Friday Night Blog: Michael Jackson 1958-2009

And so the "King of Pop" is no longer with us. On the eve of a record-breaking and unprecedented 50-night residency at the O2 Arena, Michael Jackson died of a massive heart attack.

Now, while I agree that this is a terribly sad thing, I have to admit I'm totally bemused by the outpouring of grief for a man who, let's be honest, was more than a little bit, well, strange...

Certainly he was a man of prestigious talent and ability, but I think the emphasis is definitely on the word "was". He passed his peak nearly twenty years ago and since that time it's been all downhill. Yes, he was fantastic - the Thriller and Bad albums are solid-gold classics, and the work he did with his brothers in the Jackson Five are among Motown's greatest treasures. But that was then. In the last two decades, all we've really had are glimmers of a star that burned out long ago - a couple of greatest hits collections and an under-performing "comeback" album.

The O2 would have been the last-chance saloon for a man besieged by rumour, burdened with crippling debts, a man more infamous than famous in the last few years.

The rumours, and eventual confirmation, of his death nearly broke the internet. Google thought it was under siege as thousands of people searched for "Michael Jackson". Twitter crashed (again) and numerous gossip websites went off-line for periods. If nothing else, his death has created more interest in him than has been seen for ages.

Jackson was a man who fascinated and intriuged us all. His side-show lifestyle demonstrated an eccentricity that beggared belief - if your average person tried to live the way Jackson did then they would probably have been sectioned long ago! The man is obviously not totally to blame for the way he was - his unnatural upbringing was a major factor in this and a life lived in the public glare is bound to send you a bit weird.

I feel truly sad for the loss of one of the planet's greatest entertainers, but I'm amazed and appalled by the mass grief that has been reported in the media. I don't believe that "the music died". I can't join in the celebration of his music, because I've never bought any of it, and don't want to (especially if people are trying to get the dire "Man in the Mirror" into the charts again (come on, there are dozens of Jackson songs that are infinitely better...) The upside is that maybe, just maybe, his children have got a better chance of a "normal" childhood without the presence of their father.

If he is truly dead... (The cynical part of my brain thinks this could be an elaborate ruse to escape from his debts and his freakish lifestyle, and he's actaully on his way to a place somewhere in Saudi...)

Anyway, Mr Michael Jackson. You were a unique person, and a truly talented individual. We salute you and your loss is a thing of great sadness. Rest in peace.

Friday Night Blog: Here we go again!

So, Big Brother 10 launched yesterday, with probably the most ethnically diverse bunch of freaks, I mean housemates (except they're not housemates yet...), ever assembled in the house in Elstree.

So, who have we got this year? Well, amongst others, there's Angel, a 35-year old boxer from Russia (and, gasp, she's a woman...); there's Beinazir, a Muslim Londoner of Pakistani origin; Rodrigo, a student from Brazil; Siavash, a flamboyant events organizer from Iran and Sree, a business student from India. Add to them the usual mix of gay men, glamour models, upper-class twits and you've fairly much got it all.

As I said, none of them were automatically housemates, and they have to become official housemates one way or another. Until then, they have to sleep on the floor in the lounge, and only have access to the garden. No kitchen. No bedrooms. No hot water.

Then Big Brother asked someone to go to the diary room, and Rodrigo stepped up. He was told that in order to become a housemate, he would have to convince another contestant to let him shave their eyebrows and then draw glasses and a curly moustache on them within four minutes. After the usual shouting over each other, and Rodrigo's broken English, Noirin (25, Retail Manager from Dublin), volunteered, and got herself a place as a housemate too.

What happens next is anyone's guess. And whether I keep watching is another thing. I gave up last year, but loved Celebrity Big Brother at the beginning of this year. We shall see...

For up-to-the-minute news, go to Channel4.com/BigBrother

Friday Night Blog: Star Trek

And so the future begins again.... J.J. Abrams, the man who brought us Lost and Cloverfield and Alias gets his hands on Paramount's crown jewels, and delivers a new Star Trek, not exactly for a new generation, as he's rebooted the original Kirk and Spock series, rather than creating a new crew.

In a time-twisting plotline that rewrites history, Abrams effectively wipes Starfleet's future history, from the moment his protagonist, the Romulan Nero, arrives from the future (around Picard's time), destroys the USS Kelvin, and kills the father of the still-being-born Jim Kirk. The future of Star Trek - all the films, The Next Generation, Deep Space Nine and Voyager all now exist down another leg of the trousers of time. The only thing that remains intact is the future Spock (who also travelled back to try to stop Nero) and the prequel series Enterprise.

Got that? Good.

So is it any good? Well by rebooting the series that means we have to have new actors playing the iconic roles. This is tricky, because the actors have to give us the essence of the characters, without sinking into parody.

Karl Urban gives us a brilliant McCoy, all gruff and grumpy and sarcastic, Chris Pine actually manages to feel like Kirk, while avoiding Shatner's stilted delivery, and Zachary Quinto gives a brilliant performance as Spock, once you can get over the fact that he's not still playing Sylar from Heroes. You half expect him to raise a finger to Kirk's forehead and start slicing....

The other crew members remain much as they were, generally character-less, except they all seem to be geniuses at something or other. For example, Anton Yelchin's Chekov (with his over-the-top accent - Walter Koenig's was dodgy, but this is just too much) is suddenly a transporter expert, being able to lock onto fast-falling objects. The usual Trek genius, Scotty (played by Simon Pegg with his tongue firmly in his cheek) doesn't appear until the last third of the film, so I suppose they had to find someone to fill his shoes for that scene. Uhura is the only character to have more of a developed character than she ever did in the original series, acting as a surprise love-interest for a major character.... And Zoë Saldana isn't exactly ugly, either!

There are enough nods to the original series to keep the fans happy, enough differences to make their blood boil, and probably enough to keep the non-Trekkie entertained too. The film looks brilliant, from the Enterprise's new iBridge (I like the idea that the viewscreen is also a window now, rather than just the old screen), to the more realistic, down-and-dirty engineering section, all pipes and water and steam. Looks like Abrams been watching his Firefly...!

I liked the film, but I didn't love it, but then I've never really been a fan of the original series (more of a Next Gen boy). I felt the plot, although emotionally engaging, was a little slight, and I'm pretty much sick to death of time-travel shenanigans in Star Trek, which I'd hoped we'd left behind. I'm sure there'll be more films to come, and this is a likeable, fun version of the crew to go on new voyages with.

Friday Night Blog: Credo

I believe...

...that belief in God and Darwinism needn't be mutually exclusive. After all, who's to say that God didn't click his fingers, and, ta-dah!, Big Bang? Of course, the whole Adam and Eve, and dinosaur-denial thing is bollocks, so maybe we should still hunt down Creationists and make them suffer.

...that selfishness is the only sin. Iain M. Banks wrote that in one of his books, and the more I think about it, the more it makes sense. You only sin when you put yourself and your needs in front of evryone else's. Be nice to everybody and we'll all get along nicely.

...we're closer to living a "heathen" lifestyle than we ever have in the last 2000 years. We don't believe in God until we want something and then we'll pray like buggery. Why not call God, Odin, or Thor, or Loki, and have done with it. Plus we all then get to believe in Valhalla and when we die, we have a big party with lots of food and drink and sex. Result.

...that the more stupid you are, the louder you have to talk.

...the world would be a lot better off without people in it. Fears of Global Warming aren't about saving the planet, they're about saving our (generally) worthless arses. The planet will reset itself when we're gone, and the cockroaches will take over.

...we are all geeks. Everyone is a fanatic about something. It annoys me to be called a geek (in a disparaging way) when I know all about Star Wars or Knight Rider or whatever. Hey, you, Mr. Hardcore Football Fan! You know who scored the winning goal in the 1992 FA Cup? How many caps Steven Gerrard has for England? You do? Oh. Guess what? You're a geek!

...sometimes I touch.

...that Peppa Pig is probably the greatest body of animation work produced this century. It has a clarity, a simplicity and a soul that a lot of other children's (and adults') TV is sadly missing. A whole range of emotions can be conveyed in just a narrowing of Peppa's eyes, or a tilt of Daddy Pig's head. Genius.

...pop music is underrated and sneered at by those who think they know better. Pop is popular - of the people, by the people, for the people. That doesn't mean we have to accept the pap forced upon us by shows like The X Factor. In the eighties, pop encompassed everything from Echo and the Bunnymen through to Fields of the Nephalim, to Phil Collins and out to Samantha Fox. It was diverse and eclectic, and we didn't all have to sit in little boxes.

...that eating implements made out of wood are the work of the devil. Chip forks, lolly sticks and ice-cream spoons should all be piled up and set ablaze.

Friday-Night Blog: Adam And Joe

Ladies and gentlemen, I'm here tonight to talk to you about something very close to my heart. Over the past few months, I've been privileged to have listened to some of the funniest radio ever broadcast in the history of the world. Ever. And some of it is just silly.

Yes, I'm talking to you about Adam And Joe on BBC 6Music. You may remember Adam and Joe from their late-night Channel 4 TV show, or from those soap powder commercials they did a few years back, but don't hold that against them. You see, for the last few years, Adam "Ad" Buxton and Joe "Joe" Cornish have been doing a Saturday morning show on the digital station from 9am to midday.

But I've never heard it.

I don't have a DAB radio. I usually work on a Saturday morning. And a third reason which I can't think of at the moment, but I felt I needed one to make this work. No, I just listen to their fantastic podcast, which is available through the BBC6 Music website, or through iTunes.

The weekly podcast includes all the tasty nuggets from their radio show, such as their ground-breakingly original feature, "Text the Nation", in which our heroes set a topic and get their loyal listeners to text in ("But I'm using e-mail, is that a problem?"). Recent themes have included bad interviews or auditions, public pretending (strange things you do to cover up embarrassing events) and favourite cakes. No wait, that wasn't exactly one.

And then there's "Song Wars" ("the war of the songs, a couple of tunes by a couple of prongs"). Adam and Joe construct songs based on a theme and then leave it to the listeners to decide which one is the best. The best ones have even made it onto an album, available on iTunes.

Adam and Joe are just plain funny, the sort of people that you would want to listen to on a Saturday morning. Or a Tuesday evening. Or a Friday lunchtime. Whenever you want to listen to their podcast. Or you could Listen Again to the whole show through the website or the BBC iPlayer.

Or you could become a member of Black Squadron, the elite team of listeners who listen to the show at 9am on a Saturday morning. You'd also get to hear the music they play, which I'm lead to believe is quite good (as you'd expect from a station called 6Music...) I don't know, I only listen to the music-free podcast.

And then you will know about the power of Adam and Joe. The idiot-holes. Thank you for your attention, and good night.



"Stephen!"

Friday-Night Blog...

Look, I'm out. I've got nothing. Nada. Zip. Zilch. I've been doing stock-takes, and getting ready for my own, so my mind's been elsewhere. Not enough time to muse on the finer points of the world...

Not to mention the fact that I'm knackered. Hopefully not so knackered that the dreaded pink-eye returns. That was all kinds of suck-ass.

We went to Frankie and Bennie's last night, mostly so I could remember what my family looked like and so that we wouldn't have to cook (and wash up). I like F&B's - good food, not too expensive, but the mega-loud choruses of "Happy Birthday" can get a bit much at times... Still, JW likes it and he seems to enjoy eating there, so at least we're not wasting our money by taking him there! It's also just down the road from us, so we can walk there! Looks like they're opening a branch of Chiquitos next door too, so I may have to go there and have too many Long Island Ice Teas sometime. Anyone want to join me?

Friday-Night Blog: Me and the Manics

The handy-dandy iLike application in Facebook informed me this week that the Manic Street Preachers are playing the Roundhouse in Camden in a few weeks time, which got me thinking about the Manics... (see, it's not just thrown together, this. Literally minutes of thought go into it. OK, it's a bit late this week, but hey, I'm only human. Don't see any of you trying to write a weekly blog post... Come on then... You do it if you think it's so easy.... Sheesh. Ahem.)

So anyway, me and the Manics have a very strange relationship. I've been a fan of them since very near the beginning of their careers. I'm not saying I was there at the release of the New Art Riot EP, but, I'm sure I've liked them since Mark and Lard used to play "You Love Us" (and then hijacked it for their "We Love Us" bit on the radio). I loved their energy and their music, but bizarrely, I don't remember seeing any pictures of them for a long time, but I think I would have loved them all the more for their New Art Punk look. I loved the idea that they had the original plan of selling umpteen million copies of Generation Terrorists and then splitting up in a blaze of glory. The opening salvo of "Slash and Burn", the first track on the album, is possibly the greatest statement of intent by any band anywhere, ever. James Dean Bradfield's guitar starts off fast and furious and just gets faster and more furious. (Apparently, Richey Edwards used to dare him to play faster...)

So, time went on, and I bought their second album, Gold Against The Soul. By this time, I'd started to twig that the Manics might be a little, well, political. I don't do politics. It brings me out in a rash. And yet I loved this very intellectual, very political band. Most of the time it didn't matter, because you couldn't understand what James Dean Bradfield was singing anyway. To this day, I still don't have a clue what half the lyrics to their early albums are, I just have to hum along until I get to the bits I recognise...

And in 1994, I went to the USA, and the Manics released their last album with Richey Edwards before he disappeared, The Holy Bible. Although it didn't do too well on first release, it has since become regarded as their masterpiece. I however don't get it. It's not to say I don't like it, I just don't get it. Maybe it's because I was out of the country (the Manics weren't big in Flagstaff), but it had absolutely zero impact on me. It took me a few years to buy it (well after Everything Must Go, and possibly even after This Is My Truth, Tell Me Yours) and I've never really got a handle on it. The lyrics were mostly written by Richey, and weren't exactly full of the joys of spring. Maybe it's just too much for my sunny disposition. Don't get me wrong, I like a bit of angst as much as the next guy, but songs about anorexia and whatnot are a bit too much for me.

Then the Manics released Everything Must Go and suddenly they were beloved of your Ben Sherman-wearing lad out on the piss: "We don't talk about love/We only want to get drunk", who as usual, completely miss the point.... Never mind, the album was great, and since then they haven't put a foot wrong in my opinion. I even love Lifeblood, seen by many as their nadir, before their solo work and then the "back to form" album, Send Away The Tigers. When I went to see them on their Forever Delayed Greatest Hits tour, I was totally blown away. It's probably the best gig I've been to in terms of the inspirational effect it had on me. Not that I picked up a guitar and started to write songs, that would be too much like positive action for me. But I wanted to. I couldn't believe the noise these three men made, with James tearing up his guitar and the stage, Nicky loping about like a bass-playing giraffe, and Sean creating thunder at the back. It was incredible.

The good news is that there's a new Manics album due out next month. The not-so-good news (for me) is that it's based on notes and lyrics left to the band by Richey Edwards before his disappearance. So in effect, it's The Holy Bible, Part II. Could be good. I hope it is. No doubt I'll buy it, probably on the day it comes out. I'm strange like that.

So that's me and the Manics. A strange love affair. But a wonderful one.

Friday-Night Blog: I Blame Rick McCallum...

So, I was watching Star Wars: The Clone Wars (the 3D animated series) yesterday, which seems to be showing on Cartoon Network here in the UK, after having been isolated to Sky Movies before, and I thought it was quite good, which got me to thinking... Where did it all go wrong for the Star Wars saga?

I used to love Star Wars - no, actually that's an understatement. I used to eat, drink and breathe Star Wars. I used to watch my VHS copies of the Trilogy on an old black and white TV in my room, snatching a few minutes of Jedi while I got ready for school in the morning. I used to read and re-read all the books I had, and hunt for old second-hand copies of annuals and storybooks - this was in the dark times, before the coming of the second merchandising wave, when there was, frankly, sod all new Star Wars around!

And then, Dark Horse Comics published Star Wars: Dark Empire, in 1991; Timothy Zahn's novel Heir to the Empire was published in 1992, and the ball started rolling again. More books, more comics... And my Star Wars reflex kicked in! I bought nearly everything I could that had the Star Wars name on it, spending all my available money on it. Everything was fantastic in the Star Wars Universe. Us fan boys were happy, very happy. And then...

And then, George Lucas announced that he would be making Episodes I to III of the series, and we would get the full story - we'd see Anakin Skywalker's fall from grace, his voyage to the dark side, Obi-Wan Kenobi fighting in the Clone Wars... The anticipation was immense. And before that, we'd get new, spanky, souped-up versions of the Original Trilogy IN THE CINEMA!

And that's where I think the rot set in. George Lucas had the chance to go back and "tinker" with our beloved films. Don't get me wrong, I like most of the changes made in the films - the attack on the Death Star needed sprucing up, Cloud City's windows do open up the landscape, and the um, well, no actually most of the changes in Return of the Jedi were totally unnecessary (and they got worse when Hayden Christensen was dropped into the film on the DVD...) Most importantly, GREEDO DID NOT SHOOT FIRST.... ahem.

To help with all the work on the Special Editions, and the Prequel Trilogy, Lucas enlisted Rick McCallum, who had worked with the Great Beard on the Young Indiana Jones series. Alarm bells should have rung then, quite frankly...

And so, in 1999, we got Star Wars: Episode I - The Phantom Menace. God we wanted to love that film. I watched it two and a half times (fell asleep watching it on my stag-night...). I didn't mind Jar-Jar, Jake Lloyd as young Anakin was OK, Darth Maul was pretty cool with his double-blade lightsaber, Liam Neeson was solid and Ewan McGregor was over-keen as young Obi-Wan, but there was something a bit, well, hollow in the whole enterprise. It had Star Wars on the label, but it felt like something else was on the till.

Three years later we got Episode II - Attack of the Clones and we also got the afore-mentioned Christensen. Well, to say he was wooden would be insulting to trees, but he just didn't fill the role of the nascent Dark Lord of the Sith. He was just a whiney brat who apparently didn't like sand. The romance between Anakin and Padmé was risible, and you got the feeling the Natalie Portman was trying her best, but couldn't muster up the enthusiasm to deal with her love interest...

And then, in 2005, we finally got to see Anakin become Vader. Possibly the strongest film of the prequels (save for the fact that Portman seemed to have died inside somewhere - probably when she saw her script), it still lacked... soul. We knew we should be feeling something, we knew we should love these film like we loved the original films, and we've tried to convince ourselves to love them over the last four years, but we really can't....

Where are the heroes? What kid wants to be Anakin or Obi-Wan or Padmé, like we wanted to be Luke or Han or Leia? In what way were any of the ships cooler than the Millennium Falcon or the X-Wings (or TIE Fighters, come to that?) Even Yoda's gymnastics were a little bit, well, silly, if you think about it. The over-reliance on CGI for the special effects already looks dated in some cases, whereas the model work from the Original Trilogy still stands the test of time.

So why do I blame Rick McCallum? Well, I don't think the man had the cojones to say no to George Lucas. I believe that every artist needs an editor, a critic or an executive to stand up to them and tell them when something just isn't good enough. Prince hasn't really made a consistently decent album since he parted company with Warners as he's been allowed to indulge himself - even such celebrated writes as T.S. Eliot had editors to send them back to the drawing board. I believe that Lucas needed that, and Rick McCallum wasn't the man for the job.

I've given up on the majority of Star Wars products these days. There are too many books (I gave up after the New Jedi Order series), comics and video games to buy. I'm looking forward to the live-action series due to arrive in the next few years, because I'm an optimist. I hope I get to see more of the Clone Wars TV show, but it seems to be a bit random at the moment.

I still love Star Wars, I really do. I just wish the Prequels had been so much better.

Friday-Night Blog: Star Trek

And so, the great barrel of ideas gets scraped once more, as the big screen reprise/remake/reimagining/regurgitate of Star Trek heads towards our cinema screens this spring. The idea around this version is that we get to go back to before the original TV series to see how Kirk and Spock meet, and their first mission in the Enterprise.

Now, as you might imagine, this kind of reboot has got a lot of people hot under the collar, and yes, I'm talking about the geeks here. They've got all sorts of issues with the movie, ranging from the fact that the Enterprise wasn't built on Earth, much less in a field on Iowa, that Chekov didn't join the crew until the second season....

I couldn't care less really (although why would a spaceship that doesn't have to cope with gravity be built on a planet?) My biggest issue is with the whole time-travel plot that is rumoured to be an integral part of the film. From what I can gather, the old Spock (played by Leonard Nimoy) has some interaction with a younger version of himself (probably played by Heroes own mr Nice Guy Sylar, Zachary Quinto), which alters history. Now if this means that every version of Star Trek is wiped from history, then OK, that's fine, we can deal with that (especially if that means Voyager never happened...)

My concern is that this means that Kirk didn't get sucked into the Nexus (as in Star Trek: Generations) and so didn't get killed by Malcolm McDowell, and so we have to put up with even more Shatner-antics as Kirk. Although, he's not in the new film, so hopefully we'll be spared...

Friday-Night Blog: Hmmm.

Well, I've got myself into this mess, now I'd better think of something to write. I could go on about the final episode of Battlestar Galactica and how it totally rocked, and I haven't been able to stop thinking about how frakkin' awesome it was, but that would risk alienating everyone who doesn't give a toss... All I can say is I hope the people who make Lost watched it and were making notes of how to not suck. We can but hope...

So, what shall I write about? I made some granola today. Yep. That's exciting and sure to get everyone commenting in their droves. Actually, it's become a bit weird now that I know people are reading this - I don't know if that means I've changed the way I write, or what I write, but it's strange to think that I'm not just blogging to the wall, so to speak. It's nice that people are reading it, but also a little bit scary.

Would quite like to see Monsters vs. Aliens. Looks almost as good as a Pixar movie, and quite funny. It'd be good to see it in 3D, but that would involve a trip to the Big Smoke (which I'd like, but at about £15 for a train ticket these days, it'd work out at quite pricey trip.

Sorry, but that's all I've got at the moment. I'll try and do better for next week. If you're watching on Facebook, please become a fan. Thank you.

Friday-Night Blog: Battlestar Galactica

WARNING: THIS POST CONTAINS SPOILERS FOR ANYONE NOT WATCHING BATTLESTAR GALACTICA AS IT IS BROADCAST. CATCH UP ALREADY!

And so, after 4 years, (possibly) the greatest sci-fi series ever seen on television comes to an end. If you're in the USA, it ends tonight, and if you're in the UK, then it ends on Tuesday. (Unless you're one of those "download it from the internet-type people...)

It seems hard to believe that a remake of a hokey late-'70s TV show could have become something more than the sum of its parts, and yet, it is now being discussed (by the Guardian newspaper at least) in the same breath as such "must-see" "adult" TV as The Wire. (as long as you can ignore the bits about robots and FTL drives, because that's just silly childish stuff isn't it?)

And so we have a show that has dealt with racism, torture, extraordinary rendition, martial law, questions of mono- and poly-theism, rape, murder, child abductions, terrorism, fate and predestination... The frakkin' UN has even convened a council to discuss the TV show! That's is how important it is. More important than wars or famine or disease.

There's a hell of a lot of questions to be answered in the final two-hour episode, and I have a feeling we won't get them all, but then we never get all the answers in life. What the frak is Starbuck? Angel? Cylon? Something else? Where is the seventh Cylon, Daniel? Will the crew ever find a home? Will Baltar do the right thing for the right reasons? What's with all the Jimi Hendrix?

I predict at least two deaths - Laura Roslin (who was barely able to stand up to join Galactica's rescue mission), and Galactica herself. The old girl's falling apart as it is, let alone having to jump into a Cylon fortress next to a black-hole. I'm also convinced that Adama will go down with his ship... Beyond that, who knows. (I'm also hoping Apollo gets his hair cut.)

It's a measure of the show's quality, that the original Battlestar Galactica was made as a TV answer to Star Wars (something George Lucas' lawyers pointed out...), and now it seems that the Great Beard himself wants to model his live-action Star Wars TV show along the same lines.

I will miss Battlestar Galactica (but not all the mumbled dialogue - I'm looking at you Olmos and McDonnell) , but this isn't the end of the road. There's a TV movie - "The Plan" out later in the year showing life on Caprica before the attack, and then we have the prequel series called Caprica set fifty years earlier, and depicting the lives of two Caprican families - the Adamas and the Greystones - the development of the Cylons... and the subsequent war...

So here's to the Galactica - she was a good ship, and we will miss her. So say we all!

Friday-Night Blog: Comic Relief

So, it's Comic Relief night tonight, so make sure you all go and give lots of money. Bizarrely, this is the first year that I actually have donated a decent sum of money (when I think I really can't afford it, but hey...) due to that "Roly-Poly DJ" heaving himself up a mountain... Curse the power of suggestion, and well done to Chris and everyone for making it up Kilimanjaro!

Comic Relief day always comes tinged with a bit of sadness for me, as it was on Comic Relief day in 2001 that I found out my sister was going to die. (Sorry if that just derailed you there...) I was sitting watching the stuff they were doing on CBBC in the afternoon, when the phone rang. It was my step-father, telling me that my sister Fiona's illness was actually terminal cancer, and that I needed to get up to Manchester straight away. He'd gone up there with my Mum the previous day to see how she was as they thought she'd got some liver infection or something. I nearly went with them that day, but hadn't for some unknown reason - work or something, or maybe telling myself it was only a bug, because serious illnesses don't just happen like that, do they?

Anyway, the phone call was like a sledgehammer to my stomach. I remember sitting crouched over the seat of the armchair, trying to comprehend, to try and talk this around - surely they could do a liver transplant or some such procedure? But no, the cancer had grown inexorably within her and had spread far beyond the liver. I don't remember much of the rest of the day.

My wife drove me up to Manchester early the next day, with me in floods of tears half the time. It was so surreal to get to the hospital and see all my family and my sister's family there. By the time we got there, Fiona was in a coma, pumped full of painkillers and drugs and being fanned to try to control the incredible heat being generated by her body. I spoke to her - I don't know if she heard, but I had to talk to her, to try and promise her things I would do in her memory.

We left a while later to try to find somewhere to stay, and while watching a John Wayne film in a hotel room, we got the phone call from her husband John to say Fiona had died. I believe that she held on long enough for me and her friends to get there, so she knew she could go in peace.

So that's why Comic Relief is a bit of a double-edged sword for me, and not just because of some of the "comedy" they put up for our entertainment...! So, go and give them money, or give some to Cancer Research if you prefer, because in my mind it's not fair that a healthy 31-year old woman who didn't smoke, rarely drank and had a six-month old son should die of cancer, when some hard-drinking, chain-smokers live into their nineties.

I haven't exactly done something funny for money there, have I?

'In support of Comic Relief, registered charity 326568 (England/Wales); SC039730 (Scotland)'

Friday-Night Blog: Watchmen

So, yep, this blog's late... No change there then, but at least I do have a valid excuse. Last night I went to see Watchmen, so that's where I was, and that's why the Friday-Night Blog is coming at you on a Saturday!

Well, I've been sitting here trying to write a clever, informative review, but it's not working. If you want that sort of thing, then go read Empire's or SFX's review, 'cos they're better at that than me! Besides, I'm trying to catch up on Heroes at the same time, so I'm a bit distracted.

The cut-to-the-chase version is that I liked it. It worked for me as a film, probably because I read the graphic novel nearly 20 years ago (I'm old!), and I'm not a huge fan (I always preferred Frank Miller's Batman: The Dark Knight Returns) It's a long film, weighing in at two and a half hours, but it fairly bounces along. There's a lot of violence and a heck of a lot of gore, which is why the film gets its 18 certificate. And Malin Ackerman's Silk Spectre (Ieft) challenges Michelle Pfieffer's Catwoman as the comic-book geeks' fantasy fetish female... Some of the CGI work left me a little cold, as if I know it's all going to date very quickly, especially Dr Manhattan and his giant clockwork fortress. What's wrong with painting a guy blue and then making him glow? Ah well...

I'm sure I could think of other more enlightened things to say, but they ain't happening now! Go and see the film if you like your comic-book movies dark and gritty and violent!

Not much else has been going on this week. Back at work after a week's holiday, but I've got myself a new Assistant Manager, so come April, I'll be able to go out at lunchtime again! Still loving Battlestar, and enjoying reading Susan Winemaker's Concertina: The Life and Loves of a Dominatrix - lots of kinky sex and food, which seems good to me! I'm also liking the pure unadulterated geekiness at Topless Robot.

So that's it, that's my week!

Friday-Night Blog!

So, as I'm doing a big (well, medium-sized... OK, small) push for this website on Facebook, I thought I should give you all something new to read. So, here it is, the first of hopefully series of Friday-Night Blogs, where I generally have a round-up of my week.

So, what;s been going on? Well, I've been off work all this week, which has been great. It's been so good just to spend time with my wife and son, instead of seeing them for a couple of hours every night. We've been to play parks twice, we've been swimming, and generally hanging out with each other.

It was my birthday on Wednesday, I turned the big 35. Genuinely chuffed to get a lot of best wishes on Facebook, and a decent amount of cards. Also got some blinking good gifts, like Doctor Who Season One on DVD (Good old Eccles-cake!), Stardust, an intriguing book called Death and the Penguin and a Cookie Monster t-shirt from my son. It's Em's birthday tomorrow, so we're off to the zoo! (Birthday cake has been baked and is cooling!)

Finally got to catch up on most of my stories on TV - two lots of Lost and Battlestar Galactica. I'm getting impatient with Lost, I just want it over and done with, especially with all the time-flipping stuff. Just tell me what the whole thing's about and let me go! Battlestar, on the other hand, is quickly running out of shows and I don't want it to end!

My current bandwagon is Twitter, with which I'm becoming quickly disillusioned. I get it, I just don't think I care what all these people are doing every minute of the day. It seems that a lot of people on there are sycophantic, working themselves up into a frenzy because they're following Stephen Fry or whoever. I'm sure it's good for all these people trying to sell you something, but I think it's crazy when you now have a Dr Pepper Twitter feed... Still, I've made a new friend on there, but I'm friends with her on Facebook, so that's OK. Hi, Claire!

Wendy Richard died, which was incredibly sad. (She'll always be Miss Brahms from Are You Being Served? to me, all those years as Pauline Fowler couldn't erase those formative memories!) Jade Goody's dying, which is even more tragic. Whatever you think of the girl, no-one deserves to lose their life in such an horrific, slow, painful way.

I'm sure there are lots of other things I could talk about, but you're probably tired of reading them now. From here on in, I'm going to keep notes in my nice new leather diary (thanks, Jonathan!), so I'll be able to keep up with my own thoughts!