Tuesday 31st December

Mandi had to work today, which left me at a bit of a loose end. After walking Jack around the park for an hour I had my breakfast and brought my laptop downstairs and multi-tasked catching up with my blog, doing some work on my Bowie themed short story, and watching some catch up TV that I’d recorded over Christmas. I still haven’t fully got my head around the fact that Sky allows you to record things on a hard drive, when I think about Christmas holidays of the past when I would buy a supply of blank videos when the bumper Radio Times and TV Times came into the house. For the first time in my life I have had a Christmas holiday that hasn’t started with a highlighter pen and the TV Times, (NEVER deface the Radio Times as that is the one I keep archived), such is the ease that I can just set up the recording for the entire holiday period. However, I have yet to learn how much space I have; I kept all the videos carefully numbered with notebooks full of content lists. Do I just ask Sky for a new box to keep films, documentaries, and episodes of The Simpsons in?

I’m never going to get the Bowie story finished by January 8^th, in which case I will take my time over it and hopefully have it ready for 2015. If the 8^th of January this year taught me anything, it is never to release new product on David Bowie’s birthday. Is anyone else anticipating the day this year to see what he pulls out of his (bippety-boppety) hat next?

We’re going to a family party tonight at my cousin’s house, so with Mandi out of the way I was able to sort out what I was wearing and get showered and ready before she came home and needed to use the bathroom, (she’s bath, I’m shower). To make myself a bit useful around the house, I powered through the laundry and did several wash loads. For reasons nobody has ever told me about, you can’t do laundry on New Year’s Day so I thought it made sense to get it out of the way today. Not that superstition carries a great deal of weight of course, but I can’t help but live my life by it, just in case. No ladder gets walked under on my watch, no magpie goes un-saluted and no penny is left to languish on the pavement (I collect pavement coins in a tin money box that needs a tin opener to get into it, and we open it and empty the contents into the change machine at Asda every Christmas Eve to finance our visit to the pub). Although deep down I know it to be bollocks, the OCD part of my brain won’t allow me to ignore superstition. One day I would like to spend an allocated amount of time going against all these rules; walking under ladders while smashing a mirror and telling magpies to go and fuck themselves. But I’d be too scared.

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I was a bit disappointed with myself for my lack of achievement this year, and have made plans to pull my finger out in 2014 and get on with things. It wasn’t until I read through my diary that I pieced together what I had done work-wise and when you see it all written down I must admit that I haven’t done too badly.

January started off quite well, I had agreed before Christmas 2012 to start doing a podcast for The Maze, the music venue in Nottingham. I recorded seven of these before it fizzled out. What I thought was my big achievement to kick off January was the release of my third book First Draft. It is a collection of reviews I wrote for The Nottingham Evening Post (as I still call it) before I edited them down to newspaper size. The paper refused to promote it as they said that it appeared to be a criticism of the paper, which wasn’t my intention at all. The book was released on Kindle with an audio book accompaniment on January 8^th. What I hadn’t counted on, (nobody counted on this happening), was David Bowie releasing his first new single in ten years. This of course set the world alight with excitement and I quite obviously didn’t get a look in. David Bowie certainly came back with a bang this year, and he hasn’t done my career any harm while he’s been about it, I just wish he knew about my contribution to his ‘canon’. I was lucky enough to get invited to the press launch of the David Bowie Is exhibition at the V&A in March, (seems like a long time ago), and we liked it so much that we returned a few months later as paying customers.

On the subject of David Bowie, it was announced in February that I was to take over the Moonage Daydream podcast; in 2013 I have only managed thanks to time constraints to record four editions of this, with the hope that I can make it a more regular thing in 2014. The film about the exhibition was reviewed by my good self for Leftlion, my first time writing for them (on the website, they still haven’t let me in the print edition), and to put the tin hat on my Bowie involvement for this year, I made a return to DJ-ing in November with my night ‘Bowie’, which returns at the end of January.

Talking of comebacks, I overcame my stage fright to compere Prefontaine’s biggest gig at Jongleurs club in May with a range of jokes and insults. I also played host at the Rosie May charity gig and Our Big Gig in the Arboretum in July.

I haven’t done as much newspaper writing this year, not enough to contemplate a follow up to First Draft, although I did manage to write six live reviews for The Post, the preview of Our Big Gig (although I didn’t recognise it as my work after they had edited the life out of it), an article about Prefontaine (which was chopped to bits for The Post and printed in full size in Metro), and the article I am most proud of; my piece on depression that was published in June. With The Post not exactly begging me to write for them, I submitted five reviews to NottinghamLIVE instead, including a review of Harleighblu’s album which she said was her favourite.

In February I released series two of Steve’s LP Box, and series three came out over November and December, although I didn’t have time to record this year’s Christmas special. The Christmas specials will in fact be the only new episodes of LP Box that get released from now on, as I made the decision to stop doing that particular series to concentrate on other podcast/radio areas.

Although I failed in my quest to bring Christmas back to Nottingham by getting The Old General statue dressed up as Santa, I did score a massive victory for Nottingham’s heritage by bringing attention to the scandal that rocked Goose Fair last year, and bringing an end to what has become locally known as ‘mushy pea-gate’. I am still wondering why my key to the city ceremony hasn’t been organised yet for that alone.

In March I released two albums of music taken from the live sessions on my radio shows, sooner or later I will start asking for permissions to release volume two of The Sunday Alternative Sessions, and maybe do something commercial with the live sessions I recorded for The Sound of Nottingham UK.

Apart from all that, and the 365 blogs that I have churned out this year (although I don’t count the blog as work, even though the Kindle version does bring in a small trickle of change), I have a new Christmas audio book out this year, A Christmas Dinner by Charles Dickens.

Sadly I have had a small handful of failures too; I recorded a pilot for a NottinghamLIVE television programme that came to nothing, although in January I took over (with Darren) the presenting duty from Bainy and Andy and relaunched the old Notts Live show. I think we’ll call that one a draw, the swings equalling the roundabouts. The item I pitched for the local current affairs programme on BBC1 (in the Midlands) East Midlands Today was turned down, but I do intend with going ahead and doing it as an investigative documentary next year. I also trailed an audio book of my blog through January and February, which was available to download as a pay-what-you-like, but I found that it was taking too much time and abandoned that.

My biggest success has of course been on the medium I am best known for, and most comfortable doing. I was flattered to be asked back to Trent Towers (not an actual tower) to present NottinghamLIVE, and of course The Sunday Alternative returned. My American show is also doing well; in the later part of the year I began hosting live sessions for exclusive USA play and will continue as soon as I find a new studio to work with.

If you combine the three radio shows plus a three hour edition of Castle Rock that I presented in Lee’s place, it works out that I have presented 250 hours of radio this year, which isn’t bad I suppose.

I want to work harder next year though. I’m never satisfied.

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Sunday 29th December

I was supposed to be on the radio this lunchtime, but as I have Emily staying I decided against it. I’m not sure how disappointed the listeners were, but I didn’t have time to do a pre-recorded show (something I don’t really like doing) so just didn’t bother. The play out system would have just randomly played a selection of songs from The Sunday Alternative library, and given that I wasn’t emailed to ask where I was, I assumed that most people haven’t bothered appearing live during Christmas.

We went to my dad’s for Sunday lunch, although we had sausage and mash because we all get a bit fed up of roast dinners at this point during the holiday. It was enough that I remembered that it was Sunday at all, because during this week we forget what day it is.

Jack seems to have taken to Emily quite well, allowing her to walk her to my dad’s and back. It was nice to get Emily out of the house as she didn’t go outside at all yesterday, not even wanting to come with me over the park to play ball with Jack for an hour.

Our Christmas film of choice tonight was Home Alone, a film that I have for some reason never seen before. Actually, it is one of those films that I’m never sure if I have seen it or not. Maybe I’ve just seen all the best bits on clip shows of the best Christmas films? I certainly don’t remember the nice ending with the next door neighbour, but most of the comedy business with the burglars was familiar to me. As a Christmas film it isn’t the best ever made, but it was by no means the worst. Funny really how a little while ago I wrote about Mara Wilson, the child actress from Miracle On 34^th Street among other things, and how she had grown up to be a normal person, in contrast to Macaulay Culkin who has had a very colourful few years and somehow managed to live to be 33 years old.

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Saturday 28th December

My daughter Emily is now at home with us for a little bit of a second Christmas, it is great to have her here given that we hardly see each other these days. I collected her yesterday and we opened presents when we got back to Nottingham. When she came down in the summer she had gone back to being talkative and a good laugh, and I had hoped that she would be carrying that on this time around. Although she is still talkative, unfortunately she has re-super glued her phone to her hand and hardly put it down. This is due to her now having a boyfriend, which of course is a natural part of being a teenager, although I refrained from asking too many questions as I didn’t really want to know the answers.

For someone who once upon a time used to love taking pictures of herself, Emily was reluctant to join me in a ‘delfie’ (a selfie with my dog, they can be seen on my Facebook page, which you are free to ‘like’ if you want to be kept informed of any work related activity), but I eventually got her to do one.

My dad and nana came round this afternoon for lunch and a chance to catch up with Emily, and I’m pleased to report that she did in fact talk and join in with the conversations. However, it was difficult to get her to watch a film without her using her phone every five minutes. We watched The Santa Clause (which I can’t remember watching last year) and It’s A Wonderful Life, which I’m sure everyone watches every year. Unfortunately, I fell asleep during It’s A Wonderful Life so now will have to wait until next Christmas to see it again.

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Friday 27th December

Last Christmas I set myself the target of watching a different version of A Christmas Carol every day during December. This could also include radio broadcasts, audio books, and even a play (which was terrible). I had intended to write a book about the adaptations and possibly turn it into a guide to the best and worst. However, I eventually decided that I didn’t really want to do this after all, as it began to spoil my enjoyment of one of the best known Christmas stories of all time. It numbed me against the story to such an extent that I didn’t cry at the end of The Muppet Christmas Carol, which I’m sure you all do every year. It’s strange how they keep making films based on this story really, as people generally moan about remakes. Most films tend not to stray too far from the story, keeping it in Victorian London, although Scrooged must now be regarded as a classic. A few years ago on television I saw Ross Kemp in a modern day take on the story with him playing a bailiff on a rough estate. It was exactly what Dickens would have written nowadays, the poverty and desperation of a poor part of London.

The best version of the story of course, and funnily enough one of the most faithful to the book, is The Muppet Christmas Carol, which we watched last night. This Christmas I have tried to keep away from the story, although I have watched a couple of versions, but I have saved myself for The Muppets. I especially like the way that it isn’t played as a Muppet film in the usual sense of what a Muppet film is. It is played so straight (with the possible exception of Statler and Waldorf as Jacob and Robert Marley) that the fact that they are all puppets is purely incidental. Michael Caine is playing one of the best roles of his career, and the whole presentation serves as the best possible tribute to the memory of Jim Henson. My only wish is that they hadn’t removed the song ‘When Love Is Gone’ from the DVD release. I have quickly looked into it and realise that some DVD editions do have the song, so it is pot luck. I know for a fact that the VHS video has the song included, but while we still have the video somewhere, we no longer have a video player. What makes it more ridiculous is that the song is reprised in the finale as ‘When Love Is Found’.

Anyway, we watched it last night and fully enjoyed it. The first ‘eye-swell point’ being of course the bit towards the end when Beaker takes off his scarf to give to Scrooge.

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Thursday 26th December

Last night before we left my dad’s, we watched the 1974 Christmas episode of Whatever Happened To The Likely Lads? on BBC4. In my opinion this is one of the best Christmas versions of a sitcom ever made. It hasn’t been seen for ages but both the series have been shown this year which means that James Bolam has lifted his embargo on repeating the show. I remember reading that Bolam had seen red over comments that Rodney Bewes had made to a newspaper and hadn’t spoken since. This of course didn’t do Bewes any favours as the work dried up and he didn’t have the income that a repeat run would have provided.

Anyway, the reason I bring this up was a conversation between the two characters. Terry (Bolam) was ranting against Christmas to Bob (Bewes), during which he declared Christmas to be a commercialized con trick dreamed up by department stores and card manufacturers. He also said that Christmas has lost its meaning, while Bob was all for it and remembered old Christmases from his childhood. I was interested by the fact that the programme was nearly forty years old, and yet this opinion is still trotted out to this day. Has Christmas always had this criticism that it has lost its meaning? How far back does this go? Maybe Christmas has never had any real meaning?

On the subject of sitcoms, I had been waiting for Still Open All Hours with a certain amount of trepidation. With the same writer as the original series and David Jason, who has never taken a duff role, then what could possibly go wrong? It turns out that quite a lot can go wrong. How David Jason was ever tempted to do this is beyond me, although one duff gig in 74 years isn’t a bad hit rate so we can forgive him that, especially as nobody will remember this travesty after today. I can only assume that Johnny Vegas and Mark Williams were star-struck by David Jason and the legacy of the show, as they wouldn’t have considered such a crap script for a brand new show. I especially can’t understand what one of the Chuckle Brothers was doing working as an extra. The script was contrived to include almost every single reference to the original series as possible, which became especially embarrassing when Granville brought out the old shop bike. Maybe there are still shops like that in the north of England, but I’m sure that once Arkwright died then Granville would have sold up to Londis and got the hell out of the place that emotionally imprisoned him for all those years.

Interestingly enough, when it had finished (yes, I saw it through to the bitter end) I turned over to GOLD and watched The Two Ronnies Scrapbook. It used to be quite a controversial opinion to say that The Two Ronnies were better than Morecambe and Wise, indeed it was almost considered comic blasphemy, but I have spoken to a lot of people who share the opinion. Just watching a compilation of clips showed what a fine legacy of work that Ronnie Barker left behind, and that his memory shouldn’t have been insulted by bringing back Open All Hours without him. I’m dreading next year’s Christmas showcase, Still Doing Porridge, starring Christopher Biggins as Slade Prison’s only surviving inmate.

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Wednesday 25th December

Like most people, Mandi and I are allowed to open one present after midnight before bed on Christmas Eve. This is a tradition that we didn’t have in my family as a child, so it always feels slightly rebellious to be doing this. It was worth it though, as Mandi had bought me this Santa suit onesie. I wanted to stay in it all day, but we were going out.

This was taken with my new camera, so I can no longer blame iphones. Any 'portrait' picture ends up on its side. When I look at the picture in 'my pictures' it is the right way up. I have therefore concluded that it is Blogger's fault, and will try to only take landscape pictures in future.

I know that I haven’t been feeling especially festive this year, but once I was at my dad’s I felt a little bit better about Christmas. When I was a child, Christmas Day seemed to have an aura about it; it felt like it was a truly special day. Maybe that wears off, because today didn’t have any magic about it.

We opened our pound-shop-fiver-dash stockings in bed before Mandi went for a shower. I took Jack for a walk around the park (nothing Christmassy about picking up dog turds and putting them in the bin) for a run around to hopefully spend some energy seeing as we were taking him with us to my dad’s house.

Mandi seemed a little more relaxed this year, free from the responsibility of Christmas dinner. We had a lovely time opening presents, having lunch and settling down in front of the telly (there was only four of us this year so we didn’t bother with parlour games or a sing-song around the piano – mainly because we don’t have a piano). Before we had our buffet tea, we took Jack home and settled him down for the night and walked back. On the way back to my dad’s I took a little detour to take this photo.

I love that shop; a proper hardware shop that despite all the chaos, he can probably find exactly what it is you want straight away. You wouldn’t get that level of customer service in Wilkinson or B&Q.

It is worth me pointing out that I tried my best this year to get The Old General statue dressed as Santa, but was unsuccessful. When the statue was dressed, you knew Christmas had arrived in Nottingham, as people used to travel from all around to see it. A few weeks ago I attempted contact with someone who has the keys to the pub, but to no avail. They should be ashamed of themselves for allowing this tradition to come to an end, especially as for over one hundred years the statue has heralded the start of the festive season for the people of this fine city. The chain is now broken, hopefully not beyond repair. I will keep being a pain in the arse about this, and hopefully Christmas 2014 will see a return to a real Christmas in Nottingham. Even if the pub hasn’t reopened, I will set up some kind of event around it.

One of my highlights of Christmas is the huge amount of buffet food you manage to eat over the two-week holiday period. In fact, I sometimes wonder if I find Christmas Day teatime more exciting than Christmas lunch itself. The coffee table was set up with nuts, pineapple and cheese on sticks, cheese and biscuits, all the stuff we all eat too much of at this time of year and then don’t even think about until the following Christmas (I still maintain that Ritz crackers shouldn’t even be on sale during the year).

 My nana had said that she was staying until around half past eight, so when we got home with Jack I set Doctor Who and Eastenders to record, just in case she talked all the way through. There’s still a Christmas Day Doctor Who that I can’t remember for that reason. Although nana didn’t talk over it this year, her taxi arrived just as Matt Smith was turning into Peter Capaldi.

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Tuesday 24th December

Neither of us could be bothered going to town today as we’ve both been doing a lot of running around these last few days and so wanted Christmas Eve to be as relaxed as possible. As an alternative, we walked with Jack to Bulwell for a change of scenery. It wasn’t much of a change of scenery for me of course because I work there twice a week entertaining connoisseurs of high quality music, but we haven’t been here together for a while. The main reason for going was our now traditional Christmas Eve custom, the pound-shop-fiver-dash. Usually we take a shop each and split up, we are only allowed five minutes (queuing doesn’t count because for some reason it takes ages despite the prices being so bloody easy), but today we had to use the same shop. If you’ve ever seen Bulwell, you’ll be amazed that it only has one pound shop.

Jack was wearing tinsel around his neck which attracted the attention of everyone who saw him; it was nice to see so much Christmas spirit going on in such a low-rent chav-hole of a town. That is, apart from one woman who I encountered having a to-do with some shop staff. I was waiting with Jack outside while Mandi took her turn at the dash, when I became aware of some commotion just inside. This woman (of questionable mental ability) was shouting and swearing for all to hear. Now, we all love to see a nutter yelling the odds in a crowded public area, but there were a lot of children around. I politely pointed out that she shouldn’t be using that sort of language in front of children (especially on a child’s most exciting day of the year) and she turned on me. Not only did she call me all the fucking cunts under the sun, she also said things to me in Jamaican patois and then accused me of being racist simply because I had ‘picked on’ her. I wasn’t singling her out for being black, I was singling her out for being a gobshite in front of children; as much as I pepper my everyday talk with naughty words, I have a sense of time and place. After she had accused me of being a racist, she called me a white cunt, which kind of contradicted her argument. She eventually wandered off, shouting and swearing as she went, and I noticed a little girl with her dad. I apologised to them both (not that I had anything to apologise for) and said to the daughter that she shouldn’t have had to hear that sort of thing. She came over to stroke Jack and said that the woman was naughty and that Santa wouldn’t be visiting her. That was probably the sweetest thing I have heard for a long time.

Even better than that was the old man who rode past on his mobility scooter and commented that “she’ll make someone a lovely wife one day”.

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Monday 23rd December

I moan about this every year it would seem, but the nearer you get to Christmas, the more un-Christmassy the city centre gets. The market square still looks nice of course, but the shops seem to wind things down at the beginning of December. It’s a shame really when you consider how the shops have been decked out for the festive season since the summer. This makes finishing your Christmas shopping on the day before Christmas Eve a bit of a pain in the arse, when the shops are gearing up to fill the shelves with Easter eggs and sun cream.

My intention today was to spend as little time as possible in town finishing the last bits of present buying before returning to the cocoon that is my office to record the final edition of The Sound Of Nottingham UK for this year (a ‘best of’ compilation of the live sessions) followed by the Christmas special episode of Steve’s LP Box. As with all good intentions, this went a little wrong as the shopping seemed to be taking forever and I was still in town at around four o’clock. Once I was home I took Jack to the park for a run around, and fed him and the cats on my return. By the time I had recorded TSONUK and sent it over, I didn’t feel motivated to record the Christmas LP Box. I’m certainly unable to do it tomorrow as I am obviously not going to work on Christmas Eve, and once Christmas Day, Boxing Day, and ‘the day after Boxing Day’ has been and gone, people don’t seem in the mood for a Christmas themed show. I know it is Christmas until January 6^th, but people are generally too stupid these days for that to wash. I had already decided to stop doing LP Box but will do an annual Christmas show, so next year I will release two, one of them being this year’s. The script is written so I have plenty of time to get it done, in theory.

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Sunday 22nd December

Another day, another Christmas special. Today it was the turn of The Sunday Alternative, a show that didn’t have a Christmas show last year as I had quit the station. This year I chose some of the most inappropriate festive music, thanks in part to my friend and colleague Andy Haynes who left me a compilation CD that certainly didn’t contain any Wombles or Cliff. This show certainly matched the legendary show I did for Sherwood Radio, although whether or not it is listened to in real time every year remains to be seen.

I was in a bit of a grump (for a change) to begin with as Gary had informed me that he was going to be late, so I soldiered through the first half hour generally bitching about Christmas and how we should skip it next year. Gary turned up during the first hour and I changed gear immediately, proving that I do work better with a partner. I haven’t had the best luck when it comes to Sunday Alt co-presenters in the past; although I am still on speaking terms with most of them, so I’m glad that Gary agreed to join me in the first place. Our on-air rambles aren’t staged for radio; we talk like this in real life too which in my opinion makes it a more natural partnership. In between songs we riffed on cover versions of Christmas songs that shouldn’t be made, (although part of me wouldn’t mind hearing The Krankies tackle ‘Fairytale Of New York’), and made our predictions for the traditional Christmas Day celebrity death. I chose Bruce Forsyth, as it would be fitting somehow, Gary went with Cliff Richard* and Andy (who does the show after us) plumped for Ronnie Corbett. Is it worth popping in the bookies for a spread bet? Do bookies open on Sunday?

*I texted Gary earlier in the week with the simple message: Song title: ‘Cliff, Come Out For Christmas’. By the next morning, Gary had written the rough draft of a song calling for Cliff Richard to come out of the closet. Not only that, but he then sent me the song. Although a bit tatty around the edges, it is a work of genius and testament to the way our minds work. Unfortunately, he won’t let me air it but it has become one of those ‘underground’ songs that get the thumbs up from everyone who hears it. My suggestion is that we sit on the song until Cliff dies (it can’t be too long – then watch the skeletons fall out of the closet, maybe that’s why Cliff doesn’t come out, because he is trapped by skeletons) and then release it. If he dies in the middle of the year then so be it, the song goes on Soundcloud anyway and gets a proper release the following year as a tribute.

Before I went to my dad’s for lunch, I had to endure a visit to Argos. I can’t recall ever actually shopping in Argos before (although just like every kid in the country, I used to love reading the Christmas catalogue), but it turned out to be exactly as hellish as I expected. It is a little bit like going into a betting shop (something else I have never done); you go in, fill in a little slip and hand it in, and if you’re luck is in you walk away with a prize.

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Saturday 21st December

This is a genuine letter I have written to Marks and Spencer head office.

To Whom It May Concern

It is a long standing family tradition that I have carried on into adulthood, the annual visit at Christmas to M&S to purchase the Christmas biscuit tin (and its contents of course – I don’t just buy the tin) to show off to my neighbours that I have bought something from your shop. To be fair, I don’t actually invite my neighbours round as I don’t like them (they have a home delivery from Iceland so I don’t think they would fully appreciate the gesture) but we still buy them anyway and have built up a rather handsome collection of tins. As a working-class person, I look forward to being allowed into your emporium once a year.

I am sorry to be writing to you to report a problem. Today I entered your store on my annual visit and was shocked at what I found. I know you don’t like allowing the working classes in, so I was surprised to see that you have seemingly converted your food hall into what looks like a common supermarket. If we wanted a common supermarket we can shop in one any day of the year, so why have you done this? We like M&S because it is a posh shop, so if you have undertaken this ‘make-under’ for our benefit then it is entirely the wrong thing to have done.

It is my hope that this is resolved in time for next Christmas, and the food hall is returned to the appearance of a posh place that makes us all feel a little bit out of place and inferior. Today’s visit made it feel as if it wasn’t worth taking my suit to the dry cleaners, (incidentally, there were people in your establishment today wearing denim and trainers, what are you paying your security guards for?).

I look forward to my visit in December 2014 and normality being resumed.

Yours faithfully

Steve Oliver

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Friday 20th December

Mandi has broken up from work today, as of course has the rest of the country, although for some ridiculous reason she has to return to work before January 6^th therefore she will be working during Christmas. I recorded the Christmas edition of The Sound of Nottingham UK and sent that over the Atlantic before taking Jack for a walk. Mandi did some shopping on her way home from work so we didn’t need to do anything important once we were both home. I have another American show to record which I will probably do on Monday as I don’t imagine I’ll have the time over the weekend, and then I’ll be officially off duty too. Although I feel ready for a rest I have a feeling of wanting the holiday out of the way so that I can get back to work. I think it stems from the relatively late start to my career and the feeling of having to catch up with myself that I am almost a workaholic now. Part of me would love to have an hour with my ex-wife so I can tell her how much better my life is since I walked out on her and that now she isn’t controlling me I can get on with my stalled career. I still carry the emotional scars from that marriage, which isn’t really fair on Mandi as I now put work before everything else, to the point that I once left a lunch in town to go to the BBC as I had been invited to talk about something on the radio. The sad thing is that I can’t remember the reason; I just received a phone call and accepted the invitation. As much as I’d like to devote more time to my home life, I know that realistically it isn’t going to happen.

Still, there’s time off to be had over the next week. We always go to have a few drinks at The Willow Tree on this day and usually have a bag of chips on the way home. It is nice to go in there for a drink rather than a meal, and I was a bit taken aback to see how quiet the place was (which I preferred to be perfectly honest) on the Friday night before Christmas. It was sadly too late for chips when we left the pub, and I didn’t want a pizza as I had eaten one earlier and only the Ninja Turtles eat two pizzas in a day. We waited to get home and ordered burgers instead and watched Christmas music videos (again) on Magic.

There’s a danger that I am starting to feel Christmassy.

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Thursday 19th December

Rather than skipping Christmas next year, I spent today mulling over the possibility of keeping myself busy instead in the run up. There will no doubt be some Christmas radio specials to do assuming I’m still doing the three radio shows I’m currently involved with, and I will probably do another festive album for a Steve’s LP Box one-off (I’m not going to do another series but intend to do a Christmas edition every year from now on) and more Dickens Christmas audio books. Regarding the audio books, I hope to have enough time to record more than one and release them in the run up to Christmas next year, which is connected to part of today’s mulling over of projects.

My audio book of A Christmas Carol last year (still available) was actually a reading of the adaptation that Dickens himself wrote in order to read the story in public. Public readings were very much a part of the publicity machine for Dickens in those days, starting off with a charity reading of A Christmas Carol in Birmingham but soon being paid handsomely for these appearances. His touring schedule was an awesome task that many of today’s biggest rock and pop stars would refuse to undertake; between December 1867 and April 1868 he earned nineteen thousand pounds, and that was in the days when nineteen grand for four months work was a lot of money!

I fancy the idea of performing public readings of Dickens Christmas stories during December, maybe starting with A Christmas Dinner (this year’s audio book, out this weekend), and carrying on with A Christmas Tree, What Christmas Is As We Grow Older, and something a bit spooky like The Chimes. I would of course end with A Christmas Carol. Another possibility would be to do different books every performance so that things don’t go stale, (although I would probably do A Christmas Carol every time seeing as that is the one that everyone knows).

Nottingham has a handful of very old and very atmospheric pubs that would suit the readings of festive ghost stories in a back bar or upstairs room, although that may alienate a family audience if doing them in the evening. Libraries are an option if they’re up for it, there hasn’t been any Christmas storytelling going on in a public library in Nottingham for as long as I can remember, surely this is something they should be doing?

My other idea is something I have wanted to do for years, in fact I first obtained permission to do this in 2002 and have been unable to do it due to a combination of time, money and the lack of available performance space. In the late 1990s I found in a charity shop, a double cassette of Hancock’s Half Hour radio episodes called Hancock’s Happy Christmas. There are four episodes on this collection, three of which could easily be translated to the stage with the minimum of fuss and would only need five main characters; Sid James, Tony Hancock, Bill Kerr, Hattie Jacques (Griselda Pugh), and the ‘everyman’ characters that were all played by Kenneth Williams. The problem here of course is that theatres will not shift away from pantomime during the Christmas season, and who can blame them? I’m sure the finished result would be a good show, but something like this needs to be performed in a small theatre and even the Lace Market Theatre, who put on amateur productions, stage a pantomime every year. Incidentally, we went to see A Christmas Carol there last year, it was terrible.

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Wednesday 18th December

Today was the first of three radio Christmas specials that I will be involved with this week. I’m doing the Robin Hood Radio one this week to send over to America and on Sunday I’ll be live on air with The Sunday Alternative. There’s also the Christmas edition of Steve’s LP Box and my audio book of A Christmas Dinner by Charles Dickens. Tonight I was live on the radio with the NottinghamLIVE special.  Not a bad haul for someone who wants to skip Christmas next year.

We were without Cassia this week due to illness, but we had invited Mike Atkinson along to join in. Originally we had decided not to have a live guest this week, but thanks to some quick fire texting during the day we ended up with two.

There were no Christmas songs in the first hour as Mike presented his picks for 2014, he usually turns up for the final hour but had a prior engagement so had to dash off as soon as the eight o’clock news kicked in. We didn’t really have time for a picture, but we took one anyway.

Don't we look Christmassy?

Nick Aslam played in the second hour, performing his Christmas song ‘I Know You Wish (It Could Be Christmas)’ along with last year’s festive tune that he hadn’t played since last year. We did put him on the spot with that, as we didn’t really make any plans regarding tonight’s show. Here’s a future pub quiz fact for you, Nick Aslam is the first singer to appear on NottinghamLIVE twice. Nick was great fun and didn’t even seem to object when I plonked a Santa hat over his perfectly prepared hair.

Behind the scenes fact: That 'wine' is actually Coca-Cola.

A band that I have thrown my support behind this year is of course The CTRL. I have wanted them to do an acoustic session for one of my shows for ages, and tonight they finally obliged. The appearance was only sorted out a couple hours before the show started, and even as the show started they didn’t really know what they were going to do. We arranged for them to do two of their regular songs and a Christmas song to end. Charlie kept winding me up saying that they have prepared a “really gay cover” to play during their set, but wouldn’t tell me what it was. They played in the final hour, a member down and with Charlie playing percussion on an upturned bin and tambourine. The “really gay cover” turned out to be a version of ‘When You Say Nothing At All’, best known in this country for Ronan Keating’s version (hence it being a “really gay cover”). Weirdly enough, they did a brilliant job of it and I hope they do at least put this acoustic performance on their Soundcloud page. They ended with a great version of ‘Merry Christmas Everyone’ by Shakin’ Stevens, by which time the show was nearly over and Christmas cheer had been spread throughout Nottingham.

All photos by Matt Stone

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Tuesday 17th December

To provide a festive background around the house, we tend to have one of the music channels on. In the run up to Christmas they run wall-to-wall ‘countdown’ programmes presented by pop stars and minor celebrities showing the same old Christmas videos that we all know. Alongside the likes of Slade, Wizzard, Shaky and Wham! they occasionally throw in something only children will have heard of such as the latest contrived Disney Channel starlet. I don’t personally think that there could ever be a real classic Christmas song again, as people take themselves too seriously nowadays.

Today is the third anniversary (to the day) of my Christmas show on Sherwood Radio, something I didn’t realise until this evening. It has become a tradition through Facebook (remember Facebook?) and Twitter that people download or stream the show at exactly nine o’clock in the evening, but this year the listening figures were down drastically due to me only remembering about forty five minutes beforehand. Having a look through the track list for that show again, I couldn’t believe how good a selection I had made. My reason for looking through this show again was mainly because I was sorting out the music for this Sunday. I didn’t get to do a Christmas special last year for The Sunday Alternative as I had walked out in November, so I’m looking forward to being able to do one this year.

For Sunday I have decided to go a bit anti-Christmas in the spirit of my new found apathy for this time of year. We will talk about Christmas but I am going to make more of my point from yesterday’s blog about only celebrating it every two years.

Going back to the start, I wondered about pitching an alternative Christmas video show to one of the music channels. I would watch something like that for sure, at the moment it doesn’t look like one of Magic’s Christmas programmes is going to feature ‘There’s No Lights On The Christmas Tree’ by The Sensational Alex Harvey Band for example.

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Any money donated to the PayPal account above will be used to make films, podcasts, and other content that will be made available free of charge.