Picture from BBC

Sir David Jason is without a doubt one of our best comedy actors who deserved his knighthood for his contribution to British entertainment. Since appearing on television in the 1960s he hasn't put a foot wrong and is one of the few comedy actors to have a clean record as far as quality is concerned and had he died in 2013 he would have left behind a sparkling legacy of such rich characters as Granville, Inspector Jack Frost, Edgar Briggs, Blanco Webb, Pop Larkin and of course Del Boy. His friends, fans and colleagues would have eulogised a flawless man who brought laughter and joy to millions. Sadly, if David Jason dies now, the last thing he leaves behind on television is Still Open All Hours. 

I can only assume that he hasn't taken care of his financial situation in his later years and has found himself in need of a quick fix payday, otherwise why else would be sell his integrity and reputation down the river in such a crass fashion? David Jason is not only taking his own reputation down but by pissing on his grave he is taking Ronnie Barker down with him. In the original series Granville was always wanting to escape the drudgery of his life dedicated to his uncle's shop but was stifled by Arkwright. Steptoe and Son worked along a similar trope but was a much darker story of the claustrophobia of Harold's situation, helped along by the apparent real-life hatred between Wilfred Brambell and Harry H Corbett, and we never found out the eventual outcome. It would have helped if there had been a story that revealed what happened in the interim between the last episode of Open All Hours and the first episode Still Open All Hours because I couldn't help but think that Granville would have sold the shop to Londis or Spar before Arkwright's body was cold. It was pointed out to me on Facebook that the whole conceit of the rebooted series was that Granville became his late uncle without even realising it. As much as he hated the shop, by the time he was left in charge he had wasted too much of his life to start again, and was left to rot in the shop that had begun destroying his soul when he was a child where he was cursed to spend the autumn years of his life locked in a prison of his own making, he didn't even replace that crap till. 

Whatever the reason for Granville deciding to stay in the life he hated and not bothering to break out and see the world, the writers could have done a much better job with this situation. Rather than move on, the sitcom is stuck in the past with the aforementioned till that slams shut for comic effect (you would imagine that Granville might have grown used to it by now) and the cast of characters from the original series. It is a little bit creepy that Mrs Featherstone is now lusting after Granville and Granville leers over Nurse Gladys. Granville now has a son, who is as downtrodden and overworked as he once was, even though if Granville had any heart he would remember the life he was subjected to and might have encouraged Leroy to get the hell out at the first chance. 

Interestingly, this show is written by Roy Clarke who not only wrote the original series but is also responsible for Last of the Summer Wine. Now that Last of the Summer Wine is no longer being made, I have a feeling that the BBC and Clarke are in cahoots to provide the final job for veteran comedy actors and I don't doubt that sooner or later the viewers will have to endure at least one scene involving a character rolling down a hill in a bathtub on wheels.

===

 This week's edition of The Sunday Alternative is here. 

The first edition of The Random Sessions Podcast is available here.

Thank you in advance for donating using the PayPal button at the top of this page. It all goes towards creating podcasts, sketches, documentaries, films and more, all of which I will make available for free in return for your generosity.

Picture from Wikipedia

It's very much a forgotten part of Nottingham's history now, but for a while there was a slight wave of controversy surrounding the whereabouts of a tree planted by comedy actor John Inman at some point in the 1970s when he was in town appearing in pantomime. When the area outside the Theatre Royal was messed about with to make room for the tram network the tree was uprooted and the council said that it would be replaced. I seemed to be the only one who remembered this, and enquiries to the theatre and the library didn't uncover anything, as if the whole thing had been erased from history, A letter on the subject published in the Nottingham Post unearthed one bit of information  but still I was at a dead end, John Inman's tree was apparently gone forever and nobody knew or cared anything about it. In many ways an apathetic attitude is to be expected in Nottingham as nobody tends to give a shit about anything which is why the place is falling apart, but perhaps there is a darker reason for this very audible silence.

Inman belonged to that tragic club of entertainers who struggled to keep their sexuality a secret, coming from a time when homosexuality was a criminal offence and the revelation of which could damage a person's career. Frankie Howerd and Kenneth Williams were equally subjected to speculation and although it seems (rightly) abhorrent now, a person in the public eye simply couldn't come out of the closet. The character that Inman was most famous for, Mr Humphries, was according to the show's writers 'a mummy's boy' whose true sexuality was never disclosed. In 1970s language, Mr Humphries might have been referred to as a 'woolly woofter' but nothing was ever officially said. In 1999 John Inman unconvincingly announced that he was straight and had been in a serious relationship with a woman for nearly thirty years, it wasn't until he became ill in 2004 that he dropped the mask and married his actual partner Ron Lynch. Inman died in 2007, as did Lynch, and aside from the occasional repeat showing of Are You being Served? very little has been spoken about him.

This week is was reported that Operation Yewtree are investigating claims that Inman sexually assaulted a young boy 36 years ago. Maybe at this point it is a rare example of good thinking on behalf of Nottingham Council to have remained silent on the trivial matter of the tree but why? Did they know something? The local BBC current affairs show Inside Out turned down my pitch of a film about the whereabouts of the tree as it was too light hearted (this is the programme that gives airtime to Al Needham and his fake Nottingham accent reporting on such banalities as rude sounding street names), did they have an inkling? After all the BBC hid a lot of stuff that should have been reported.

Whatever the truth is on this story, I can't see how a police investigation will help at this stage. Inman has been dead for nine years so can't face justice. Jimmy Savile was a different case in a way, although he too never had to face prosecution the subsequent investigation did some good in unearthing decades of wrongdoing in the BBC, Parliament, and in several hospitals. However for every successful scalp there were innocent victims such as Jimmy Tarbuck and Paul Gambaccini who had their names dragged through the shit. It remains to be seen whether or not John Inman will be affected by this story, although similar sensationalist reports about Leonard Rossiter and Alan Freeman blew over allowing us to enjoy repeats of Rising Damp and the BBC 6Music's perpetual airing of The Story of Pop in the early hours of the morning.

You could of course wonder why the victim has waited until now to speak about this. I understand that victims don't always feel as if they can come forward straight away, and even 36 years ago children weren't always believed when they tried to accuse an adult of something. So why not at some point during his adulthood, or just after Inman's death? He could also have revealed this incident in 2011 when the Operation Yewtree ball started rolling. We will never know the truth about John Inman's involvement in this crime but it remains to be seen if he suffers a posthumous fall from favour as a result. Either way, I don't think Nottingham Council will be in a hurry to plant a tree in his name.

Please read my February newsletter here.

The Sunday Alternative Podcast #73 is available from here.

This week's episode of The Random Saturday Sessions stars Gerry Trimble, watch it here.

 

Generic Google Images picture

As I may have already mentioned, we are currently working our way through an incomplete collection of Only Fools and Horses on video and have almost moved beyond the regular series that ended a lot longer ago than I remembered and onto the annual Christmas Day special episodes. Fitting in with the retro feel of watching videos rather than DVDs, today I found a true relic of the post-Internet era. Inside one of the cassette cases was a form to fill in asking where you bought the video from and your participation gave you a chance to win a pile of BBC videos. Once you've filled it in you fold it up in a specific way and the address was already printed with postage paid by way of a printed number 1 or 2 signifying first or second class post (does that concept still exist?). I had a choice; did I keep the form inside the video case as a time capsule of the days when life had a slower pace, or did I fill the form in and post it? One of the questions was where did I buy the video and Woolworths was one of the options, the closing date for the draw/competition was May 31st 2000 and it ended by asking me if I have access to the Internet. As someone old enough to remember when you asked if someone was 'on email' before asking for an email address (which would have been a complicated collection of numbers and symbols), this was a blast from the quaint past in much the same way that you would in the late 1990s ask if a person's mobile phone 'had texting'; two things we take for granted that everyone has.

Of course I filled it in and posted it to the free post address and fully expect nothing to happen with the only reminder of this daft moment being presented to me should I ever have the need to come back to this blog entry. These slips often appeared in videos and CDs and sometimes formed part of the cover that had to be detached using the perforated line. The idea was to get people on their mailing list and I always used to send these off to occasionally be informed of a new album coming out or a band's latest single, what a shame you can get this information nowadays via the unromantic system of following on Twitter or liking a Facebook page. 

I posted the form in the early hours of this morning while walking Jack and on the walk I started thinking about how we don't rely on the post anywhere near as much as we used to. Presumably the free address is no longer in use (it was a PO Box address) so what will happen to my form? As I was a postman once I kind of know the answer to this. If you receive a letter at home for the person who used to live in your house, the responsible thing to do is to write 'not known at this address' on the envelope and put it back in the pillar box. This will then be picked up and put back in the system for your postman to stick a sticker on it and send it to the address on the back. One of the reasons I advocate doing this is that it will eventually stop you getting post that you don't need which will in turn lighten the postman's load. If the PO Box once hired by the BBC is no longer in use then it will either be forwarded to a different arm of the BBC, returned to myself as a dead letter, or binned. What would be really cool is if every redundant address had to stay open, even if there is only one person in charge. Sometimes I will find an old comic or music magazine in a charity shop and am tempted to enter the competition to win a brand new Raleigh Grifter or top of the range cassette Walkman just to see what happens. Old music magazines often advertise fan clubs so what would happen if you wrote in to ask a question of a member of a long forgotten pop star? Somebody should be there to reply for you, the same as there should be someone in a lonely office somewhere waiting for some joker to enter a competition that closed fifteen years ago, if they have a sense of humour they could send a VHS tape out. 

Incidentally, did you know that if you dial the phone number for Multi-Coloured Swap Shop you get through to the Banker from Deal or No Deal? Try it.

The Sunday Alternative Podcast #58 is available from here

===

October Housekeeping

Donations have slowed down a bit and this has had an adverse effect on filming plans. Ideas are waiting to become reality so please do consider making a donation using the PayPal button above.

In return for your gift I will make entertainment that I will put online to be enjoyed free of charge by everyone. Comedy sketches, documentaries, short films and podcasts are waiting to be made so dig deep.

You get 365 blogs a year, a weekly podcast and a forthcoming Nottingham music podcast (at Christmas) free of charge already.

Some ways to help:

You can have a kazoo cover dedicated to you.

Beat the 5p carrier bag charge here (and check out other goodies)

Download my audio books here.

I now have a fully updated shop page on this site so please give generously. It has been a while since I properly got under the bonnet of this site to update things but at least the shop is now up and running. This is quite an important push because I have several projects on the go that can only be completed with your help, and you get to watch the finished result completely free of charge. If you donate one pound and it helps to make a short film that will get on YouTube then you can be proud that your quid helped, plus you get a film for a pound - can you go to the cinema for a pound? How much is your TV Licence these days? Is it worth it for all the shit that the BBC make? 

This year I basically need to fund the pilot episode of Saturday Breakfast, a trailer for a potential (crowd-fund dependent) documentary, and hopefully I will finally finish The Woolworths Related Documentary (working title), the comedy I first wrote a draft for in 2008 when Woolworths closed down. It is written but I have had a few issues with locations for a start, there are scenes filmed in name-specific shops or supermarkets and I can't get anyone to agree to it as they don't want their names brought into disrepute, not that I intend to do such a thing. I was also warned about copyright but as I have tried my hardest to obtain certain permissions to no avail I am going to assume that the rights to the Woolly and Worth characters died when the shutters were pulled down for the last time. If I am contacted with information to the contrary then I will happily play along. It's going to be a free film on YouTube so it isn't like I am trying to make a fortune with a cinema release using characters I didn't invent. 

To be honest I am expecting more bother when I release my children's programmes Postman Pete and Ben the Builder.

No podcast this week.

===

May housekeeping 

Please consider making either a one-off or regular donation using the PayPal button above this blog. Every penny will be used to fund creative projects that will be made available for free.

The Sunday Alternative is a free weekly podcast. I am aiming to start making this podcast in a studio with live bands in session. This will cost at least £50 per episode so please give whatever you can.

52 podcasts and 365 blogs a year must be worth something to you?

The Sunday Alternative bag is on sale now. All you need to do is click on the PayPal button and donate £6 (or more if you're feeling generous), then email me at the address below with 'BAG' in the subject line and your name and address in the email.

(All money from the bags goes into the fund to create free online entertainment)

steveEoliver@gmail.com

@SteveOliver76 

Typically, the hottest day of the four day weekend is the day I have to spend in my office hard at work. At least I finally finished writing up the Georgie Rose interview and emailed it to the newspaper ahead of deadline which was my priority. The to-do list that I made for the Easter weekend was a waste of time as I always underestimate how long certain things are going to take. As the world returns to normal tomorrow I will have hardly any time to catch up as I am in court all day before going to a gig, so Wednesday will be my only evening which means that very little will be achieved this week. I'm looking forward to getting back into the swing of live music now that I seem to be fully fit following my chest infection, hopefully the other music champions have caught up with me although this won't take long as my diary tells me the shameful truth that I have only been to ten gigs this year. Part of this is down to being busy with various writing commitments and part of it is down to not wanting to see the same local bands time and time again as the circuit is starting to bore me.

It took most of the day to get the Georgie interview just right and I had intended to enjoy the fading embers of Easter weekend in front of the television with a couple of beers and an Easter egg in the company of Mandi and Jack. Last night we finished the complete Bottom box set, maybe it is looking at it retrospectively now that Rik Mayall is dead that made me realise what a work of genius the show was. Saddest of all is the knowledge that there was a fourth series that wasn't picked up by the BBC and this was in the days before Kickstarter and online DIY programming. A couple of years ago Rik Mayall and Adrian Edmondson did start writing together but nothing came of it. If there actually is a collection of scripts then someone should get in touch with Edmondson and negotiate. There was enough love for Rik displayed around the world when he died that a crowd funding campaign would surely make enough money to make the series in front of an audience for an online screening and DVD release. Paul Merton starred in a series of old scripts written by Galton and Simpson that included some remakes of Hancock's Half Hour so such a project can be done. People record cover versions of songs all the time and remake films and plays so why not a sitcom script? As long as it was done with respect for the original and of course Rik Mayall's memory then it would be doing a valuable service on putting the scripts out there for the fans.

This week's edition of The Sunday Alternative can be heard here.

===

April housekeeping

Please consider making either a one-off or regular donation using the PayPal button above this blog. Every penny will be used to fund creative projects that will be made available for free.

Saturday Breakfast: We are making a pilot episode of this music and cookery show and we need your help. Your donations will help to get this made.

The Sunday Alternative is a free weekly podcast. I am aiming to start making this podcast in a studio with live bands in session. This will cost at least £50 per episode so please give whatever you can.

52 podcasts and 365 blogs a year must be worth something to you?

steveEoliver@gmail.com

@SteveOliver76

It is tragic what happened in Hockley, a pocket of Nottingham city centre at some point over the weekend. I was at Jam Cafe on Thursday night and I didn't notice anything untoward, apart from the roads being reshaped and parking being a nightmare. However, something happened and the papers have not reported on it nor has it been mentioned on the BBC news for the East Midlands. The fact that there is a media silence is worrying; what information is being held from the public and why? We don't know if there was a poisonous gas leak, a deadly virus, a crazed axe-murderer running amok laying waste to everyone in his (or her, women can be psychos too - I should know I married one) path, or some other sinister reason which is why they are covering it up. Even the BBC website doesn't mention it in the local news section, I know the BBC have form when it comes to covering stuff up but when something on this scale happens the public deserve to know about it.

I have been advertising for various people to act in The Record Store Day Video (working title) for a couple of weeks, one of the calls was for a hipster. There is one scene that needed a typical hipster type, rolled up trousers and all, the more cartoonish the better. Thanks to whatever happened in Hockley I now have to rewrite the scene because for reasons that Nottingham council and the media are hiding from us, Nottingham no longer has a single hipster. You would think that at least one of them would have replied, but now it will never be. There was a time when you couldn't move for hipsters in Hockley, (no idea how as surely they can't be afforded the opportunity to reproduce if they go around looking like that) but now they are all dead and nobody will reveal why.

Hockley will become a wasteland with boutique coffee shops and pretentious bars closing down once the (inexplicably earned) hipster money dries up. Never again will we see rolled up trousers with slip on plimsolls, checked shirts buttoned up to the neck, big beards, man-buns, and a sense of importance. Bars in Hockley will be forced to sell proper drinks instead of Tizer and Opal Fruit flavoured craft beer, and the word 'vintage' will no longer be used as a substitution for 'second hand' or 'old crap nobody wants' to justify charging extra. 

This explains why I haven't found a hipster; they have all vanished, possibly up their own arses. Not a single person replied to my social media calls for a hipster type, so whatever it was that killed them is responsible for the fact that I have to do some rewrites. 

I suppose it isn't the end of the world but I enjoyed that scene and now it won't be as good somehow. In fact, I haven't yet organised a few details for this filming project yet for some reason I am not stressing about it. The singer element has been fleshed out into every scene but with a comic twist, a nod to an old joke. It looks as if the whole scene can be shot on Saturday rather than over the whole weekend which is good but it means that Mandi and I lose our only day off together. I can then start to think about the next project, filming the pilot for Saturday Breakfast - another thing that I still don't have all the details for. Maybe there's something in this less organised approach, we'll find out on Saturday I guess.

Listen to this week's edition of The Sunday Alternative here.

===

March housekeeping 

To purchase my audio books, albums, and books, please visit my Shop & Donations page.

I am trying to raise the money to extend The Sunday Alternative, read about it here.

We also need to fund a pilot episode of a new music and cookery show, read about it here.

Every penny that I receive via the PayPal button will be used to fund future projects such as podcasts, short films, comedy sketches, documentaries, and more. They will be made available for free online and I will not personally benefit financially. All help is greatly appreciated.

steveEoliver@gmail.com

@SteveOliver76 

We all have that one person at work that would benefit from a punch; it would make you feel better and it might deliver a message to your colleague that they are causing you a degree of annoyance. At school someone would challenge an enemy to a fight and the news would spread from classroom to classroom (I was at school before the Internet so this was word of mouth advertising, schoolkids nowadays probably create a Facebook event and invite people to a scrap on the football field, or tweet the news with #fightatlunchtime becoming a trending topic). Everybody would assemble and the two opponents would punch each other as many times as possible before the teachers were dragged away from their warm smoky staff room to run out and break things up. After the telling off in the headmaster's office you would shake hands and probably form a lifelong friendship. I'm not suggesting that this is the right way to behave in the grown up world of work, but I know that anyone with an irritating/boorish/sexist/racist person in the workplace will agree with the following point: Would you rather go around the houses reporting this person to a manager, causing a meeting to happen, forms to fill in, courses to attend and a report to write, or would you rather send an email to everyone in your department announcing that a fight would take place at lunchtime in the car park? If you answered honestly, even the most PC tree hugging, yoghurt knitting, tofu sandals wearing, breast milk on your muesli among you will have opted for the second one. Although I should of course remind you that technically (and legally) that is the wrong answer. Punching someone is wrong and never the answer.

All of which brings me to Jeremy Clarkson. This week it was announced that he has been suspended by the BBC for allegedly punching a producer and the remaining two episodes of Top Gear have been shelved. Clarkson is the kind of person who divides opinion straight down the middle; if I used clichés I would refer to public opinion of him being akin to a particular brand of foul tasting toast accompaniment. Apparently Clarkson is on a final warning by the BBC for several controversial matters last year that I won't go into suffice to point to this blog from last year to highlight how fireproof he seems to be. I'm not apologising for him or making an attempt to defend him because I simply couldn't give a shit one way or another if Top Gear stays on television. If you have withdrawals on Sunday then watch Dave, it's on all the time. What I am surprised at is the reaction from the BBC in this situation. 

On the one hand, Clarkson has supposedly used racist language on two occasions on Top Gear; referrring to Mexicans in unflattering terms and using a word that nobody (and I mean nobody) even knew was a racial slur, 'slope'. The other racist incident (as mentioned in the blog I linked to) was an outtake in which he may or may not (it's the second one) have used that word, this was made public to stir up trouble and having listened to it again in the writing of this blog I still couldn't detect that word but instead only heard a 'ner ner' mumbling. People have been removed from television for this offence and on those occasions he should have received the highest level bollocking possible and had he actually used that word then of course he should have been fired. The BBC of course probably did a bit of number crunching and decided not to sack the golden goose because in financial terms Top Gear is the corporation's biggest show.

Jeremy Clarkson makes little impact in my life because I don't watch Top Gear so I genuinely don't care about the fact that they have taken it off the air. However when I have seen him on programmes such as QI or Have I Got News For You he comes across as an intelligent and witty man. It is obvious that Clarkson deliberately says things and does things to get a reaction and the public do exactly what he wants them to do, they react. Unfortunately for the detractors though, a lot of the time he talks a fair amount of sense, go on deny it if you want. Do some research if you need to (especially if you're one of the bleeding hearts who have taken to Twitter or Facebook to cry into your lentils about how the big bad wolf should never be allowed to even own a television never mind be on it) into some of his opinions regarding the scourge of health and safety, the scourge of political correctness (gone mad) and all manner of subjects. The Daily Mail jump on everything he says in their traditional out of context damnation to use him as a stick to beat the BBC with. When he said that strikers should be shot in front of their families that was the only bit they quoted from, not the bit he said in support before joking that he had to be impartial. They pulled a similar stunt with Russell Brand and fanned the flames of the Sachs-a-Phone 'scandal' by putting the recording on their website for the benefit of anyone who didn't hear it and wanted to be outraged.

The fact that the future of Top Gear is in the balance is something that I imagine Clarkson has lost no sleep over, despite no longer owning a stake in the production company that makes it. All he has to do is wait for the other channels to start waving their chequebooks and he'll be back on television. Even if the BBC refuse to relinquish the name Top Gear it won't matter because without the presenters the title is worthless.

If anything this highlights an enormous hypocrisy from the BBC; Jimmy Savile (not to mention Rolf Harris, Stuart Hall and no doubt many more) was free to rape and molest children in TV Centre for more than fifty years and was protected not only by the BBC but also by the NHS, the Government, the police, and the Royal Family. Is it fair that a fight between two adults is considered a worse offence?

Listen to this week's edition of The Sunday Alternative here.

===

March housekeeping 

To purchase my audio books, albums, and books, please visit my Shop & Donations page.

I am trying to raise the money to extend The Sunday Alternative, read about it here.

We also need to fund a pilot episode of a new music and cookery show, read about it here.

Every penny that I receive via the PayPal button will be used to fund future projects such as podcasts, short films, comedy sketches, documentaries, and more. They will be made available for free online and I will not personally benefit financially. All help is greatly appreciated.

steveEoliver@gmail.com

@SteveOliver76 

I've been practising using the video camera on my phone to see if it would be any use in filming little funnies for my YouTube channel. The quality of my camcorder is good enough but for convenience sake it might be useful to use the phone as you can upload it straight away (although there doesn't seem to be a way to keep what you have done externally as yet). My only disadvantage is that smart phones (or mine at least) that aren't made by Apple don't have the function allowing you to reverse the views, this means that trying to film myself is virtually impossible. However to look on the bright side I uploaded a video of Jack to Facebook and I was pleased to see that it didn't do that thing that iPhones do and make your video look like someone had stuck two strips of black tape over the lense.

It does feel as if I have hit a bit of a brick wall as far as work projects go so I am looking for reliable people to jump on board. Even though I am still working on scripts I sometimes wonder why I am bothering. Part of me wants to cut my losses and concentrate solely on the music side of my work, something I am good at and am known for. Is it worth me writing comedy to discover that I am not as good at it as I hoped I was? I won't spend too much time worrying because if I make something that I am proud of then that is all that really matters to me, but it will harm donations if someone doesn't like one thing that I put out then they will wonder why they should donate to an enterprise that they don't get anything out of, even though they presumably pay a TV Licence and don't watch everything the BBC puts out. 

To coincide with this mini-crisis of confidence I have been thinking of ways to expand The Sunday Alternative. I have given up chasing the idea of getting the show back on the radio as I feel that the show is working better as a podcast. Although the radio show attracted a lot of attention around the world, the listening figures were nowhere near what the podcast gets so it has forced me to rethink the situation. Radio used to be the first port of call when a musician had a new single out as people trusted the radio to inform them of what was worth running down to Our Price for with pocket money burning a hole in their pockets. These days I see tweets asking for bloggers, podcasters, and radio presenters, with radio presenters no longer top of the priority list. Part of the reason for deciding that The Sunday Alternative no longer needs radio, (although radio, dare I suggest, needs The Sunday Alternative), is a sea change in how we consume 'live' media these days.

My daughter's generation bypass radio (she hates me having the radio on) in favour of music television channels and all of those Internet things so the idea of being told what to listen to by someone three times her age on the radio is alien to them. This made me consider my own listening habits and I was amazed to realise when itemising my radio consumption that I no longer listen to a great deal of live radio. Although I don't know how long it has taken for this evolution to take shape, it now transpires that I listen to far more podcasts (including podcast versions of radio shows). The beauty of this is that I can listen to these programmes whenever I like and not be beholden to what is being played at the time, even BBC 6Music fall a little into 'playlist' territory so it sometimes becomes a little tiresome (apart from Sundays when the DJs are allowed to play their own choices, which would make The Sunday Alternative an ideal show for the schedules, a mistake that they might have to live with for the duration now).

The Sunday Alternative when on radio suffered from fatigue at certain times such as when there was an England match on that night, or the closing ceremony of the Olympics. Now that I'm doing the podcast I have no idea when people listen but it doesn't matter because I know that people are listening at some point. As soon as I release it there's a surge of listeners but it increases during the week and has a slight but significant lift on Fridays. I am now planning a next step which will involve expanding the airtime of the podcast to maybe an hour to combine new music and live sessions but presented as if I was doing it on the radio as before. The revolution will be televised, but you can catch up with it and watch it at a time that is convenient to you.

Listen to this week's edition of The Sunday Alternative here.

===
February housekeeping

I rely on donations via the PayPal button to enable me to provide free online content. This year there are plans afoot for more podcasts plus documentaries, comedy sketches, short films and other content that will be available free of charge.

My audio books can be downloaded from my Bandcamp page.

My books (including my latest, Bowie Day), are available to download to your Kindle.

This daily blog can be delivered to your Kindle for just 99p a month

If you want an audio book or e-book and would prefer me to get more money, cutting out the corporate middlemen (or women) then make a donation of one pound or more, and then email me with ‘I paid a pound or more’ in the subject line. In the email simply tell me what you want and I’ll email it to you.

steveEoliver@gmail.com
@SteveOliver76

Today the news broke that took literally nobody by surprise; Cliff Richard’s house was searched by police in connection with an allegation of sexual assault dating back to the 1980s. Quite what the police were hoping to find that would give any sort of clue to something that happened (or didn’t happen, it’s early days yet) nearly thirty years ago nobody knows, but Cliff Richard has been lurking in the shadows (as opposed to The Shadows) ever since Operation Yewtree was set up.

Whatever the outcome of this, if it at least wipes that smug grin off his face then some good will have come of it. Cliff Richard had had this coming but until further investigation has been carried out then we can only speculate.

Cliff has apparently been aware of the ‘rumours’ surrounding him on the Internet for some time, which basically means he has his expensive legal team working on it with a view to hopefully burying the story before it can go to court. Leaving aside the fact that the phrase “I won’t dignify it with a response” is a well known expression of guilt, there is a lot of information to process. A music industry insider friend of my dad’s who was around in the 1950s and 1960s once told us (and I’m only passing this on) that security had to keep Cliff away from young males because a scandal would have ended his career in the days when homosexuality was illegal. Maybe his refusal to come out of the closet is due to a personal battle with his Christian beliefs, but you only have to look around the entertainment industry to see how such a thing doesn’t have an adverse effect on an artist’s popularity anymore. He once said that it is nobody’s business, which is true of course, but by hiding it away he is only fanning the flames of doubt; what else does he wish to keep secret?

There is a culture of paedophile activity that goes too deep to ever be fully investigated and brought to an end as the secrecy will never truly be exposed. Jimmy Savile seemed to have been the glue holding this together, although how a club DJ from Leeds was ever able to rise to such power and influence is a mystery. Within the BBC Savile was feared and hated yet nobody ever reported their suspicions. If they did it was brushed under the carpet. Savile had friends in high places such as royalty, politicians and BBC management and was untouchable. Anyone who tried to publicly ‘out’ Savile was dealt with by a visit from his ‘boys’ in the first instance, his BBC colleagues knew better than to say anything to rock the boat; Simon Dee voiced his concerns and never worked again! Jill Dando was about to go public regarding the BBC’s paedophile network and was shot dead on her own doorstep and an innocent man was framed, the real killer still hasn’t been found.

As for Cliff, (and this is just speculation), tireless charity work, a knighthood, friend of the royals, friend of the government, leading a mysterious private life hounded by gossip and innuendo, and until now all investigations into him have been squashed. Does any of that sound familiar?

I am sure that Cliff will be found innocent, why else would he renounce his British passport and become a full time Barbadian citizen? I’m sure that the fact that this country has no extradition treaty with Barbados is just a coincidence.

===

My daily blog can be delivered straight to your Kindle for 99p a month (link)

Listen to The Sunday Alternative here

All donations received via the PayPal button above will be used to fund creative projects such as podcasts, short films, documentaries, comedy sketches and a whole lot more. You are under no obligation of course, but thanks in advance if you do drop something in the pot.

photo from BBC website

This morning I spotted a tweet linking to a YouTube video of the whole of the 1985 Christmas Day programmes that Noel Edmonds used to do on BBC1 live from what was then the Telecom Tower, a variation on his Saturday teatime show The Late Late Breakfast Show with the slightly modified title Live Live Christmas Breakfast Show. Noel was holding court at Telecom Tower, Radio 1 DJ ‘oooh’ Gary Davies (with The Krankies) presented from a Virgin aeroplane full of children making it the first ever broadcast from a commercial flight. BBC presenters hosted bits from Leeds, Birmingham, Manchester, Newcastle, Glasgow, Cardiff and Northern Ireland, a bit like on Children In Need where they give regional presenters a moment of national fame, and Mike Smith arrived in style by helicopter to a village in Sussex to invite the residents to turn up and play various ‘wacky’ sports on the green. If that wasn’t enough they also found the time to be interactive 1980s style, (if you phoned in a dedication it would be available to read on Ceefax), and officially launch Comic Relief with a live link-up to Ethiopia. Pulling off such an achievement on live television wasn’t without its technical problems way back in 1985, but looking back at what they had to play with regarding 1980s technology it stands up as a brilliant piece of experimental television. When you realise how many people were involved in this task it is impressive enough, then it dawns on you that this was done live on Christmas Day. The pressure to get it right on the one day of the year that everyone is indoors and very likely to at that time of day have the television on must have been immense, and those poor people in the 1980s only had four television channels so potentially a quarter of the UK will have seen if they fucked it up and had to bring out the girl playing noughts and crosses with a clown.

The reason I mention it is of course because it was tweeted in tribute to Mike Smith, whose death at the young age of 59 was announced this weekend.

Despite being a long time fan of the superior medium of radio over television, it is actually television where I first became aware of Mike Smith. Although his stint as the breakfast show presenter on Radio 1 was on in the car to school, to me he wasn’t a radio person. Presenting Top of the Pops on occasion and being Noel Edmonds’s man-at-the-scene on The Late Late Breakfast Show made Mike Smith a star. ‘Smitty’ parted company with Edmonds following the tragic death of a contestant taking part in a daredevil challenge and went on to forge a career as a television ‘go to’ man. Regarded as something of a jokey poster boy for bland presentation, Mike Smith was a million miles better than he was ever given credit for while he was alive. Radio-wise, he rose through hospital radio and behind the scenes at BBC radio, moved to Capital Radio (the proper Capital Radio, meaning the London only station), and then returned to the BBC on the right side of the microphone. Eventually he took over the flagship breakfast show in 1986.

As I said though, it was television where Mike Smith shone. Whether presenting fluffy light entertainment fare such as the largely forgotten panel game That’s Showbusiness or ITV’s Trick or Treat with Julian Clary, to semi-serious documentaries The Really Useful Guide To Alcohol and AIDS: Your Choice For Life, he was a competent host who could turn his hands to anything. His television appearances lessened following his helicopter accident in the late 1980s, leading to the setting up of his aerial filming company responsible for most of the footage we see on news programmes.

In the series The Light Entertainment Story, an episode centred on radio personalities crossing over to television mentioned Noel Edmonds’s return to the big time with Deal or No Deal after a period in the wilderness. Mike Smith appeared on screen appearing genuinely upset at the way Edmonds had blocked him out of his life; when commenting on his former colleague’s comeback he said that he would have phoned to congratulate him if he had his number. This could have made him look like the bitter ex-star but it didn’t, he just looked genuinely upset at no longer feeling a part of something. Speaking to Chris Moyles on a documentary about the breakfast show, Smith admitted he missed radio.

To die at such a young age is a tragedy, to not have been given the chance to make the best use of his talent is a crime. We’ll never know what Mike Smith could have achieved, and that is the biggest tragedy of all.

===

My daily blog can be delivered straight to your Kindle for 99p a month (link)

Listen to The Sunday Alternative here

All donations received via the PayPal button above will be used to fund creative projects such as podcasts, short films, documentaries, comedy sketches and a whole lot more. You are under no obligation of course, but thanks in advance if you do drop something in the pot.

I have in my rose-tinted memory of television past, not only the circus and a star-studded pantomime on Christmas Day afternoon, but also a BBC special on Bank Holiday Monday called Disney Time. Presented by a different star of the day every episode, it was a compilation of cartoons and film clips. Because of broadcast rights the BBC couldn’t play everything they wanted to due to ITV having it on their roster, but children of the 1980s didn’t really worry about such matters. I remember Tony Robinson once explaining on Stay Tooned why he couldn’t show certain viewer requests because the BBC weren’t allowed to, and I seem to recall a difference in the repertoire when the BBC programmes Cartoon Time turned into ITV’s Rolf’s Cartoon Club. The less said about that the better I suppose at the moment, although we can’t undo the fact that we watched it.

Disney Time today would have been a far different animal to the show my generation all looked forward to. There would perhaps be too much emphasis on the likes of High School Musical and the like, although on the other hand they do own the rights to The Muppets now so it wouldn’t be all bad.

When thinking about the quality of guest presenter, the standards wouldn’t be as high in these times of dumbed down TV. It would be a pity to bring back an institution like Disney Time but allow the likes of Paddy McGuinness to present it.

===

My daily blog can be delivered straight to your Kindle for 99p a month (link)

If you’ve enjoyed reading this, please consider showing your appreciation by way of a donation using the PayPal button above this blog. Every penny will be used to create free online content. There are currently plans for a comedy sketch series, an online cookery and music show, a video version of The Sunday Alternative and plenty more including documentaries, short films and podcasts.

Listen to The Sunday Alternative here.

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.

===

My daily blog can be delivered straight to your Kindle for 99p a month (link)

I’m raising money to make a film about The Sunday Alternative and put on a free screening, please read my latest newsletter.

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.

Friday 18th October

I had thought that today was going to be the day that I finally brought the ridiculous idea of writing a daily blog to a crashing halt, as nothing of any real note happened all day. Friday is the day that I record The Sound of Nottingham UK, and even that went off without a hitch apart from one sound issue at the end. My obsessive need to write 500+ words about today wasn’t looking that good at all. Until teatime that is.

After recording the show and sending it across the Atlantic, I had a shower. The two things aren’t connected, I don’t get especially dirty or sweaty making radio shows, although it is quite warm in my office. Mandi had made dinner while I was recording, and I had timed everything to perfection to ensure that we were both sitting down in front of Eastenders with our meal. I hadn’t eaten two mouthfuls when (as part of a long drawn out sub-plot about the council not emptying the bins in Albert Square) the camera panned to a close up shot of a rat running across the kerb, followed by several other shots of this same rat scampering around. My throat closed up, I grabbed the remote and changed channel, and then ran to the kitchen to spit my food into the bin. When I’m eating I am rather squeamish about what people talk about or what I see on television. Mandi said it was eight o’clock and therefore acceptable to have this on screen as it was way past teatime, but I disagreed. We no longer live in a 9-5 society where we sit around the table for our evening meal at six o’clock. Besides, eight o’clock on a Friday is about the right time to be having dinner, and it is my opinion that the BBC should have put a warning at the beginning of the programme.

Although we weren’t eating my favourite meal, or even one of my top ten meals, the meal that we were eating is now forever associated in my mind with rats, albeit on television, and I can’t ever eat that particular meal again. It was several hours before I could eat, and had to make myself a whole new meal because of the BBC and their ridiculous scheduling policy.

I have written a letter to the BBC, in particular the producers of Eastenders, to complain about this and have asked for a small compensation for the cost of tonight’s meal. If they are unwilling to stump up this amount of money, I will be taking it off my next TV licence payment. The BBC are under enough scrutiny at the moment, what with their policy on employing rapists to present children’s television programmes, paying people too much public money, closing down BBC TV Centre for no reason and other things without putting people off their fucking Friday night dinners too.

Mandi tried to reason with me that it wasn’t a real wild rat but a trained animal actor that was probably very clean in real life. That is probably the case, but the animal was a fucking good actor as it put me right off.

===

My daily blog can be delivered straight to your Kindle for 99p a month (link)
I’m raising money to make a film about The Sunday Alternative and put on a free screening, please read my latest newsletter.

The BBC have axed Bob the Builder. They say they can't take any chances with a children's tv star who claims to fix things.
— Steve Oliver(@SteveOliver76) November 12, 2012

So it turns out that Bob the Builder was innocent after all, and that the telly paedo-squad should have been looking elsewhere in puppet land. Logging on to Twitter this morning, I was a bit taken aback by the tweets proclaiming Elmo to be involved in an inappropriate sexual relationship with a young male. Good, I thought, surely nobody likes Elmo? Certainly not a proper old school Sesame Street fan. Elmo's arrival on Sesame Street was a full on 'jumping the shark' moment, and heralded the end of the show as we remember it and the arrival of the shouty, camera cutting, sub-MTV monstrosity that we see today. I say 'we', the UK hasn't seen Sesame Street since the turn of the millennium, so in a way we are lucky. We did however get Elmo's World on Channel Five for a bit, (yes, remember Channel Five? I've got news for you, it is still going), and somehow Elmo has become some kind of spokesperson/thing for the show. Whenever a celebrity appears on the show, (still considered quite an honour in America), they always work with Elmo. Sometimes maybe Grover or Telly but usually Elmo.

I have happy memories of watching videos (it was the early 2000s) of Sesame Street with my daughter Emily, and unfortunately she developed a liking for this annoying red sock. A full on, every cuddly toy, video, picture collecting liking that I indulged, mainly because every minute spent watching Sesame Street was a minute not watching the Teletubbies. Also, I was able to use Sesame Street as a gateway to introducing Emily to the various other works of the genius Jim Henson, such as the output of The Muppets and the criminally never repeated Fraggle Rock.

For ruining a much loved programme, I hope Elmo feels the full force of the law for this.

Hang on a minute, I've just investigated further, as I realise that Twitter might be a good news source but it's not entirely without flaws. I decided to look at the websites of some newspapers instead, and it turns out that Elmo didn't have an inappropriate relationship, (newspaper euphemism for sex) with an underage boy. It turns out that the perpetrator of this crime was Kevin Clash, the puppeteer who operates the Elmo puppet.

Kevin Clash is the one on the right.

First of all, I'm not even sure that Sesame Street is still relevant enough in this country for this to be that newsworthy. Secondly, the papers  (the tabloids in particular) can't possibly have finished unearthing all of our own sex criminals yet. Let's get ours out of the way before we start looking abroad for more. 

My main issue is with the media's use of Elmo in this story. A puppeteer is the one under scrutiny here, not a character loved by millions of children around the world. By associating Elmo with this story, it will come to the attention of small children when they see the news, or see the puppet's face in the paper. When they read the shouty headlines that he has been arrested for having sex with an underage boy, then parents are going to be faced with all kinds of awkward questions. I know how the media works, and it perhaps wouldn't have been quite the sensational story had it simply reported that a fairly anonymous behind the scenes man had been investigated, should a modicum of discretion been employed here? I'm not suggesting not reporting it, but for the sake of Sesame Street age children who might believe the story at face value, that Elmo is a nonce. I was employing comedy when I wrote that I thought Elmo had been involved, but I'm not sure Elmo's key demographic are au fait with the concept of satire.

If Kevin Clash has done wrong, then he should be removed from Sesame Street, because PBS should not be seen to be employing a sex offender to work on a children's television show. That would appear to be the BBC's department.

Besides, sexual predators have long been a problem on Sesame Street, as this video shows.