Elwes! Judd Nelson! Ally Sheedy!) and a better looking cast. I still don't get why he didn't chase after the character played by Rachel Leigh Cook, though.

Let Your Feet Do The Talking

Shoes: they're a vital part of life. Especially if you live in parts of the world where there is plenty around that you don't want your naked feet to step in.

This is doubly so at this time of year, if you live in Northern England - the right choice of footwear is all important to personal comfort. That wise old sage Joe Strummer once noted you should wear shoes made either for running, or fighting. Now, given I have the combat skills of an elderly Thora Hird, I've tended to stick with comfortable fitting sneakers, which also have the advantage of looking good.

At this time of year, however, they're just not good enough. Heavy rain creates puddles that are regularly not stopped in time to avoid a soaked sock situation, which as we all know, is always very unpleasant. Add to that the problem of an icy pavement ensuring a nasty (and embarrassing) fall is always around the corner unless you're properly equipped.

With that, we can turn to another example of German efficiency: the Doctor Marten boot. With a couple of them on your feet, you're set for anything the English weather can throw at you. I actually came to them fairly late on, only buying a pair when I was off to visit the Baltic in wintertime. But since then, they've proved to be a vital friend: four years on, they're still in top nick and you can stomp through ice and rain with no worry of getting your toes cold.

But if you want to hear the true beauty of a pair of these wonderful boots, I think Alexi Sayle does it best.

Suzie Q, I Love You

My family aside, there's been one constant in my life since the day I was born, and that's Suzie. Here she is:

The day after I dropped into the world, my mother's Aunty Betty came to visit. Somewhere between the door and the maternity ward was a stall selling stuffed toys made by (I think) patients recovering from major heart surgery. She picked up Suzie, and she's been with me ever since, moving with me to university and then to Manchester, where she's sat up in the corner of my bedroom. She'd come on holiday with us to Butlins when I was young, I could barely stand to be away from her. Obviously she became less a comfort blanket over the years, but I still look her over to the States a few years ago. Didn't feel right to go there without her.

When I was younger, I would insist to my mother that we celebrate her birthday, which is obviously the day after mine. Much to her credit, she indulged me in this and would buy a card for her and a little cake.

For her age, she's holding up well. Better than me, in a lot of ways. All the same, observant readers may have noticed that the poor girl is missing an eye. Not as a result of one of my many petulant childhood strops, you may be surprised to hear. No. It was that little shit of a brother of mine that did it, and he's still not forgiven. I must have pissed him off, the way brothers do, but all the same there was no need for retaliation of that level.

What made it even worse was that soon after, his school had a "Teddy Bear's Picnic" type thing. Our mam, being ever-resourceful, dolled Suzie up with a pirate costume, complete with eyepatch. Thus my brother won a prize, showing that being an evil scrote pays off and there truly is no karma in this world.

I'm not sure if it's tragic having such memories of childhood still hanging around when you're into your 30s, but it feels reassuring that she's still around. I wonder if there's ever a time I'll let her go: maybe when my brother has spawn of his own, I'll hand her over to try and wade them away from his path of darkness. Or maybe I'll cling on to her till my final days, and like one of those mad old cat women, name her as my sole inheritor of whatever I have left by that point.

Question Time

In a stroke of good luck, I happened upon mention of Lawrence of Belgravia finally getting a showing in Manchester. Naturally, I moved quickly to snap up tickets.

I've heard plenty of the documentary, about the Lawrence of Felt/Denim/Go-Kart Mozart non-fame, to know I wanted to see it. It's being shown in various cities across the country, and it's about time it made it to Manchester. By all accounts, it's a very well made film.

But what's this? Lawrence himself will be at the screening and fielding questions afterwards? Cue much excited jumping up and down.

So, do I become a total fanboy and take all my Felt vinyl LPs (and Ballad of the Band EP!) down for him to sign, along with getting pictures of him looking slightly annoyed with me grinning like a total arse? October 13th will reveal all.

(Incidentally, if any Lawrence fans read this before then and can think of any decent questions to ask, let me know, as all my journalistic training will doubtless abandon me and leave my mind blank.)

Fanning the Flames

That was the Olympics, then. It all seemed to go rather well, despite some of the press initially thinking it would bring chaos, famine and pestilence to the capital of the UK. But once it was clear everyone was having a lovely time and, more importantly, the British team were actually doing very well, even the likes of the Mail and Express were getting giddy.

It took a little time, mind. The opening ceremony brought somewhat tedious moans of it being some kind of Marxist propaganda vehicle and/or a love-letter to New Labour values. Such idiocy was quickly laughed away, as the media realised we all actually quite like the NHS, especially those of us without the spare wedge to put aside for BUPA premiums.

I have to admit watching the Olympic torch being lit even brought a bit of warmth to this cold, black heart. It helped that the actual flame was burning away in a rather spectacular fashion and that the coverage was on the good old BBC - no three-times-an-hour ad breaks for us.

What also helped was having top athletes like Mo Farah and Jessica Ennis winning gold. Despite myself, I was cheering away when they were tearing across the tracks. I don't know, they just seem so likeable. But then it was also thrilling to see the guy from Kenya break the world record at the 800m - I was clapping away at the guy deciding to just dispense with the whole idea of having someone else set the pace and just tear away from the off.

After the event, there's a lot of talk of "legacy", whatever that means. Not being a London resident, it's hard to see what long-term effects it has on me per se. There's been some talk of the whole event bringing raising self-esteem across the nation, which strikes me as a load of crap: this country in the main is too divisive for any true national identity to grasp us and for one thing, the English especially love to be told what worthless pieces of shite we all are.

What I hope is that we see through any attempts by the government to claim false credit for how everything went off. The success is down to huge amounts of funding, which is always the key to sporting success. It's no good having talented athletes if they don't have top-notch facilities and coaches to make sure they fulfill their potential. The whole "Big Society" would see these costs cut and enthusiastic volunteers step into the void.

I'm also pissed off to a stupid degree by Cameron's dismissal of "Indian Dance" as part of PE lessons and the over-emphasising of competitive sports. Here's the reality: not every child likes sports, because a lot of us are crap at things like football, hockey, rugby etc. Having extra options to make sure a kid gets exercise can only be a good thing, with emphasis on getting a bit of a sweat on being fun being the prime point. Much better than some skinny kid being pummelled on a patch of mud doubling as a rugby pitch, right? Not that I'm talking from personal experience, of course. (cough)

Sowing The Hurting Songs From The Big Chair

Seeing Curt Smith appear in the "Shawn 2.0" episode of Psych a few weeks ago made me go back and listen to the work of his band Tears for Fears, something I'd not done for a few years. A wise decision, as it turned out, as I'd forgotten how great they were and later found out how they'd managed to do their best work years after their supposed peak.

Smith (bass/vocals) made up half the band along with Roland Orzabel (vocals/guitar) - both had grown up in Bath, children of separated parents, a factor which would influence Orzabel's songwriting in the future. Initially, they played in mod-revival band Graduate, scoring a hit in Spain with Elvis Should Play Ska, that being Costello rather than Presley. It wasn't happening on the home front, though, and the duo fronting the band weren't happy with band dynamics getting in the way of their ideas.

Therefore, they quit and formed Tears for Fears to ensure the direction lay entirely with them, and idea made a lot easier by technological advancements such as drum machines, synths and sequencers allowing them to dispense with having other people involved, though local musicians drummer Manny Elias and keyboardist Ian Stanley would soon be recruited, existing somewhere between being in the band (their names were listed as so on albums) and sidemen (Smith and Orzabel would do most of the interviews and photo-shoots).

Taking a name from Arthur Janov idea of 'Primal Scream' therapy set a tone of where the songs were going: their debut single in November 1981 was titled Suffer the Children, though the lyrical tone was helped along by a strong pop tune. It went nowhere in the charts, though, and the same fate befell Pale Shelter a few months later.

Luckily, just when it may have been looking grim, third single Mad World cracked the charts and made it up to #3, either helped or not by a video that saw Orzabel do a strange dance that brings to mind a more angular Ian Curtis. Despite it's pop verse/chorus structure, it's hookline of "the dreams in which I'm dying are the best I've ever had" still made them strange pop stars, though Smith's good looks doubtless helped get them in the pages of Smash Hits.

With the band now up and running, their debut album The Hurting went to the top of the British album charts. It's not a set with many laughs, hence the title, but it's a great listen, especially if you're an angst-ridden 17 year old, as I was when I first heard it. I imagine it sold well with teenagers who would have been listening to Joy Division four years earlier: indeed, the closing Start of the Breakdown uses mental illness as a theme in the same way Ian Curtis did on Closer.

Change and a re-recorded Pale Shelter both went into the top five of the singles chart, making the band one of the biggest in the country at the time.The album and Change also both made #73 in the US top 100 charts, further adding pressure to build on these successes with the next album.

Initially, the signs weren't good. A stand-alone single The Way You Are stalled at #24 in the UK: an attempt at repeating a formula that had worked so far, it's weird rhythms and weak lyrics weren't likely to make for a big hit. Doubtless it was this relative failure that led to the subsequent changes that 1984/85 would bring.

Working again with producer Chris Hughes, the band looked to create a huge, commercial sound. The hard funk-tinged Mothers Talk snuck them back into the top 20, but it was the epic anthem Shout that put Tears for Fears back on the map.

The album that followed, Songs From The Big Chair would become one of the defining albums of the era.  Orzabel, writing with Ian Stanley on several songs and Smith on Head Over Heels, carried across some of the themes from the début album but looked to tinge them with a more adult approach. It also sounded made to crack the States.

Which it did, big time. The lead single over there, Everybody Wants To Rule The World, went to the top of the charts and Shout followed suit. Suddenly, they were one of the biggest bands in the world: Songs would go onto the sell five million in the US and Head Over Heels became the third massive hit from it. Of the eight songs from the album, five were released on a single, which exposes the sets biggest flaw: it's lack of songs. Broken is essentially only a lead into Head Over Heels - sharing as it does a central riff.

More recent re-issues address this by including some excellent b-sides: Pharaohs uses the shipping forecast to create an atmospheric number while When In Love With a Blind Man shares a riff with The Working Hour (from the album proper) but improves it with a sensitive Smith vocal, cutting out the slightly indulgent sax and making it a lot shorter.

After becoming mega-stars beyond their imaginations, Orzabel and Smith did the understandable thing and took an extended break. Sessions for a follow-up eventually started in 1987 but become problematic - recordings with Chris Hughes were scrapped and a new man, Dave Bascombe, was brought in. Ian Stanley and Manny Elias had left the band, though keyboard player Nicky Holland, who played with the band on the Songs tour stayed around to co-write a fair chunk of what would become The Seeds of Love, which finally arrived in September 1989.

It was led on by the single Sowing the Seeds of Love, which threw away the synth aspects that had made their name in favour of a Beatles-esque approach that Lennon and McCartney themselves would have proud to write. Making lyrical jabs at Margaret Thatcher ("Politician granny with your high ideals, have you any idea how the majority feels?") and, strangely, Paul Weller ("Kick out the Style, bring back the Jam!"), it was a huge hit both sides of the Atlantic.

But the album failed to build on this. There was too much self-indulgence (not surprising from a band cooped up in the studio for so long with access to a huge budget) on songs like Year Of The Knife and not enough strong tunes. Woman In Chains was saved from dodgy production by the presence of American singer Oleta Adams, who the duo had seen in the bar of their hotel while on tour. On the back of this profile-boosting, she went on to have a few hits in the early 90s. But the album did have one other major ace: Famous Last Words was a touching closing song, a cheery tale of a couple facing the end of the world. It sounded great and Orzabel has rarely sound better.

Bigger problems were afoot, however. Curt Smith wasn't happy and tensions between him and Roland Orzabel were getting serious: perhaps understandably, as the two had been in bands together for over ten years. Smith may also have been aggrieved at his role in the band - while he sung half the songs on The Hurting (including all the hits), by The Seeds of Love he only had lead on one song.

With the album somewhat of a failure in context (it still went Platinum in the States, but only produced one big hit single), tensions may have come to a head faster than might have otherwise. By 1991, Smith had quit and Orzabel decided to keep the name for his future work, perhaps reasoning that he was singing the vast majority of the band's new songs anyways. Signalling a new rockier direction, Laid So Low (Tears Roll Down) got the band back in the top 20, promoting the Tears Roll Down (Greatest Hits 82-92) compilation that was a big hit at home and in Europe.

While Smith moved to New York for work on a solo album he hated, then with his band Mayfield (bad pun alert), Orzabel brought out the albums Elemental and Raoul and the Kings of Spain to diminishing commercial returns, though the lead single from the former album, Break It Down Again provided a last hit single, and a worthwhile one at that. For the main part, however, the songs were hampered by some stodgy AOR production.

All of which seemed to be the end of that. Orzabel dropped the name and produced some weird experimental electro album in an attempt to get away from lyric-heavy music, Smith moved out to LA and kept doing his thing. Negative feelings towards each other - which may have been understandable given they'd been together since they were teenagers - dripped away with time and distance. By the start of the next decade, the two began talking and plans were put afoot to maybe work again.

Around the same, by pure coincidence, their stock rose to it's highest point since the mid 80s when the film Donnie Darko used Head Over Heels and a cover of Mad World on the soundtrack. The latter, by Michael Andrews and Gary Jules, ended up being an unlikely #1 single in the UK.

At the same time, Tears for Fears, working with Smith's writing partner Charlton Pettus, was slowly crafting away. Writing for the first time largely as a unit, songs came together and following some messing around with labels, Everybody Loves a Happy Ending came out in 2004.

Surprisingly, or not, the "comeback" album turned out to be the best thing they'd ever made. Taking Sowing the Seeds of Love as a starting point of sorts, it had plenty of Beatles-tinged pop like the title track and Closest Thing to Heaven - though Who Killed Tangerine? has the biggest (and best) Hey Jude style singalong outro you could wish to hear.

There was also Big Star-tinged power pop on Call Me Mellow, 70s soul smoothness on Last Days On Earth and all round epics like Secret World. Working with Smith again seemed to shed Orzabel of his more indulgent tendencies, as well as given him a strong voice to harmonise with.

Sadly, it didn't enjoy the chart success it deserved, failing to crack the top 40 on the US or UK. A crime. If you have a love of beautifully written pop music, you should go and buy it now. Really.

Since then, the duo have sporadically played gigs around the world, but are yet to bring out another album, perhaps feeling there's a lack of interest from the public. A shame if so - one of the best groups of their time deserve a better legacy and a proper critical re-evaluation.

Brief Encounter

Life can be incredibly random in what it gives you. Quite often it's bad - person gets hit by lightning, for example. But there's also little bits of life-affirming randomness that make you glad to be on this rock.

Today brought one. It begins with me lugging my bag onto the train heading up North from Manchester. I've not booked a ticket, so I just jump on the first carriage that looks like it has some spare seats. I find one and settle down to read a magazine I'd bought to help beat the tedium of travelling. Another Rolling Stones related cover for Mojo, ho-hum.

After a while, I begin checking out my fellow travellers. No screaming kids, thankfully. There's a young Japanese couple, maybe students, who look to be heading on holiday, judging by the amount of baggage they're lugging and that they look fairly excited (therefore not coming back). Suddenly, a blonde haired guy in glasses catches my eye.

"He looks just like Richard Butler," I think. I know he's been in the country, touring with the Psychedelic Furs, but why would he be on this train? I decide he must be some guy who just looks like him. Then I spot the man directly across the aisle.

"He looks just like Tim Butler", I think, this time with a bigger hint of excitement.

See, in my heart I'm always a music fan first. I may play in a band, I've written songs and played on stage, but I was a geek for the whole world before any of that. And as anyone who knows me will tell you, I love the Psychedelic Furs. Ask me to list my top 20 albums, and chances are Talk Talk Talk, Forever Now and Book of Days will be in there, and here's two of the guys responsible sat a few feet from me.

I've met musicians I've had huge respect for in the past, always in a journalist context. This allows me to be professional, prepared and able to keep my fanboy tendencies in check. But this - I'm almost in shock: my hands are shaking before I even get up. I stand up and pretend to be stretching my legs just to get a proper look. I always wondered how people who've had a bit of fame like strangers coming up to them, wanting time and attention. It must get annoying, but at the same time, I might never get a chance like this again. The universe has conspired to put me on the same train, on the same day in the same carriage as two people who have improved my life with their art. So, eventually:

"Sorry for bothering you, but are you Richard and Tim Butler?"

A lot of people have stories of meeting musicians, actors and writers they admire, who turn out to be complete dicks. I'm dreading this happening here.

"Yeah," comes the reply from Richard. But he's smiling and I feel like I'm 15 years old.

"I'm a huge fan," and I offer my hand, which they both shake. I don't even tell them my name, I just babble on for a bit of how I love their work, and tell Tim as a bassist, I really dig his playing. Turns out they're heading North to visit their mother. They ask where I'm from, and I say I'm off to visit my own parents, but I live in Manchester and moved there because there was nothing to do back home.

"So what's in Manchester?" asks Richard.
"Football, gigs, my girlfriend," I reply to which Richard laughs. I mention I'm in a band myself, but we're struggling to find a singer.
"It's usually the drummer," he says, before  asking "Why don't you sing?
"I'm a bassist. I prefer standing at the back looking moody."

This makes Tim laugh: "There's an artform to that."

I have to ask whether they're doing another album: turns out Tim has written the music for one, but Richard needs to sort the lyrics out. Here's hoping he gets to work soon.

As Neil Finn said, "one of those times, wish I'd had a camera on me" yet I'm aware that I'm taking up their time from talking to the people they're with. So I shake their hands again and wish them a nice time over in the Dales. When they get off at Oxenholme station, they both bid me farewell, which made me smile like a goon. Naturally, I then pulled my mp3 player out, stuck on Love My Way and wish I had asked Tim Butler to show me the bass part sometime.

Oh, and they're both still handsome devils too.

Euromen Cometh

Much to my joy, the European Championships start tomorrow. I do love a good tournament, especially in this instance where all the games are on in the evening after I finish work - with luck, I shouldn't miss a single game.

I've always preferred the Euros to the World Cup, too. Sure, the latter is considered the apex of achievement for a footballer, but there can often be some games involving some pretty crap teams, even if the antics of New Zealand two years ago showed the gap isn't that far these days. But the Euros rarely have filler teams that never stand a chance of winning a game: Ireland may be considered the weakest team out of the 16, and even they have proven international quality players like Shay Given and Robbie Keane, as well as being led by one of the most respected coaches in the game.

Plus you get the occasional huge shock winner, like Denmark in 1992 and Greece in 2004. Alright, so the Greek team played in a style so mind-numbingly negative it would have made George Graham proud, but you take your surprises where you can get them in football and a team who had never been a real threat at that level before suddenly being champions of Europe on the back of sheer willpower and organisation made for a decent story.

If I had to back a team, though, I'd have to plump for the Germans. They looked very strong in qualifying and you can generally rely on them to be amongst the chasers. Given my own brief flirtation with the England national team ended when Graham Taylor dropped Chris Waddle and Peter Beardsley, then gave more caps to Carlton Palmer than Matt Le Tissier, I won't be giving much backing to them. Indeed, I'll be surprised if they escape from the group stage.

Mind, even if they do, they'll probably have to face either Spain or Italy in the next round. Given those teams have won the last World Cups, it again shows the level of competition in the tournament.

What I will be hoping for is that the lunkheads that the BBC reported on the other week are kept well under the cosh by the local authorities. The idea of a footballer being the target of racist abuse at such an event in the 21st century is grotesque. Cliché and trite as it may sound, but football is the Beautiful Game and groups of extremist bell-ends should be kept out by all means necessary. Call your centre-half a useless bag of shite when he punts one into his own net - fine - but bringing such irrelevant details as his skin colour into it is just a sign of idiocy and a lack of intelligence in being unable to think of a decent insult. UEFA have made noises about taking a hard line if such abuse is heard - I can only hope they follow through with it if need be.

The main concern for me on a personal level, however, is that with so much footy on TV over a short space of time, the amount of beer and crisps I might get through may ensure I'll soon have a belly big enough to rest my pint glass on...

Plenty of Gaul

On a trip back home, my mother (for whose 60th birthday I was there) presented me with a box. It's part of a gradual moving of my stuff from my old bedroom and the attic into my current abode. This is taking the best part of ten years, so far. Should be finished by 2025, I reckon.

Anyways, in this box was a load of old football programmes from my youthful habit of buying football programmes. They didn't have to be related to the team I liked - I had a load of early 80s Watford, West Ham and Sheffield United ones for some reason.

But more importantly, all my Asterix comics were in there. Happy, happy, joy, joy! I can't remember exactly how I got into these wonderful books, though I guess that my parents may have had something to do with it, probably my dad, who has always been a history buff. To the uninitiated, they centre around the eponymous hero, a Gaul living in 50 BC. Julies Caesar has invaded all of Gaul bar one small village, holding out with the aid of a magic potion brewed by the druid Getafix - something I could have done with a few doses of the last few days, let me tell you.

Naturally, various adventures occur that see our hero and his best friend, Obelix, travel across Europe, the Middle East and even America, often trying to foil the plans of the Romans to finally see off the troublesome Gauls.

Two things struck me reading them over again. One is the superb quality of the art by Uderzo - the level of detail in some frames is amazing. Secondly is how that now I'm older, I get so many more of the jokes. The six year old me probably wasn't aware of the humour of Caesar telling Brutus to put away a knife he's idly playing with or "You'll do yourself an injury" or references to someone being "sent to Coventrium".

Though Goscinny wrote the original French texts, huge credit must go to Anthea Bell and Derek Hockridge, who did the English translations. This involved renaming a lot of characters to give them English related puns, like the fishmonger being called Unhygienix and the elder being Geriatrix. Some of the best jokes involve the stereotypes of various countries: the British, for example, all have stiff upper lips, will end a battle to take high tea and say things like "Jolly good game, what?". The Swiss are portrayed as efficient and obsessed with keeping things clean while Corsicans are laid back but also prone to violent vendettas. All in good humour, of course, as the various parts of France are sent up too.

It was also only recently that I learned that the reason it begins raining in Asterix in Belgium is because Goscinny died while Uderzo was working on the art. The latter has spent the last 30+ years working on new strips alone.

There has also been various animated and real-action films, of mixed quality. The best (The Twelve Tasks of Asterix and Asterix in Britain) were excellent and I really must see if I can pick them up on DVD. And, of course, there's a related theme park near Paris that I always wanted to go to as a kid - denied, alas.

Master of the Domain

As described in a previous post, the humble ZX Spectrum was my introduction to the fab world of video games. The next step up was the Sega Master System. My childhood best friend* had one and our games of Great Golf and Enduro Racer made me feel envious. Needless to say, I was a happy wee bunny the Christmas Day my parents were kind enough to stump up £99.99 as a present to me. That really was a fair wedge in them days.

As we have now with XBox vs Playstation, the battlelines of the time were either Master System or the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES). For me, there was no competition: I mean, look at the faithful Sega below.

Good shape, nice black and red colour scheme. The NES, by contrast, looked like Commander Data's lunchbox. It also was a world away from the Spectrum gaming I'd been used to: no more loading times, lots of colour and better sounds.

Of course, this all came with a cost. I was used to paying £1.99 for a game, a month's pocket money. Even the cheapest games for this cost a tenner, and they tended to be of the atrocious quality of Transbot. Luckily, my Master System had Hang-On and Safari Hunt built in and ma and pa had managed to swing a deal somewhere so that California Games and Chase HQ were in the bundle.

The latter wasn't all that cop, but the former was an absolute classic. It looked great, sounded great and the range of events (Half-Pipe skateboarding, foot bag, surfing, skating, BMX, frisbee throwing) provided plenty of variety, especially if you played with a bunch of mates. I especially liked the BMX event, which allowed me to do tricks that in the real world would have resulted in a lengthy spell in a wheelchair.

But what really gives me a nostalgic tear in the eye is the box art of the early games. Take a look at this one, for World Soccer.

Here we see a disembodied leg, perhaps a distant relation of Thing from the Addams Family, trap the ball with no shortage of skill. The game itself was pretty limited: you could only play one-off games from two of eight teams (from memory: Great Britain (!), France, Germany, Italy, USA, Japan, Brazil and Argentina - spot the two put in for marketing purposes) or have a penalty shoot-out. Still, hours of fun at the time, especially when you pulled off a goal from an overhead kick.

The packaging on these early games was a long shot from the mess of images you get now. On the back, you'd have two screenshots and a brief description of the game. Essentially, you were taking a chance with your money and it wasn't until the 1990s rolled around and stuff like Sonic the Hedgehog put the kitchen sink on the box that it changed. All the same, it has a certain comforting uniformity about it - as I get when I hear that little jingle you got when you fired the console up.

I never moved on to the Master System's successor, the Mega Drive. I lost interest in gaming outside the Championship Manager series (an addiction to which doubtless left my friends and I with no time to do much else anyways) until I went to university and discovered the wonders of Playstation. All the same, the old girl lies in a bag under my bed, almost tempting me to fire it up one more time. Or I would, if the damn controller wasn't knackered...

*A few months ago, our mothers met in our hometown and the news was passed to me that he was living in Kidderminster, had recently got married and was expecting to become a father. That made me feel old.

Happy 30th, Spec-Chums!

Apparently it's St George's Day today, but I couldn't give a toss about that. A far more important milestone is that this is the 30th anniversary of the ZX Spectrum hitting the public.

Uncle Clive Sinclair's finest moment helped bring gaming to a wider audience, thanks to his policy of making it affordable to normal folk. I remember we had one at school, an old 48k with the (in)famous rubber keys, and I was smitten. The time of the week we were allowed to mess about on it was always cherished by me and one of the happiest days of my childhood was when I got my own Speccy for Christmas.

So, in tribute to Sir Clive and the little bit of microchips and plastic that started me on a journey that led to terminal disillusionment at the end of Mass Effect 3 (yes, I'm still annoyed), here's my five favourite titles on my initial burst into the wonderful world of gaming.

1. Skool Daze/Back to Skool
Seminal in every word games where you played Eric, a young miscreant who needed to swipe his somewhat negative school report before it made it back home - resulting in a severe thrashing from dad, I expect.

But apart from that, you had to attend lessons, sit quiet during assembly and dodge a good kicking from the school bully. And if you did take a punch, you could always take it out on the local swot, who would always answer every questions the teachers posed.

Both games were pretty much the same, though the sequel had the added bonus of putting a girl's school next door, from which you could charm a young lady into doing your lines for you.

Brilliantly, you could also rename all the characters, so that you could have revenge on that dickhead at school who called you names, as well as make Eric's girlfriend that wee lassie you had a crush on. Wither you now, Kelly Atkinson?

Rumbled!

2. Boulder Dash
Of course, Manic Miner and Jet Set Willy are legendary names in the platform/puzzle genre, but I always preferred this slice of taxing gaming.

The conceit was simple: every level is a cave where there's a time limit to collect the diamonds. But to make things difficult, one wrong move resulted in a big rock landing on the bonce. And that was it, really: like many  of the time, it was simple but often infuriatingly difficult. Very, very addictive too.

3. Tracksuit Manager
My brother and I must have bought about 30 different footy manager games between us for the Speccy, but this was always the yardstick. Though Football Manager may be the birth of the genre, this beauty is the point where losing days at a time to a game became all-too-easy.

Rather than putting you in charge of a league team, Tracksuit Manager handed you the reins to that all-too Impossible Job: leading England to international glory. Amazingly for the time, you had about 100 players to choose from, all real-life ones too. In the days where Football Manager 2012 has apparently anybody who ever kicked a ball in its database, this might not seem much, but trust me - the fact you could stick Martin Hodge in goal or Keith Houchen up front was very impressive to us misguided youth of the time.

After working your way through qualification and the odd tour of the South Pacific (as I would always arrange, for some reason), there was the drama of the World Cup or European Championships. The tension generated when putting your troops against the likes of Diego Maradona and Ruud Guillit could have been cut with a knife.

Rare high drama, Spectrum style

4. Daley Thompson's Super Test
Superior joystick waggler in that it give you a wide range of sports to compete in - from the more obvious sprinting and cycling to more skill-related gigs as ski-jump and, err, pistol shooting.

Daley's stock was at an all-time high, given he'd won Gold in LA the year before, which saw this game's prequel, Daley Thompson's Decathlon, knacker more young male wrists than a subscription to Mayfair. Super Test provided many hours of fun for this young gamer,

Best of all, as well as a somewhat moving version of the theme from Chariots of Fire, it didn't have that impossible bastard High Jump event that its predecessor had.

5.Mercenary
The road to Grand Theft Auto begins here, methinks, with this sandbox-style game even receiving a 99% score in Your Sinclair.

And quite right too. Mercenary saw you play the titular role of a bod trapped on a war-ravaged planet after their spaceship elected to stop working. The plot was simple: earn enough cash to get it fixed up by working for one or both of the factions scrapping for control. You had the whole planet to explore and huge underground complexes. Miles ahead of it's time, it also spawned a couple of decent sequels a few years later for the Amiga.

It's better then it looks.

Where Did You Get That Blank Expression?

Until he rocked up in the excellent Justice League Unlimited cartoon series, the Question was pretty much a forgotten character in the DC universe, almost relegated to the status of somebody he might have been.

After falling out with Marvel, comics legend Steve Ditko signed up to Charlton and was allowed a greater deal of creative freedom. The Question first appeared in a Blue Beetle comic – introducing us to TV journalist Vic Sage, whose investigative skills nevertheless require a secret identity. Using inventions created by Professor Rodor, when needed Vic takes out a mask from a hidden belt compartment. This also releases a gas which bonds the mask to his face and changes the colour of his clothes and hair, but the best part is that the effect given is that our hero no longer appears to have any facial features, creating an unnerving effect to the villains he encounters.

Under Ditko, Sage/The Question took a stance inspired by the creator’s interest in the works of Ayn Rand. On his news show, Sage would attack his viewers for enabling criminals to prosper by using the illegal services they provided. Incorruptible to the core, he would refuse to tone down his (somewhat hectoring) stance, which carried over to his Question identity. This saw him refuse to help criminals in risk of mortal peril, musing that their activities had seen them put in a situation in which they would receive their just punishment.

Ditko would take these Objectivist ideas further still with Mr A, who had an absolute black and white view of the world, which doesn’t settle too well with this reader, who believes in a world full of various shades of grey. The Question pretty much slid from view until the 80s, where he was resurrected by another superb writer, Dennis O’Neil. That this happened soon after Alan Moore’s Watchmen was released, with its Question/Mr A expy Rorschach, may not be a coincidence.

It’s in this run that I came to the character, which may explain why I think O’Neil had Vic Sage nailed down the best. This Sage was given up at birth and brought up in an orphanage as Charles Victor Szasz, taking on his better known name when he appears in Hub City to work on the TV station. Professor Aristotle “Tot” Rodor provides a role as his mentor, voice of reason and best (only?) friend. In the first issue, we see Hub City as a deeply corrupt place with a drunken major being controlled by Reverend Hatch, who can best described as slightly hatstand. As both Sage and the Question, our man has been causing problems for the bad guys, and lured as his alter-ego into a trap, he’s beaten close to death by mercenary martial arts master Lady Shiva then shot in the head and dumped off the end of a pier for good measure.

As ever working for her own reasons, Shiva rescues Vic, heals his knackered body and arranges for him to spend time with Richard Dragon, a somewhat philosophical kung-fu dude who lives in the mountains. After a time, he returns to Hub City with a new line in Zen thinking to aid his honed fighting skills. Over 30-odd issues, we see him try to avoid falling back into his old ways as all around the city begins to collapse into absolute disorder with seemingly only the Question and bent-cop-now-reformed Izzy O’Toole fighting the other corner.

Though the overall tone is serious, Sage – in true comic book tradition - does have a good way with a line. Often asked about his (non) face, he replies “Overdosed on acne medicine”. Yet his jokes hide a man constantly at war with himself. As the series progresses, Sage spends less time meditating (or “going inside”, a technique he uses to put together seemingly obtuse clues) and more engaging in brutal fights as the fabrics of Hub City unravel.

One amusing sidenote sees Sage buy a copy of Watchmen to read on a flight and admiring Rorschach’s moves. Later, he adjusts his combat style to sheer brawling and get’s his arse handed to him on a plate, leading him to muse that “Rorschach sucks”.

As a collection, for me it’s only equalled by Watchmen and Garth Ennis’ run with the Punisher on the Marvel Max imprint. Vic’s work as the Question is shown to be more a search for identity: at times he seems to think that his actual name is the Question, as his original name was given to him at the orphanage and Vic Sage merely one he gave himself. A telling moment towards the end of the run has Sage save a man from a mugging and asked “who are you?”, to which he answers “A reasonable question. At least for now”. Earlier issues had seen him answer similar inquiries with “Good question”. We’re led to wonder, as Izzy O’Toole does, whether he will eventually crack and start killing criminals rather than just beating seven shades of shit out of them.

In the now and then, I believe the Question is still out there, albeit under a new identity: Renee Montoya taking on the mask after Sage died of lung cancer. As stated at the top, he returned on our TV screens as an oddball character convinced of various conspiracy theories involving boybands and the tips at the end of your shoelaces. Think of Fox Mulder in a cool coat and hat combo. Though miles away from previous incarnations, this Question worked in large part due to the brilliant voicework of Jeffery Coombs and a memorable scene where he confronts Lex Luthor on his latest plan for world domination with objectivist logic: “A is A, and no matter what reality he calls home, Luthor is Luthor”.

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.