Picture from Wikipedia
All is well with the world, The Sunday Alternative is back with a vengeance. I had saved time by uploading it to the Internet Archive a few days ago and doing the blog too, so all I needed to do this morning was make the blog page go live and I was away. While I was doing the usual tagged tweets from the show's Twitter account (I only log in on a Sunday to do this, which could be why the follower count is a bit low) I was watching the listening figures and they were quite pleasing but still not as great as they were in the good old days of the podcast all those seven weeks ago. Hopefully I will be able to climb back out of the pit and claw back the audience as the podcast is surprisingly my most successful venture. The live gig in a couple of weeks will be a good way to get the name out to those who might not be aware of it yet, especially with the tie-in video series on YouTube, and I am currently working behind the scenes (and superstitiously not mentioning it too loud) to attempt to get a monthly night off the ground outside Nottingham. As much as I would like to do it in London somewhere I'm not sure if it would be something I could commit to so may need to think about somewhere nearer; Leeds or Sheffield perhaps to start with as they have a pretty healthy scene. A tiny part of me would also like to revive the radio version but only on the right terms.
Once I had got the ball rolling with the podcast we went for lunch at my dad's as usual. Once home I checked the figures and the podcast enjoyed a reasonably steady first day, still a little catching up to do with the usual numbers but enough to make me want to carry on doing it. We are nearly at the end of the complete Keeping Up Appearances box set so watched a few more episodes this evening. At first I was reluctant to watch it but as I reported at the time I soon got into it, based as it was on the writing style of traditional domestic sitcoms. The nearer we get to the end the more irritated by it I am becoming, although I don't feel as if I should stop watching it as I want to complete the set and draw a line under it. One of the major sources of annoyance is the character of Rose, Hyacinth Bucket's sister. Rose is a mini-skirted mutton dressed as lamb who always has some sort of relationship crisis to contend with, and her coping mechanism seems to be overacting on a pantomime scale that would make the cast of 'Allo 'Allo seem restrained. The improbable man-eater is a sitcom staple and Rose no doubt went to the same deportment school as Lilo Lill in Bread and Marina from Last of the Summer Wine. The character is too cartoonish even for a Whitehall farce like this. The other problem I have is the relationship between Hyacinth and Richard; she is bossy and patronising towards him and he has no choice but to play along and follow her rules, unable to escape from the daily misery that is his life. Perhaps it is too much like my own experience of marriage for me to really enjoy it.
The Sunday Alternative Podcast #43 (Saturday edition) is available from here.
The Sunday Alternative Podcast #44 is available from here.
===
June housekeeping
The audio book of Bowie Day (a short story inspired by A Christmas Carol) will be released on August 31st. In the meantime the book can be downloaded to your Kindle from here.
All donations made using the PayPal button will go towards making podcasts, comedy sketches, live video sessions, documentaries, short films and more that will be made available online for free.
The Sunday Alternative bag and t-shirt (and other products) can be purchased from my shop page. All money raised will go into the fund to create free content.
steveEoliver@gmail.com
