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Friday July 29 Inspired by BBC2's Arthur Conan Doyle drama on Wednesday I sought out a book of his original Sherlock Holmes stories - the first collection, gathered under the title The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes. Each mystery, originally printed in the Strand magazine, is about 25 pages long. This makes for ideal train reading. I went into London to record some 6 Music trails and announce my return, and I read one story on the way in, and one on the way out. I won't name them all as I go, but since these were my first ever: A Scandal in Bohemia and The Red-Headed League, the first being my favourite. What exquisite 19th century language, what wit, what barely suppressed homosexuality, and how entertaining Holmes' methods of deduction are! I feel as if I am somewhat late for the boat here, but Conan Doyle is a genius. I'm hooked. Whilst in London I loaded up on fresh fruit and veg from Fresh & Wild. This helped to assuage my guilt while watching the first of a two-part Dispatches called Supermarket Secrets, taped from last night. There was nothing in this exposé of supermarkets' methods that I didn't already know, having read plenty of literature on this subject over the years, not least the epic Shopped by Joanna Blythman - the woman who literally changed my life back in 1998 with her fundamental text The Food We Eat (I have been a committed nutrition bore ever since). That said, it's good that this stuff gets a public airing in a populist documentary strand. If I still ate non-organic supermarket chicken, for instance, and millions do, I'd have to look into my own soul and ask difficult questions after seeing the footage shot in factory-farmed chicken sheds. Even the model one, where the farmer seemed truly concerned about animal welfare and was proud to allow filming inside, was a scene from one of the seven circles of hell. Depressing. At work, Mark Sutherland mocked me for my decision not to use the Tube. I think he called me a "lightweight". (Mind you, he thinks eating vegetables and dancing are signs of femininity, and I was once went to a gig with Mark and suggested eating beforehand and he said that only women eat beforehand. He delights in this faux-Neanderthal, rugby-playing position, even though I know he is a softy inside, and I bet he imagines he is the body-building man on the 1980s Athena poster when he is cradling his young child.) Anyway, I am beating the terrorists by not using the Tube. I am not cowed, I am a pedestrian, walking proudly and stoically with my cockney head held high through St James's Park. If they blow up the Underground again, by not being in it, I will have denied them the satisfaction of killing me. It seems the police have caught all the suspects. Perhaps now all the tourists will come back and start spending money in our shops and bars and restaurants again. I wouldn't. You can't beat the suicide bomber.
Saturday July 30 The terrorists beat me today. It rained while I walked back from the BBC to Victoria station. Rained really hard. I got soaked through, despite my umbrella. But I will not be cowed by rain and I will walk through St James's Park again tomorrow. Made one major error during the Chart show (boring technical matter involving "dragging over" a "bed" from "Dalet"), after what I adjudged to be a pretty slick two-hour show, but it just goes to show that if you have two weeks off, sloppiness can set in. It's like exercise - stop doing it and you get flabby. Family came round this evening. Too wet to eat outside as planned, but we were not cowed and ate indoors instead. Really nice to see everybody. Chucked on a DVD of Best In Show at about 10pm and it proved a real crowd-pleaser to adults and children alike. Sunday July 31 Listener Louise Stephens from Suffolk, who originally emailed the show to complain that my blogs had become too long and acted as a wake-up call for me, got in touch again today to apologise if she in any way offended me. No need. It's better this way. I was beginning to ramble. Brevity can be a powerful tool. I beat the terrorists today, as it didn't rain on me. In my opinion the funniest ever Sunday paper review with Richard Herring today, and a fitting send-off, as he was literally on his way to Edinburgh after the show. It was the bit where, in a roundabout and I hope inoffensive way, he accused Princess Diana of having been a paedophile and seducing the 14-year-old Jamie Oliver. I dare say you had to be there. It's rare that I am unable to speak on the radio for laughing. Today was one of those occasions. Had the Thai meal we were cruelly denied on Thursday by comedian Paul Chowdhry (see: last week's blog). Then, even though it was late, we watched Godsend on DVD, a middling thriller with a diverting premise about cloning, with Robert De Niro keeping one eye on the meter as usual. A few jumps.
Monday August 1 Booked a skip today. That's quite exciting isn't it? It's coming to sit outside our house for a week next Monday - a "12-yarder", if you're manly enough to be interested. Had a lovely lazy day today (hey, might as well, I'll be pretty busy as of next Monday, throwing things into a skip). Watched a DVD at lunchtime! A pretty distressing one, actually, Maria Full of Grace: the one that earned Colombian first-timer Catalina Sandino Moreno a best actress Oscar nomination last year, the first time a non-English-speaking part had been nominated for the award, so they say. She plays a 17-year-old drug mule and the film basically follows her fraught journey from Bogotá to New York with 70 latex capsules of cocaine in her belly. It was really fascinating to learn the tricks of the trade but nauseating too (she accidentally "ejects" two in the toilet on the plane, then washes them and coats them in toothpaste before re-swallowing them - nice). Part two of Dispatches: Supermarket Secrets tonight, this time showing footage of lame and dead ducks on a factory farm (I'll never eat duck again, just to fall into the cliché of someone who's watched a horrible documentary), some outrageously abused dairy cows and pinpointing all the wasted fruit and veg that fails to pass the supermarkets' stringent uniformity tests. I have changed my opinion of reactionary Sun columnist Jane Moore - she did a great job of presenting this from the perspective of a concerned mum.
Tuesday August 2 One of those days that merits a detailed timeline, in case aliens should desire an insight into the life of a man who talks for a living. 5.30am: get up. (I planned to get up at 6am but my body always prefers to be early rather than late, and scheduling in a couple of hours before I leave the house means I don't have to run around like an idiot, and I can squeeze in a bit of writing between homemade smoothie and shower - today, the finishing touches to my Gene Hackman profile, which I have been beavering away at for weeks now.) 8.30am: leave the house. 8.50am: arrive at Redhill station after a walk that was mercifully rain-free. 9.06am: Victoria train arrives on time at Redhill. Read history of 20th Century Fox on journey, in preparation for first job - 11 consecutive interviews about the 70th birthday of the studio for various local radio stations. (It's a paid job - I'm working for Fox, but as an independent "film expert", a slightly grand term for what I actually am.) 10.18am: train finally arrives at Victoria, a depressing 40 minute late due to Reggie Perrin-style emergency engineering works on the line at Wandsworth Common. Pretty tense by this time, as I had hoped to walk to the studio in Piccadilly for my 10.30 start and beat the terrorists. 10.25am: take Tube to Green Park. One stop, but nevertheless, the terrorists had beaten me. Or at least Southern Trains had on their behalf. Survived. 10.40am: arrive at studio. 11.00am: start interviews, with two representatives from the PR company and an engineer smiling at me through the glass in my soundproof booth. It was quite bracing actually, spewing forth about a 70-year-old Hollywood film studio in ten-minute chunks, some live to air, some pre-recorded, from BBC Humberside to something called Northsound 1, via British Forces Radio, BBC Radio Devon (the lovely Judi Spiers), BBC Radio Oxford, BBC Radio Cumbria, Rugby FM, BBC West Midlands, The Saint (broadcasting across Southampton and surrounding areas), BBC Radio Jersey and BBC Radio Shropshire. What a marathon it was, with no break, two bananas, some grapes and a lot of water. 1.15pm: finish interviews, then off to my next talking appointment. You couldn't ask for nicer people, and they gave me a Fox box, which contained DVDs, some promotional items and a nice coffee table book about the studio. (I could now write one.) 1.30pm: arrive at Broadcasting House to pre-record an interview for Front Row on Radio 4 about post-punk, with producer Craig. I rambled on and hopefully he'll be able to fillet something useful out of it in the edit. 2pm: drop in at 6 Music to check my emails. Texted by a man called Ian at BBC Radio Wales who wanted to know if I could manage a "quick two-way" about the Jaws documentary which is on tonight. I said I could. 2.45pm: drop down to first floor to be interviewed down the line from one of the self-op studios. Some talking in between my talking. 3pm: arrive at my agent's office in Soho, as arranged, to watch a clips tape to get me in the mood for the next and final job (whilst eating some pea and mint soup from Eat). 3.25pm: picked up by car and taken to Pembridge Court Hotel in Notting Hill to be interviewed as a talking head for a Sky One documentary about political correctness. 5.50pm: finish talking. It was an exhaustive trawl through so much material, from Mind Your Language and Prince Phillip to Miss World and incitement to religious hatred. Highly entertaining and plenty of opportunity to rant on camera. Pity I don't get Sky. 6.15pm: deposited by a mute taxi driver at Victoria station. 7.02pm: finally board a train that actually stops at Redhill. Knackered, although I wouldn't expect someone with a proper job to feel too sorry for me. I wish I hadn't eaten all my nuts at 6 Music - I really fancied them with my Sudoku. 7.40pm: home. Is that interesting? Realised, over the course of the day, that my mobile has not been taking messages for about 10 days. Fixed it, which will be a relief to all those people who've been trying to offer me work. Kind of glad Sarah Beeny's Streets Ahead finished on C4 tonight. Even though they had a call-out for a second series at the end, it's no Property Ladder , and it presents people in a very bad light most of the time.
Wednesday August 3 A day at home, to compensate for yesterday. The first two episodes of Lost arrived in the post from C4. I can't wait until it starts next Wednesday. I watched both episodes back to back. It's excellent. Yes, it's full of beautiful people, but the individual stories are shaping up well, and the opening of episode one (ie. the plane crash on the beach) was as good as a Hollywood movie. It's been a huge hit in the States, 18 million viewers, I daresay success will follow over here. They've spent enough on that irritating, pretentious, off-putting David LaChapelle advert. Watched the tape of the second part of The New Al-Qaeda whilst cooking dinner, which looked in startling detail at the Madrid bombs from last March. Peter Taylor was his usual dogged self. A little sensational when they half-reconstructed the countdown to the ten bombs exploding (yes, there was a close-up of a ticking clock), but it told some difficult truths and at least it explicitly connected the bombers to the Iraq war. A DVD box set arrived from a well-known online outlet, Sherlock Holmes The Complete Collection, with Jeremy Brett in the title role and David Burke as Watson, superseded by Edward Hardwicke in the latter series. That's 39 hours of television (1984-94) in one box - just the ticket. Watched the first one, A Scandal In Bohemia, which of course I've just read. Didn't spoil it - in fact I loved seeing it come to life. Brett is exquisite. Pity they used a shot of him when he was very ill and puffy in the final series on the box. Another point against the packaging: the blurb - and this is worth quoting in full to show how stupid the people who put these things together think we are . . . "Featuring guest appearances from stars such as John Thaw (Morse), Robert Hardy (Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets), Natasha Richardson (Maid in Manhattan), Joss Ackland (Lethal Weapon 2) and many more." How easily an actor's career is reduced to one for-idiots reference! Caught up with the episode of Extras we missed last week due to taping difficulties (thanks to David Butcher at Radio Times, who kindly sent me a preview disc of the first three eps). It was the Ross Kemp one, and - I hate to say it - a bit disappointing. Perhaps it was the fact that Kemp was poor, but it didn't actually make me laugh and I found the director character unrealistic. Mind you, Stephen Merchant was terrific as the agent. Thursday August 4 Successful day's writing with Simon Day at my agent's office (we're putting together a detailed treatment for "a project" at the BBC). It was the day when the streets of London were awash with armed police, just in case the terrorists have a thing about Thursdays. Nothing happened. Good.
Some varied viewing tonight: Warlords (taped from Sunday, watched while making dinner), yet another documentary about Hitler and Stalin, which I admired for avoiding too much reconstruction, but I didn't learn anything I didn't already know; Dark Star , a long but engrossing profile of Frank Sinatra which claimed to offer new evidence of his links with the Mafia but in truth just stated the same facts with more confidence and had only a passing interest in how good he was at singing; Extras , a total return to form with the Kate Winslet episode - Merchant excellent again as the agent, and more laughs all round. The views expressed in this column are the views of Andrew Collins and do not neccesarily reflect the views of the BBC. Related Links
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