England Prevails

London Fields # 98
First published Inpress (Issue # 1200), Melbourne on 16 November 2011, and in Drum Media (Issue # 1086), Sydney on 15 November 2011
NB: Each column has a name, but these do not appear in print; printed versions may differ slightly to those displayed here

Recent events made the scheduling of the film adaptation of V For Vendetta on the evening of 5th November feel like a quiet political statement by state broadcaster BBC Two The film was originally due to have its UK release on the eve of the 400^th anniversary of the foiling of The Gunpowder Plot, yet in the period since 2005 the stylised Guy Fawkes mask worn by the central character of V has become a common sight at protests, from student marches to the current Occupy London camp in the grounds of St Paul’s Cathedral. While the film may differ from Alan Moore’s original vision, the picture of an isolated nation in crisis, presided over by an authoritarian government, with the people as that 99% rang some bells. There was another protest by students against fees and cuts in central London last Wednesday, but this passed without serious incident. The number of marchers was much reduced, perhaps dissuaded by the advance police warning that baton rounds (rubber bullets) could be employed if any trouble erupted; those that went were met by 4000 police officers. This week has also seen a furore over the reported relaxation of the border controls over the summer months - sackings and resignations are sure to follow. Behind the wheels of government, following changes to the Act of Settlement 1701 at the recent CHOGM in Perth, royal heirs will soon have equal rights to the throne regardless of gender, and be able to marry a Roman Catholic. Meanwhile the Fixed-term Parliaments Act 2011 (which received the Royal Assent on 15 September 2011) removed the Royal Prerogative which allowed the monarch to dissolve parliament, so there won’t be any Remembrance Day 1975s here.

Guy Fawkes Night traditionally means bonfires and fireworks but it’s been a few years now since I’ve heard anyone asking for “a penny for the Guy”. These days it’s more commonly referred to Bonfire Night and cross-pollinated with Halloween, but Southwark Council got into all kinds of hoo-hah when they attempted to re-brand their event as The Colour Thief: A Winter Extravaganza Celebrating the Change of the Seasons. One place where the old traditions hold true is in Lewes in East Sussex where for 200 years they have marked the prevention of the Gunpowder Plot and remembered the Marian Martyrs burned in the town in the mid 16^th century. Last year they blew up an effigy of the Pope as part of the celebrations, but this year there were bigger villains to pillory. The Waterloo parade featured an effigy of Rupert Murdoch as a dragon being ridden by Rebekah Brooks which was later sacrificed to the flames

The clocks may have gone back at the end of October, but temperatures are still in double figures and the leaves only just falling from trees en masse, meaning autumn’s arrived very late this year. The mild days bright have made the return to Greenwich Mean Time (GMT) harsher than ever; suddenly it’s dark before 4.30pm and by the solstice it will be pitch black before 4pm. For years there have discussions about changing the UK time zone, but a Private Members Bill tabled by MP Rebecca Harris may actually make this possible. This Thursday the money resolution of her Daylight Saving Bill 2010-11 will be debated in the House of Commons. If agreed, it will lead to a three year trial, yet it hinges on getting agreement from Scottish Parliament, Welsh Assembly and Northern Ireland Assembly. The change would mean England was on GMT+1 (aka CET) in winter and Central European Summer Time (GMT+2) in summer. It would result in the carbon savings on lighting, a reduction in the road toll (as drivers are more tired in the evenings), and a boost for tourism. Additionally, the latest findings show it would also help to curb childhood obesity as light is a key factor on decisions to play outside. Despite this, The Mail On Sunday is insisting a move to what they call “Berlin Time” would be a disaster, particularly for Scotland where sunrise would be very late. But surely it has to be good for businesses to synchronise with Europe (even if the economies are in crisis)? The solution would be for Scotland to keep its current time zone. That said it would be strange to think that nowhere in England would ever be on Greenwich Mean Time again, even in Greenwich. Maybe if all this comes to pass, GMT will end up nicknamed “Glasgow Mean Time”?

© James McGalliard 2011

Inpress: Published on page 56
Drum: Published on page 54

News Of The World

London Fields # 94
First published Inpress (Issue # 1184), Melbourne on 27 July 2011, and in Drum Media (Issue # 1070), Sydney on 26 July 2011
NB: Each column has a name, but these do not appear in print; printed versions may differ slightly to those displayed here

A Sunday morning stroll through the News Of The World’s website to see what celebrity muck had been freshly raked used to seem like a bit of fun. Many of the stories were seemingly so ludicrous that they were amusing, and it could be done with a clear conscience didn’t involve actually buying the rag. But the fairly ambivalent attitude of the British public to the phone hacking saga changed dramatically about three weeks ago when it was revealed that News Of The World had not only hacked into the voicemail of murdered schoolgirl Milly Dowler, but had deleted messages as well, leading relatives believe that the then only missing family member was perhaps still alive. Targeting those who had at some point actively sought the limelight didn’t seem so bad, but this was another thing entirely. As Billy Bragg sings in his new song Never Buy The Sun: “the means justify the ends because we only hunt celebrities and it's all a bit of fun”.. But this reprehensible act shocked a nation and (contrary to what I read in a piece in The Australian) quickly became a hot topic of conversation across all classes and beliefs.

As this saga unfolded I kept recalling the central motif of HBO’s Game Of Thrones: "When you play the game of thrones, you win or you die. There is no middle ground." For decades newspapers have played at king making - Murdoch papers supported Labour Party in the elections of 1997, 2001 and 2005, and then at the last election reverted to their formal loyalties to stand firmly behind David Cameron and the Conservative Party. So perhaps it’s not unexpected that Ed Miliband, the current leader of the British Labour Party, has seemed to finally gain some teeth when discussing this issue. While it seems this present government is determined to substantially weaken the BBC, some papers have tried to claim that the whole Hackgate sage was a beat-up of a private leftist cabal between The Guardian and the BBC, with a Daily Mail headline asking “why won't he [Miliband] tackle the REAL threat to our way of life - the BBC” in response.

While attention was focussed on this, there wasn’t much room for other stories. So the announcement that the NHS, which we’re continually reassured isn’t going to be privatised, will have £1billion of services opened up to private competition passed almost unmarked, as did Education Secretary Michael Gove’s report to the Commons that the rebuilding project for 58 schools which he axed would remain scrapped (despite the opinions of the High Court). Meanwhile on television late night current affairs show Newsnight saw a surge in rating as day-by-day new revelations came to light, and hosted great live interviews such as one where Steve Coogan eviscerated a NotW journo. Over on Question Time, another celebrity who had found himself the subject of tabloid stories fought back, with Hugh Grant proving himself mightily impressive.

The shining knight in this whole sorry affair has been the pioneering and persistent investigative work by The Guardian that has brought this into the light. Yet its continued future is a cause of concern. Although The Guardian has the second largest online readership of any English language paper in the world, there is no paywall (Comment Is Free) but last month it revealed an annual loss of £33 million and stated that the Guardian Media Group could run out of cash within five years “if the business operations did not change”.

This weekend showed nothing much had really changed. While that the closure of the News Of The World may have put some people out of work and adversely affected newsagents Sunday takings, the act has done relatively little to address serious issues in certain sections of the Fourth Estate. One tabloid led with what was apparently Amy Winehouse’s final drug deal, while others were happy to quote the story and show photos of the late singer’s blanket covered corpse being removed from her home. While in (Murdoch owned) The Times last Friday cartoonist Peter Brookes depicted three staving Africans, one of whom opined “I’ve had a bellyful of phone-hacking”. But perhaps the most telling comment on the whole affair was automatically generated by a machine. When I tried to access the NotW website from my work PC, I found it had been blocked by my employer. The reason given was that it was “categorized as: Tasteless & Offensive”.

© James McGalliard 2011

Inpress: Published on page 57
Drum: Published on page 60

Black & White TV

London Fields # 70
First published Inpress, Melbourne on 14 October 2009
NB: Each column has a name, but these do not appear in print; printed versions may differ slightly to those displayed here

Perhaps the most contentious section of comedian Richard Herring’s Edinburgh show Hitler Moustache began when he chose to use the term “Paki” to make a point. In the UK it is no mere abbreviation, but one of the most taboo terms of racist abuse, a derogatory catch-all for anyone from the Asian subcontinent. I felt myself catch my breath as he uttered it, for it’s dangerous territory to tread. Herring is not a racist by any stretch, but there’s a risk in being quoted out of context, such as the furore that surrounded his “maybe the racists have a point” comment from elsewhere in the show. His expansive conjecture was that an extreme racist’s ‘us and them’ mentality was only one step away from the truly enlightened state of seeing that we’re all the same; so those liberals who see hundreds of separate races on Earth were hundreds of steps further away from the ideal. He went on to illustrate that if people from India and Pakistan saw themselves as a racist sees them (the same), they’d be no conflict between the countries. Now this was never meant to be a serious proposition; the whole point of his show was to challenge perceptions and assumptions.

There’s been another recent TV race row playing out in the papers, where Strictly Come Dancing contestant Anton Du Beke saw the spray-on tan of his partner Laila Rouass and exclaimed “You look like a Paki”. The comment was made off air, and apologies were quickly made and accepted. Yet it’s still shocking that such a remark could be made, even in ‘jest’. ‘Only joshing’ was Carol Thatcher’s excuse earlier this year too, when she used the word “golliwog” to describe tennis player Jo-Wilfried Tsonga. It was also an off-air remark – the difference was that she refused to apologise (at least initially), saying there was nothing wrong with it. Rightfully, the BBC dismissed her, yet there are those who claim that the Beeb has not been even-handed in its handling of such incidents. Both the Celebrity Big Brother affair and Manuelgate are still fresh wounds in TV Land, and the BBC faces an uncertain future, particularly if there is a change in government at the next election.

Hence the BBC Trust’s latest broadcasting guidelines are reactionary, and the new restrictions on bad language feel like a visit from the ghost of Mary Whitehouse. Yet the modern world is one wherein you need to be more aware that certain, seemingly innocent words may carry a hidden weight. Only the other I week a responded to a ribald remark from a fellow employee with “cheeky monkey”, only to then freeze as I remembered that in England that word has nasty associations to anyone of black decent. And a few weeks earlier I was completely dumbfounded when a handyman at my flat started expressed some pretty hateful opinions, and used some racist expressions I’d never heard used in real life and hoped had been lost in the 1970s.

Yet the most shocking example of TV gone wrong recently wasn’t any of these, but the Jackson Jive act on Hey Hey It’s Saturday. It’s thirty years since Bert Newton wrongfooted Mohammed Ali with his infamous (yet genuinely innocent) “I like the boy” remark, and longer since The Black And White Minstrel Show was consigned to the cultural dustbin. So you’d have hoped that a true multicultural society might have become more attuned, yet the “Where’s Kamahl?” cartoon genuinely served to bundle all races of colour into the one basket that Richard Herring satirised. It isn’t about political correctness; it’s about being aware of a wider world - one in which the Lucky Country, with its detention camps and belated ‘Sorry’ is sometimes viewed as backward, homophobic and racist. Personally, I was simply embarrassed, and somewhat glad that this didn’t become a bigger story here, as it would have been impossible to defend my homeland. It’s not necessarily a question of racism, but it’s certainly one of sensitivity and awareness. Would they have been allowed to perform in blackface holding boomerangs, didgeridoos and a copy of the Mabo Treaty? To put it simply - “Wake Up Australia!”


© James McGalliard 2009

Summer In The City

London Fields # 67
First published Inpress, Melbourne on 19 August 2009
NB: Each column has a name, but these do not appear in print; printed versions may differ slightly to those displayed here

When you live in a place, you end up with all kinds of insider knowledge without ever quite knowing how you picked it up in the first place. In London, milk is cheaper at the corner shop than it is in the big supermarkets, a hint of sun on a day warmer than 17 will result in hoards of shirtless men in the high street, and if you see a Japanese person with a bewildered expression in the centre of Hackney, it’s most likely they’re trying to find the Burberry factory outlet. Although an Englishman’s home is supposedly his castle, the fiercest pride and competition is in his garden. An unkempt hedge will draw disdainful glances, and any foray into your back garden is to invite comment on its state. That said, a true joy of gardening here is the lack of ferocious beasties; there are no white tails hiding in your gloves, or deadly critters in the undergrowth.

The great centres of the British making conversation continue to be weather and sport. The predicted long hot summer has so far failed to arrive, which is a little bit of a blessing as the long brick terraces of the capital can become furnaces once the mercury creeps over 30. Football (soccer) is the ubiquitous game here and virtually nothing else comes near challenging its dominance. Such is the strength of both sentiment for the sport and team loyalty, that to really follow a team you have to be born into it, which is not part of a shared upbringing for a lad from suburban Melbourne. These are some of the few weeks of the year when the game isn’t being played professionally; still it’s always football and never cricket that’s being played on the streets around where I live.

All that was different a few years ago, if only for a few short weeks, in 2005, when The Ashes were last played here. Back then the whole country suddenly went cricket mad, particularly after England ended up winning them back (The following series, where England copped a drubbing in Australia, seems to have been conveniently forgotten about). With the Poms last-minute survival in Cardiff, and their first Ashes win at Lords in 75 years, I fear that all this is going to repeat itself once again. In 2005, the Ashes games were shown free-to-air; this time around the live broadcasts are exclusive to a premium satellite subscription channel. So maybe it won’t capture the nation in the same way? It seems Aussie baiting has already become a secondary sport; all the more reason to hope Ponting and his team can still turn this series around.

Surely part of the experience of living in another country is about immersing yourself in that lifestyle, and becoming a part of the community in which you live? So while I may want to ‘fly the flag’, another part of me keeps a distance from the expat community here. Last week, the BBC dug out The Adventures of Barry McKenzie and I was wondering if it isn’t due for an update about the new generation of Oz ambassadors to the UK. With visits from Melbourne friends recently, more than once I’ve ended up on a purely Melbourne table in a pub. It was nice to talk to people with shared experiences of growing up, and to learn new examples of Australian vernacular as well. Walking up Essex Road in Islington en route to another pub, I pointed out Britannia Row, the former studios where Joy Division recorded Closer. In the ensuing conversation, it was suggested that the London I was living in was one based in the past, rather than what is happening now. I’ve never considered myself much of a scenester, in the context of this column it bothered me. So for a while I may be taking a step back from music and concentrate on writing about other aspects of life here.

Reading seems little more than a satellite town of London in the characterless commuter belt. I found myself here again recently as it was my only chance to catch some other friends from Melbourne before they flew home. Given the persistent mizzle falling, there was little other option than to retire to a nearby hostelry. It could easily be argued that real ale appreciation is just gauze to disguise another excuse to get drunk. But there was no piped music in The Hobgoblin, and mobile phones were frowned upon, so the only sound was that of animated conversations, it made me very glad to be in this place and time. It was a distinctly English environment yet sadly it’s now hard to find a place like this anymore in the city. On the train back into London, another thought struck me. It’s friends who make anything worth experiencing, regardless of where you or they came from originally.


© James McGalliard 2009

Future Retro

London Fields # 60
First published Inpress, Melbourne on 6 January 2009
NB: Each column has a name, but these do not appear in print; printed versions may differ slightly to those displayed here

Sometimes you need to look into the past to see the future. I was trying to predict trends in the UK music scene for the next year, but realised it would be rather pointless to simply write about acts that are going to be bigged-up or fawned over by the broadsheets or music press. Concentrating on personal favourites who may never even get around to releasing a single song commercially would perhaps be even worse. Yet a great deal of what’s happening here now comes from two places – the early eighties and the mid nineties.

For in the early eighties, synthesizers became affordable, and these cheaper keyboards opened a door to music, like an after echo of the DIY manifesto of punk. Today the sound of those old analogue instruments is ever more sort after, and some of the groundbreaking artists of this era are receiving recognition by a generation who weren’t born when these records were first made. In the mid nineties, the current eighties revival first began - The Human League toured on Octopus, Heaven 17 played live for the first time and Martin Fry put on the gold lame suit again, embracing his past with ABC.

Last month saw The Steel City Tour, when all three of these Sheffield acts played together for the first time. And not cabaret-style with a house band – this was three fully independent groups. It was a great idea on paper, but I’ve seen all perform better in the last decade; it was also hugely disappointing that Martyn Ware and Phil Oakey didn’t collaborate. December also saw Simple Minds on a 30th anniversary tour, which involved them playing the entire New Gold Dream in the middle of their set, while 2007 saw Orchestral Manoeuvres In The Dark taking Architecture and Morality around the country.

But is the live arena the place to replicate music designed to be listened to at home, specifically by playing a ‘seminal’ album in its entirety? When Gang Of Four brought their Entertainment LP to Don’t Look Back, they pretty much kept to the same set of songs as at other shows on their reunion tour; I’m not sure if every track was actually played. As curator of the Meltdown festival, Patti Smith organised a showcase of the entire Horses album, in order. Yet in the excitement of performance, she forgot a track, which she later slotted into the encore. Now these were seated gigs, in formal concert venues, with an audience there for one act only. Yet when you take this concept to the festivals, it becomes more questionable, for it breaks the cardinal rule about playing known songs to seduce music goers who have never seen you live before. Yet at Primavera Sound in Barcelona the other year, there was Sonic Youth announcing “And now here’s side two, track 2”, as they track listed their way through Daydream Nation. Following a record’s running order slavishly not only takes away the spontaneity of the live environment, but it also ignores that a totally different sequence of tracks may be needed to keep a audience’s attention than is right for the passive listening of a studio recording.

There are other pitfalls of this too. At the same festival, Dirty Three had a valid complaint about performing Ocean Songs - “How are we meant to play an album that lasts over an hour in a forty minute slot?” asked Warren Ellis quite reasonably. Now I’m not necessarily against these things – I’ve paid to see a quite a few of them myself. But do we risk tainting our memories, and do bands risk ruining their reputations? Sometimes these events involve bands reforming, and that raises the tricky question of whether to write and perform new material? James are one of the more successful examples of this, but their 2008 album Hey Ma failed to capture the magic of the live rehearsals that took place during its recording. When they do work, it can be very special. The Blue Aeroplanes launched their deluxe re-release of the brilliant Swagger by playing the album in order, including tracks that had never been played live before.

So why the backward glance? Well, one look at the BBC Sound Of 2009 longlist is enough to make you despair for the future. It was only a few years back that The Bravery won; this year we have White Lies, who sound like The Bravery performing The Teardrop Explodes in the style of The Killers. Other ‘hopes’ also seem to be pillaging the past, and it looks as if there’s going to be a belated attempt to break some Electro into the UK mainstream.

It’s hard to see where 2009 will actually go. There are yet more eighties acts on the way - Blancmange is quietly working together again, and April will see the hit-making version of Ultravox bringing their arpeggios and flanged notes back on stage for the first time since Live Aid. But while the acts of the past were innovators, innovation seems largely absent today. Personally I can see two things – a new wave of C86 influenced acts from the USA, and this ceaseless digging bringing forth a BritPop revival. You have been warned.


© James McGalliard 2009

Boom and Bust

London Fields # 59

First published Inpress, Melbourne on 29 December 2008

NB: Each column has a name, but these do not appear in print; printed versions may differ slightly to those displayed here

But you really don’t care for music, do you? Isn’t it more than a little ironic that the debut single of this year’s winner of The X Factor is a cover of Leonard Cohen’s classic Hallelujah? The fastest selling download in UK history was released just after the final, so it’s fair to assume that all the late contenders recorded their own karaoke rendering of the same arrangement. The sheer commercial hard-headedness of it just fills my heart with seasonal glee. Saturday night telly is where the BBC and its commercial rival ITV battle it out in audience-voted talent quests, the modern day equivalent of variety shows. Even Peter Kay’s one-off piss-take Britain’s Got The Pop Factor And Possibly A New Celebrity Jesus Christ Soapstar Strictly On Ice spawned its own single, and it seems nothing will stem this tide of bilge passing for entertainment.

Pop may well eat itself, but television feasts on its own entrails. Literally in Charlie Brooker’s Dead Set (E4), which focussed on a microcosm of refugees hiding in the Big Brother house whilst the world outside fell to zombies. Brooker was also behind Screenwipe, an informative, cruel and bloody funny show about television. On ITV, the award-winning TV Burp saw Harry Hill take a gentler ramble through the previous week’s viewing, replete with some lovely running gags. While BBC Four had a series of biopics of famous comedians and their bloody depressing lives, it wasn’t a vintage year for TV comedy. New sketch shows failed, Pulling improved but wasn’t recommissioned. With the exception of Peep Show, the brighter lights were the newcomers, like No Heroics, or The Kevin Bishop Show. 2008 also saw the serious decline of the documentary. reality TV and lifestyle challenges had already done damage, but the new decline was evidenced by ‘mission’ shows. Even Horizon turned mental illness into a game of Spot The Looney.

Dramas prepared us for the end of the world. Spooks saw a Russian sleeper planting a nuclear device in central London, and the ropey Spooks Code 9 was set in the aftermath of a nuclear attack by terrorists at the 2012 games. Survivors (a remake of Terry Nation’s 1970’s original) began with a pandemic wiping out over 99% of the earth’s population, and next year we’re promised a new version of The Day Of The Triffids. While I suppose anything is more entertaining than Hole In The Wall or I’m A Has-been, Restart My Career, you start to wonder if we’re being slowly prepared for a new, tougher world, one where you can only hold onto what is yours by force.

In the real world of London’s streets, 28 teenagers died violently and gangs fought post code-based wars. Britain talked its overvalued housing market into a crisis, and we all just watched helplessly as the credit crunch inevitably became a recession. For sure, someone made a nice profit out of the misery of wrecked lives. Every day a further 350 Londoners lose their jobs; unemployment stands at 1.8 million, the highest since 1991, and predictions expect this to rise by another million by 2010. But the most telling sign of the downturn has been the loss of an integral part of British life and one of the country’s retail giants - Woolworths. Perhaps actually closest to the long-gone Coles Variety stores, Woolies modern Australian equivalent would be Target or K-Mart. Yet Woolies wasn’t an outer suburban megastore - with 807 stores they held a place on every high street. Nothing has felt less like Christmas than watching a wake of buzzards descend upon the 27 000 soon to be unemployed workers, to pick clean the carcass of the dying beast, all to the sound of piped Christmas songs. Ironic also as this was where many a single of Christmas Past was bought.

My catch cry of live gigs this year seems to have been ‘Oh, maybe it was just a bad night’. Hence Robert Forster was dull and uninspired and Nick Cave at Hammersmith seemed a little out of love with The Bad Seeds, perhaps wishing he was playing Grinderman instead. The exceptions to ‘bad nights’ were wonderful. My Bloody Valentine joined the rare echelons of acts whose reunion was a good idea, and Edwyn Collins, who I was a little scared to see after his stroke, proved bloody great, both musically and spiritually. The baggy workings of Working For A Nuclear Free City hinted at a possible return to Madchester, and Frank Turner’s enthusiasm and sheer joie de vie made every show special. Get Well Soon as a full band surpassed their excellent debut album, and Fuck Buttons dark rave provided an exhilarating contrast to boring Carling rock acts.

With Top Of The Pops gone, and only very large stores carrying any physical singles at all, does the singles chart really matter any more? Railing against bad cover versions, I feel a little like Alex DeLarge, strapped into a chair, my eyes clamped open, screaming “It’s a sin!” Yet as I write, the campaign to get Jeff Buckley’s cover of Hallelujah is gaining momentum. Perhaps there is some hope for the future after all?

© James McGalliard 2008

Scapegoating

London Fields # 58

First published Inpress, Melbourne on 3 December 2008

NB: Each column has a name, but these do not appear in print; printed versions may differ slightly to those displayed here

Righteous indignation seems to be favourite pastime of a disgruntled populace. Fanning the flames of anger helps to sell newspapers, so it’s become the backbone philosophy of certain British tabloids (or Red Tops as they’re known) and perhaps their lifeblood. Deliberately provocative language is used to heighten emotions, and the manipulation may also make you seethe with rage.

They need things for you to be angry about, and while there’s nothing new about making news out of nothing, this rebel-rousing feels like the work of the Ministry Of Truth. You’ll find stories of how youth are out of control, or how Britain is not as great as it was, or how foreigners are taking away British identity. And this sort of piffle perpetuates the vision of a decaying nation and opens the door to politicians that play on dreams of sovereignty and jingoistic nationalism.

The British believe strongly in justice. So when someone was voted off The X Factor is questionable circumstances, Ofcom (the broadcasting standards council), was besieged with complaints. In this instance, people actually watched that show, and made complaints themselves before it became a news story. But that’s not always the case.

I’m not sure how much of BBC’s Manuelgate permeated the Australian conscience, so here’s a brief précis. On a Thursday night, comedian Russell Brand was pre-recording his Saturday night show for BBC Radio 2, along with special guest Jonathan Ross, a near ubiquitous BBC presenter and talk show host. They unsuccessfully tried to contact Andrew Sachs (Manuel from Fawlty Towers) for a phone interview. As he was unavailable, they left four explicit messages on his answerphone, centring on Brand’s dalliance with Sach’s granddaughter, the burlesque performer Georgina Baillie. Perhaps the presenters felt no need to curb their exuberance as the show wasn’t being broadcast live, so anything too risqué could be edited out later. Sachs was contacted about the messages and content prior to actual transmission. Here, accounts vary; certainly some material was cut, and the show was approved by station management and broadcast, claiming an audience of 400 000. Two of these listeners complained - about Ross’s language, not the content itself. More than a week later, The Mail on Sunday picked it up as a story, and from there it snowballed into front page news, and stayed there for weeks, going on to become one of the most complained about broadcasts in the history of the BBC. Ross was suspended without pay for three months, while Brand resigned, as did other high ranking BBC staff, including Lesley Douglas, the controller of BBC Radio 2 and BBC 6Music. Georgina Baillie hired publicist Max Clifford, and was the centre of a Channel 5 documentary called Russell & Ross: What the F*** Was All That About?

There are a number of key questions raised by it all. Do people in public life have a right to privacy, or has the world of gossip magazines and paparazzi taken that away? Was anyone hurt by it? Was it funny? And what does it mean for comedy? Adrian Edmondson (Vyvyan of The Young Ones) writing for The Independent, and the brilliant Charlie Brooker (whose television programme about television Screenwipe has recently returned to BBC Four) in The Guardian questioned the effect there might be on comedy if producers were so worried about reprisals and recriminations for allowing material which pushed the boundaries.

The real thing that was called into question in all this is the BBC’s role as a public broadcaster. Yet perhaps the reason for the story was envy – of the sexual proclivities of Brand, and the enormous pay packet of Ross (£6 million a year). Can an organisation which is funded by the public afford to pay commercial salaries? It probably wasn’t helped by Ross’s quip about his income at last years British Comedy Awards - "I'm worth 1,000 BBC journalists". Personally, I’ll pay the licence fee just for Doctor Who. Incidentally, this story almost buried the news that David Tennant is stepping down from the central role in Doctor Who at the end of next year. But it did allow former Doctor Sylvester McCoy to suggest on GMTV that Sachs and Baille could take the show back to its roots, with the Doctor as an old man, accompanied on his travels by his granddaughter.

A few days after newsagents were left with unsold newspapers with Brand or Ross on their covers, Barack Obama was elected president, and these papers were all sold by lunch. Brits care about a lot more than their television. The short sad life and circumstances surrounding the death of Baby P was indeed a tragedy, and one that caused genuine feelings of revulsion and sadness. But the prurient humour of two adult schoolboys knocked the government’s huge bail-out of British banks off the front page; and made us forget that the US election wasn’t taking place in the UK. Britain hoped too when it had a major change in 1997, and I don’t think it will ever forgive the Blair government for what followed. One can only hope that Australia and America are not similarly disappointed in their respective new golden ages.


© James McGalliard 2008

The Crunchy and The Smooth

London Fields # 52
First published Inpress, Melbourne on 21 May 2008
NB: Each column has a name, but these do not appear in print; printed versions may differ slightly to those displayed here

“If you hate the place so much, why have you lived there for the best part of twenty years?” This question arrived by e-mail in response to a recent column, and played on my mind for days. Was I portraying such a negative viewpoint, or merely being actively and critically aware? And if I did indeed hate London, why have I chosen to make this large, cold, distant and potentially dangerous city my home for so long?

Over the past few weeks, I’ve been watching a pair of magpies build a nest outside my office window. But I can no longer see it or them. For in the course of three days Spring arrived, and a tree of bare branches became so thick with foliage that the nest was lost from view. Now with this sudden change of season came the pollen, which for the past three years has blighted the capital with itching, eye irritation and other allergies. Even if you see it all though teary eyes, how can you not love a place that goes troppo the minute there is sun and temperatures over 20? The change in people’s personalities is astounding too, like that old episode of Star Trek where the townsfolk’s demeanour changed as the clock struck twelve. So too, the Londoners shed their winter hides and suddenly exchange scowls for smiles - there’s a latent friskiness in the air. At lunchtime, London Fields was awash with sunworshippers, and the turnstiles of the recently opened lido (outdoor swimming pool) clicked incessantly. It can be these little things that make you cherish a place so.

The London pub is a special place, and the old style establishments are becoming rarer all the time. Many have been converted into flats, or ‘upgraded’ to gastropubs and dining rooms. Yet they can still be found, and in a local boozer on a Hackney estate, they quickly learn your name, and remember what you drink. In this very pub recently a mate (London born and bred) commented on how hard it was to make friends here, but friendships you do make are exceedingly strong. So while it is harsh for the newcomer, there are rewards for staying longer term. For a place is as much about people as it is about architecture, and so London has become more an International city than a British one, as a true reflection of its shifting multicultural population.

Although folks moan about it, public transport in the capital is pretty amazing considering the sheer numbers it has to cope with. And living in a city so large means that it can take hours to get to a gig, but the sheer variety and number of acts means it’s hard to keep it to less than two nights a week. Bands from all over the world play here, and the local scene is better than it ever has been. Melbourne is so far away; here I see bands that have never made the journey there, sometimes because their Australian fanbase simply isn’t big enough to make a tour financially viable.

While it’s by no means perfect, the National Health Service (NHS) remains amazing, simply by surviving all the cutbacks. It may be underfunded, but is staffed by dedicated professionals who provide a high level of healthcare. You may sometime have to wait a while, and you’d be lucky to build the same bond that you had with your Australian GP, but I never fail to be impressed by a system that provides care to all, regardless of income or private insurance.

Another publicly funded jewel, the BBC, is an absolute gem. I may not entirely agree with its direction of travel, but find myself watching its five main television stations, listening to four of its radio stations, and using its comprehensive website daily. Really it is unmatched anywhere in the world. And it’s all commercial-free! British newspapers, from the popular red tops, to the ones given out free at train stations, to quality papers like The Independent and The Guardian are also wonderful. Without them, I feel disconnected from the wider world in a way that even the SBS News can’t fill.

I miss Cherry Ripes, and being able to say ‘Morning’ to people I pass in my street, and having a peer group with a similar background. But for the time being this will continue to be my home. I like that bands are finished by 11pm, so I can get to work the next day without too many ill effects. I love being embedded in history, from local place names, through to contemporary pop references.

I think what it all comes down to is that some time into a relationship, you realise that your chosen partner isn’t perfect. You see their faults, yet still love them. For if the things you love outweigh those you don’t, you stay. My eyes may wander, and my heart may desire more, but for now I’ll continue my relationship with London. Melbourne was my first love; and your first love remains with you for your whole life. I have no desire to be here when the Olympics arrive, and London is increasingly a city for the young. But for the time being at least, London is the one I’ll come home to each night.

© James McGalliard 2008

TV Club 18-35

London Fields # 49
First published Inpress, Melbourne on 27 February 2008
NB: Each column has a name, but these do not appear in print; printed versions may differ slightly to those displayed here

In the UK it’s not your 8 cents a day, but rather your £135 a year to fund Auntie. The compulsory TV Licence funds 75% of the BBC’s costs, from TV & radio to the news-gathers & websites. There’s huge pressure to show that this revenue is being used wisely; and the biggest visible shake up recently has been to digital station BBC Three. It’s aimed at the 18-35 market, is the UK home of Man Stoke Woman and The Mighty Boosh, and has just gone through a major revamp. With the BBC cutting back on its news services, questions are being asked about how the licence fee is being spent. Some may say the station is fighting for its very existence.

Spearheading the re-launch was Lily Allen and Friends, a chat show that was sadly awkward and uncomfortable to watch, and not because of the host. Elsewhere, the ‘light’ documentaries, which may cover serious issues, but tread a fine line with reality TV, continue as a mainstay. These have included the series Freaky Eaters, Sex With Mum and Dad and Can Fat Teens Hunt, and one-offs like My Big Breasts And Me, My Small Breasts And I, Me And My Man Breasts, Dawn Goes Naked, Dawn Goes Lesbian… Yeah, I know these sound made-up – sadly they’re all real.

Amongst all this mire, Being Human - the tale of a ghost, a werewolf and a vampire sharing a house in Bristol - shone. Although it had its light moments, it was no comedy. While it is post-Buffy, but in some ways it feels more like it could be a successor to the fabulous Ultraviolet, the 1998 series in which the Vatican were out to stop vampires (referred to as Code Fives or leeches) from creating a nuclear winter to claim the earth. The vampires of Being Human also feel that they’ve been living in the shadows for too long and, under the leadership of Adrian Lester, things are going to change. At a gathering he chillingly uses a little Blake to question whether evolution gives man any superiority: "Did he who made the Lamb make thee?" I couldn’t wait for the next episode; sadly at the moment they’re isn’t one. Hopefully the powers that be at the Beeb will see sense and commission this as a series. It was written by Toby Whithouse, who has also written for Doctor Who (the one with Giles, K-9 and Sarah Jane at the school), and for Torchwood.

Yes, Torchwood is also back, but it’s been rebooted so savagely you can almost see the tread-mark on the face. While the first series was almost Doctor Who without the Doctor but with added sex and swearing, the new series is about relationships. It’s like when James Bond briefly became a one-woman guy in the aftermath of AIDS. There’s romance, but very little sleeping around – it’s more about the yearning. The series began with the addition of James Marsters (Spike from Buffy The Vampire Slayer) playing, well, Spike from Buffy, except in name. It really doesn’t quite know if it’s Arthur or Martha. Speaking of which, Martha Jones has jumped from the TARDIS to appear in it too. There is an underlying story that a major invasion is underway, but as a story arc it’s suspiciously absent. So far it still fails to involve me; it’s lacking the emotion range of the revamped Who. But I’m still watching.

Over on ITV, Primeval returned, and it too has gone through a major reboot, this time by taking the central conceit of Ray Bradbury’s time-travel classic A Sound Of Thunder. For stepping into the past has changed the present, and only Cutter knows things are not the same. This has allowed the makers to tweak with the story elements, while keeping the core. But the problem with high concepts is that they can wear out rather quickly. The second season of Life On Mars showed strain, but sequel Ashes To Ashes has broken the towrope. This time it’s Keeley Hawes as DI Drake - sent back to London 1981 with a bullet (literally). It’s lacking the charm of its predecessor, kills any ambiguity of the conclusion of Mars in the first few minutes, and just feels forced. Sure it’s fun to visit the Blitz club, but would Steve Strange (playing himself) have worn ear monitors fronting Visage in 1981? But there’s a way out - it’s not the real 80’s, but Drake’s idea of it. But who do we blame for the squandering of the wonderful character of Gene Hunt? Or the soundtrack that feels trowelled on? And, worse of all, for it being dull??

Thanks then for Channel 4’s 18-35 channel, E4, and the second season of Skins. The first series went from the humorous to the very dark, but managed to maintain reality. Its high concept was the weekly baton changing of the focus of the unfolding narrative. The second season is darker, and so far has been telling character’s stories in doubles. If the arc of the first season was the fall of Tony, maybe the key to this one is his rehabilitation? Bill Bailey (complete with his dancing dog) appears as Maxxie’s father (continuing the theme of parents played by comics, mostly in non-comedic roles), while the school is presenting Osama The Musical. Once again, it’s a joy to behold intelligent programmes that don’t talk down to their audience. Why can’t all drama be like this?


© James McGalliard 2008

Three Seasons In One Year

London Fields # 47
First published Inpress, Melbourne on 26 December 2007
NB: Each column has a name, but these do not appear in print; printed versions may differ slightly to those displayed here

If you look at the news cycle, it was as though nothing of note happened in the world in 2007. Blair may have abdicated and passed the throne seamlessly to Gordon Brown (the invisible PM), but things seem mainly unchanged. Yep, there may well have been wars and disasters, but most of our attention was seemingly drawn to Celebdaq-style events.

Amy Winehouse may have ended the year Back To Black as the best selling album of 2007, but sometimes it was hard to remember that she was a musician (except when it came to odds on whether she’d show up at her own gigs). Pete Doherty, who must have been well aware of the pattern, then became part of the Winehouse saga when he paid her a visit. Earlier in the year the vexed question of whether the various z-listers had been racist came from the misleadingly named Celebrity Big Brother. And the year ended with outrage that Fairytale Of New York had to be censored for play on BBC Radio 1, but they soon backed down from their immovable stance. Were these all distractions from the real news?

Over on TV, Spooks has spent the last nine weeks preparing us for the breaking of ties with America, and Iran gaining nuclear capability. Is this TV drama preparing a complaint public for possible futures, a production trying to be gritty and edgy, or just another distraction? The TV networks have been a news story in themselves this year, with rigged results from premium rate phone lines. While this has spared us the late night horrors of Quiz Call and The Vault, over at Aunty it’s caused the BBC to suspend all competitions. Their studios must be overflowing with promotional tat, as they’re not allowed to give any of it away.

While some got hooked on Heroes, it faded into insignificance next to Battlestar Galactica, which, after stumbling slightly in the second season, came back with some of the tightest drama on screen this year. Summer Saturday evenings meant Doctor Who, which returned with a very strong season, marred only by a messy(anic) final episode. But the great British public were obsessed with reality shite like I’m A Celebrity Get Me Out Of Here, talent contests like The X-Factor, or worst of all, series to cast West End musicals (Grease and Joseph And His Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat). Yeach! Only The Apprentice seemed to rise above the mire, but even it had been dumbed down in its move from BBC Two to BBC One; its repetitive formula saved by the candidates and Sir Alan Sugar himself. Charlie Brooker continued to relentlessly dissect the medium in his weekly Screen Burn column for The Guardian, and on his own show Screenwipe on BBC Four. However the best thing on TV this year was Skins – proof that drama can be innovative, involving and original, even if its target is ‘only’ adolescents.

Summer was a lukewarm washout; Glastonbury was a mud bath, July’s Truck Festival was washed into September, and other festivals were postponed or cancelled, while some went bankrupt. In the high street, record shops went belly up, or were bought out, sending us back online to buy specialist items. There were some great songs this year, but few great albums. Many of the previous hopes released lacklustre second efforts; only Bloc Party produced an inventive and mature follow-up to their debut album. Similarly Devastations may have alienated some with Yes, U, but it was the most rounded original and consistent work of their career. But The Twilight Sad was easily the highlight of 2007; their debut album displayed a new original voice and their deafening live shows were each special, different and unique.

The introduction of a total smoking ban was the biggest change for gig goers, and caused problems in venues with a strict No Passouts policy, particularly where this was more a matter of protecting their high bar prices rather than anything else. A continuing pattern was the firework career arc - acts get too big too quickly, and may sell out large shows but can’t satisfy the crowds they draw. This hype also plays into the hands of the scalpers - and prices go up, and gigs are full of idiots who have no interest in the music. These large gigs then become a chore, so I’m almost glad that some acts never broke big so I can still see them in smaller venues. While iLiKETRAiNS’s debut suffered from being too much at the one pace, their live show is still great; Fields are another band that sadly didn’t cross into the big venues, but put on a great live show. Sadly no-one but me picked up Apartment’s The Dreamer Evasive and it seems that they’ve now gone into indefinite hiatus. But some of the best bands of 2007 were an older generation, raging against the dying of the light - James, Grinderman, The Blue Aeroplanes and Gallon Drunk.

2007 was the year summer never came; the year Tony Wilson died; a year that we focused on the wrong things; and a period when BBC 6Music lost many of the presenters that made the station special; a time that dumbing down seemed to be the order of the day. It was a year with few highs or lows. Yet some of the new acts I’ve seen recently at least give me more hope for 2008.


© James McGalliard 2007

Sex In The City

London Fields # 46
First published Inpress, Melbourne on 28 November 2007
NB: Each column has a name, but these do not appear in print; printed versions may differ slightly to those displayed here

At this time of the year, the autumnal northern sun hangs low in the London sky. It’s not a light you ever see in Australia; this bright yet diffused ball of light sits right in your eyeline. For a pedestrian this makes crossing roads particularly perilous - sometimes you just squint and plough ahead, hoping for the best. You need sunglasses now more than you do in summer, but the days are so brief and it’s a strange look on the cold streets. The world is all around you but in silhouette – it’s there, but you can’t actually look at it. You see only your immediate surroundings, which is a good analogy of living here. For sometimes, you only see glimpses of other lives through arts or the media.

Recently the British public has been taken into the life of the sex worker in London via two glossy adaptations of working girl’s memoirs. And it’s gotta be said, I know very little about prostitution. I know that the seemingly glamorous world presented in these shows has upset some groups, notably The Women's Institute. I also know that if I watch a current affairs show, I’ll see stories of human trafficking. But these adaptations are meant as amusing titillation, not high art or sweeping social comment.

In 1748, John Cleland wrote Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure, better known as Fanny Hill, a fictional account of a country lass happily falling into prostitution in the London of his day. Now it has been adapted for arty, mature channel BBC Four, by the near ubiquitous Andrew Davies, as it seems no work of historical literature can be adapted by anyone else. The original book helped its author out of debtor’s prison, and this recent adaptation broke viewing figures for the digital-only station on which it was broadcast. It’s not a morality tale – despite Fanny’s changing fortunes she is untarnished; even her rape in a back alley leads indirectly to her happy ending. In the Beeb version, it ends with her aside to camera “As to the moral of my story? Must stories have morals? It seems to me life is very complicated and we must all get through it as best we can. Virtue is always preferable to vice, but we can’t always choose can we?”

Meanwhile, on the other side (ITV), Billie Piper is currently a long way from the TARDIS. Having first appeared as another literary Fanny – Fanny Price of Jane Austen’s Mansfield Park, she’s now starring in a present day role as Hannah / Belle in Secret Diary Of a Call Girl. It’s based on the reportedly true-life book (and blog) of “Belle De Jour”. To my cost, I’ve found the consequences of buying Belle’s book for ‘research’ for a potential column via Amazon. Once you put something like The Intimate Adventures Of A London Call Girl in your shopping basket (particularly alongside Abby Lee’s blog turned book), the future recommendations become a page that isn’t safe to open at work. Like Fanny Hill, this was broadcast on a digital-only channel (ITV2), and it also broke viewing records for the station. The TV version was unsure of what tone to adopt, and veered wildly from week to week.

Yet these shows had more in common that the profession of the central protagonist. In both the fourth wall was broken with looks and discussions straight to camera, to allow the actual words of the original text to come through. And their stories do connect on a deeper level, as both Fanny and Belle are searching for that one true love. For London is a city that keeps you at a distance and makes this seemingly impossible. It’s against the rules to talk to people on other tables in the pub. You might see someone you’d like to talk to, but approaching him or her directly is brazen and not done. The worst is public transport, where it is deemed safest not to be even capable of focussing on anyone else. Not everyone follows these rules of etiquette, but they are seen as a nuisance or even threatening. So it’s easier to meet people on the internet than in real life, which explains the large take-up of internet dating and other methods of meeting.

Back on TV and in the final episode of Secret Diary, Belle quits her agency, becomes a courtesan, and then finds she’s bored with that, and so goes back to a world of many clients, but on her own terms. But it’s all OK her closing narration tells us, if certain things are in place: “In London you can keep secrets. You can be anonymous. You can be whoever you want. But as long as someone knows you entirely and loves you still, it’s the best place in the world.” But the other side of that narration makes me recall The Cure’s Other Voices - “But I live with desertion and eight million people”. It was written 26 years ago; today you may find that a relationship has ended via Facebook before you find out in the real world. Maybe sometimes it’s best not to be able to see too clearly?


© James McGalliard 2007

Food For Thought

London Fields # 45
First published Inpress, Melbourne on 31 October 2007
NB: Each column has a name, but these do not appear in print; printed versions may differ slightly to those displayed here

We found ourselves sat huddled and shivering in a local beer garden after work the other week. The practical ramifications of the smoking ban (which was introduced in the summer) are now really making their presence felt, as the clocks go back and the long nights close in. We sat there so that the few smokers in our party could continue as they always had.

There’s often talk here that the welfare state has evolved into the nanny state, but the health of the UK does give cause for concern, particularly in the light of some recently published reports. The nation is drinking far too much, and some of the largest problem drinking levels were found in average middle class areas. This will get see a huge rise in liver and heart disease, and a subsequent strain on the NHS as a result. Even now casualty departments already have a pretty rough time of it with the drink-related injuries and incidents every weekend.

Now the garden we were sitting in was equipped with gas fires, but sadly these weren’t turned on. I’m aware that these are a hugely inefficient form of heating at a time we’re being asked to be much more aware of our environment. But in recent weeks the health secretary Alan Johnson has said that the people of the UK face a threat to rival global warming, and that is obesity!

According to the Foresight Report, the UK has the highest obesity rates in the European Union with 24.2% of adults now classed as obese. The predictions given by for 2050 are even more startling and alarming; mainly that 26% of children, 50% of women and a staggering 60% of men will be obese by this date. The health service is struggling with this already, and they’re not alone. In Lancashire, the fire brigade is wondering if they’ll have to impose fees on helping to move very heavy people. This is not a joke – some people can’t get out of the house without a crane. In North Wales, they’ve has an obese dummy weighing over 26 stone especially built to give their emergency services practice with something they’ll experience more and more often.

Harry Enfield returned to the BBC in April after a long absence with Ruddy Hell! It’s Harry and Paul. Enfield may not be well known in Australia, suffice to say that The Fast Show grew out of characters rejected by Enfield for his own show back in the ‘90’s. Anyway, some sketches were based around two enormous teenage children, known as Jamie and Oliver, whose life only moves from one take away to another fast food joint, only stopping for some chocolate on the way. Although never stated, perhaps it is a factor that crisps and chocolate are so much more available and affordable than fresh produce? And while Jamie’s School Dinners did actually achieve some success, our supermarkets (one of which Jamie advertises) can’t agree a standard labelling on displaying dietary information. Looking for lunch last week, I put the macaroni cheese back after seeing this small tray represented 110% of my daily allowance for saturated fats.

English cooking has improved over the years; so the lard-heavy recipes of Two Fat Ladies tended to leave a reactionary and slightly sick taste in the mouth. But now it seems that Nigella Lawson has jumped into the frypan with her latest series, Nigella Express. This new series sometimes seems one step from how to take the ready meal out of the freezer and pop it into the microwave. Nigella smiles and tosses her hair as she boasts that the only exercise she ever does is to skip to the fridge. Then she uses half a kilo of chocolate to make 12 "therapy" cookies, and I feel fatter for just watching it. Later she fries bread and rolls it in sugar for instant midnight gratification, and then shovels it down. Now the Daily Mail has started a whole thing about Nigella’s weight, but that’s not the real issue here. Rather it’s about responsibility to a populace that is rapidly heading towards avoidable diabetes and early death. Although on one level it’s simply a matter of less food, less saturated fats and more exercise to avoid this, the British mindset also has to be overcome. After a long day, it’s hard to resist the affordable temptation of three supermarket pizzas for three quid.

Whilst in that pub beer garden, one of the blokes their related the story of when his Italian flatmates cooked a "traditional English breakfast" for him. It was gorgeous he said. But they’d used some delicatessen sausage, and a lot of it was grilled. So the next day he resolved to cook it for them properly, with cheap snags, value baked beans and fatty bacon.

There’ll always be an England. But between size zero and XXXL, there may be very little middle ground left. And its people may no longer live as long as their neighbours…


© James McGalliard 2007

Movin' On Up

London Fields # 38
First published Inpress, Melbourne on 18 April 2007
NB: Each column has a name, but these do not appear in print; printed versions may differ slightly to those displayed here

The papers here are full of stories about London’s housing crisis. Having just been through the wringer of finding a new abode, I have first-hand experience of some of the difficulties, and how much you pay for so little. Another survey showed that Londoners had the smallest number of close friends of anyone in the UK , with an average of 5.3 each. Luckily, I managed to get through the past month with the support of some of mine. So why live here at all? Well, on nights when I really should have been packing, I snuck out and caught a few more nights of live music.

A few years back, I lent one of those friends my copy of The Lost Riots, the debut album from Hope Of The States. He loved the opening instrumental, The Black Amnesias, but lost interest when frontman Sam Herlihy began singing. He may well like Troubles then, as it’s the core of HotS, but without drums or vocals. The live performance is a forty-minute tone poem, as songs melt and merge into one another, tumbling more like movements of a greater vision, rather than individual pieces in their own right. There are eight on stage; Sam alternates between piano and guitar, whilst other members play guitars, strings and brass. The trouble with Troubles is that it’s all too much – they’re yet to find the openness or space in the sounds they’re creating. There’s too much kitchen sinking; it would be more effective if all of them didn’t play all the time. Still, this is definitely an evolving work in progress, and one to come back to.

They were supporting the very wonderful iLiKETRAiNS, who are also in the process of change. Gone are the trademark British Rail uniforms, replaced by white shirts, black ties at half mast, and mourning bands. They are halfway through recording their debut LP for Beggars Banquet, but there is no looking back – the album will be all new material. They play a few of these new compositions tonight, including current single Spencer Percival, a nine-minute epic about the only British Prime Minister to have been assassinated in office. The band are a little sedate tonight, but the distance allows me to appreciate new aspects of them; the power of the drumming and how the band manage to keep reined back live, when the temptation must be to race and up the tempo.

On the other hand Arcade Fire managed to be distinctly underwhelming - how did my favourite live act of 2005 fall from their pedestal? Put simply, they now seem more like an incorporated company than a collective of like-minded individuals. The excitement of the random motion, like tea leaves swirling in hot water, has been replaced by something that feels far more choreographed. There’s less fun on stage, and the joy they used to communicate to their audience was lost in the cavernous spaces of the Brixton Academy . Still you couldn’t complain about the setlist, and how Power Out segues beautifully into Rebellion (Lies) to finish on Intervention. Yet tonight it all feels as false and hollow as the organ pipes on stage not actually connected to an organ, but merely for show.

But the live highlight of past month has probably been seeing the reformed James, playing their second ‘secret rehearsal’ gig in the tiny confines of Holloway’s Nambucca, mere weeks before their sold-out arena tour. Along with The Blue Aeroplanes, James were the best British band of the ‘90’s who never toured Australia . But now they’re back after a six-year hiatus, and it’s the classic six-piece who recorded the career-best Laid album. Tim Booth was carrying a shoulder injury, but he still swayed along, even if the electrocuted Ian Curtis dancing was put on hold for the evening. It was great to see them avoiding the ‘big’ numbers for this gig, playing songs so new that the ink on the handheld lyrics was barely dry, then delving deep into then back catalogue for songs like Chain Mail. I’d forgotten what a difference Larry Gott’s searing guitar made to their sound, but it’s the reaction between musicians who know and trust each other that makes this night so special, giving space and life to something like Heavens, which I’d only remembered from a somewhat homogenous form on Seven. I can’t wait to see them at Brixton now! Like the Gang of Four, James are another post-punk original returning to show pretenders how it’s really done!

On television, we sadly bid farewell to John Simm as Sam Tyler in the BBC’s Wizard Of Oz, time-travelling ‘70’s cop show Life On Mars. Yet it won’t be long before he’s back as the enigmatic Season Three meme Mr Saxon in Doctor Who. It may well get interesting if it’s more than coincidence that his Life On Mars character was an anagram of Masterly.

© James McGalliard 2007

Mind Your Language

London Fields # 24
First published Inpress, Melbourne on 22 March 2006
NB: Each column has a name, but these do not appear in print; printed versions may differ slightly to those displayed here

When you spend some time away from a place, you see it with different eyes on your return. There are so many similarities between Melbourne and London that it can be easy to get a little confused. Particularly when it’s a mere twenty-three hour blur between the two. Hitting the equinox, it may now be light at 5pm here, but that’s when the temperature plummets. With snow expected for Easter, it seems as though spring is still some way off.

No, you know you’re in London because it’s squirrels in the garden and not possums, the sky is low-hanging and slate grey, and housing comes in unbroken rows of terraces. If a stranger speaks to you it’s probably because they want something; it can all seem unfriendly and threatening. But there are compensations – British newspapers, digital broadcasting and a great live music scene.

It may seem strange, but asides from climate, the biggest barrier between the two cities is probably language, which can cause all manner of strife. It’s easy to get into a mess, as the promoters of Australian tourism recently discovered. For all the fuss in the Australian media about the "Where the bloody hell are you?" campaign, so far it hasn’t really made its presence known much at all. A friend saw a press ad [without the bloody], but that’s about it. I suppose anything’s an improvement over "I can see a rainbow" though.

But it’s all a matter of what you may consider to be offensive. London’s Evening Standard has devoted a fair bit of coverage to its ongoing feud with London Mayor Ken Livingstone. When a persistent reporter door-stepped Ken after a private function, Livingstone lost his composure and compared the reporter to a concentration camp guard. A year of legal wrangling, and non-apologies, led to a four-week suspension from his post [currently frozen pending judicial review]. So, it’s all about use of language that may be deemed offensive, right? Yet in the issue of the Standard that carried pages of coverage relating to the initial suspension, was a column by AN Wilson on Australia and the Republican movement, in which the author saw fit to use the term "Abo" as an appropriate description of indigenous Australians. Despite letters to the paper, complaining about the use of the term, and some coverage in TNT Magazine, no apology was forthcoming from the paper or author.

It is strange watching Melbourne through a British lens. If you only saw the news, you’d think that it was only the countries in the UK who’d won medals at the Games. Thank god for digital broadcasting. The UK has latched onto this faster than any other country in the world. Over ten million Freeview boxes have been sold, which allow reception of free-to-air digital broadcasting. Add this to those with satellite and cable services, and over two-thirds of UK homes have now gone digital. Just as well as analogue transmission is planned to end in 2012 [just in time for the London Olympic Games]. With ten million homes on broadband internet, and 2.7 million DAB radios sold, and you have the dawn of a new digital age. With the Games, it means that you have a choice of watching five different events through the one channel via interactive broadcasting. Sadly that’s five events in which the Brits are favoured, but you can’t have it all.

Although I love the BBC, and only begrudge a little the £126.50 annual TV licence fee, which pays for all the BBC’s TV, radio and web services, they don’t always get it right. Of course, via interactive TV, I could have watched the Opening Ceremony of the Games without commentary, but then I would have missed their embarrassing gaffs. My favourite was when the commentator had no idea who Ron Barassi was, so mistakenly proceeded to spend a few minutes discussing Herb Elliott, as Barassi walked on water. It was only when the baton was passed to Elliott that they realised their error and apologised. And the whole duck thing may have made a little sense if they’d bothered to explain the Leunig connection. When it came to the highlights repeated that evening, the whole section from the tram landing to the Queen’s arrival bit the dust, as did the performance by The Church. Weirdly The Cat Empire stayed in…

Speaking of language barriers, how did they match countries with their relevant giant fish on the Yarra? Whilst pike(r) is a quitter in Oz, pike(y) is an extremely offensive term for a particular class and type of thief. Did the organisers of the games think about this? – I wonder if there was some big joke in giving Northern Ireland a pike, and England a roach?

But amidst all the ‘Bloody’ fuss, you may have missed this gem. Lastminute.com had their wrist slapped by the Advertising Standing Authority for an e-mail campaign for children’s theatre tickets entitled Doing It For The Kids. What did they do that was so wrong? This was in the text of the ad: "Like Gary Glitter in a sweet shop, you too can have your pick of kiddy treats in London’s theatre world". Eh Gadd! [Paul Gadd, eh?] Now that’s the way to get your bloody message across!



© James McGalliard 2006

Who Will Buy?

London Fields # 23
First published Inpress, Melbourne on 22 February 2006
NB: Each column has a name, but these do not appear in print; printed versions may differ slightly to those displayed here


February in the UK is a time of short days, grey skies and bitter cold. When there’s little incentive to go outside, what better time to reflect on what’s been worthwhile on television recently.

Whilst I’m enjoying US imports Bones, Monk and Battlestar Galactica, by far the best thing on at the moment is the BBC’s Life On Mars. Taking its title from the David Bowie song, it’s the tale of Manchester DI Sam Tyler (John Simm), who is knocked down by a car in 2006, and wakes up in 1973. With echoes of Vanilla Sky, it plays on a dilemma - did Sam travel back in time, or is everything happening some coma-induced fantasy? Made by Kudos [Spooks], the series looks great, has a killer soundtrack, and features witty, erudite scripts, and well-judged performances from a strong ensemble cast. Basically, it’s a hell of a lot of fun! The concept plays with the whole Euston Films [The Sweeney] genre, but with a sense of post-modern humour and irony, pitting Sam’s modern police methods against the hard-drinking back-to-basics approach of 70’s DCI Gene Hunt (Philip Glenister). A second season has just been announced; let’s hope they don’t blow it. Maybe it’s no surprise that one of the three writer/creators has penned a story for the new season of Doctor Who. On the basis of Life On Mars, it’s looking good for the new Tennant in the Tardis.

Amongst all the reality bile, there have been not one but two separate documentaries recently chronicling the death of the British sitcom. One featured writer Carla Lane [The Liver Birds, Bread, Butterflies] bemoaning the end of her era, citing "unfunny" things such as The Young Ones as the cause of her demise. I certainly laughed more when media satirist Chris Morris had this same writer making a desperate appeal for the elephant who had its trunk stuck up its arse in the groundbreaking brassEye, than I ever did at her affected slices of life.

Last year, Morris returned to television with Nathan Barley, a collaboration with columnist Charlie Brooker (TVGoHome), which attempted to capture the scenster culture of the Hoxton Twat, but maybe a few years too late. Starring Julian [Boosh] Barratt as Dan Ashcroft, the features writer of Shoreditch zeitgeist mag Sugarape, it also featured Nicholas Burns as the trendsetter/follower of the title, Richard Ayoade [Garth Marenghi] and Nina Sosanya [Teachers]. While Morris co-wrote and directed the series, he never appeared in front of the camera.

But he does in The IT Crowd, the new sitcom from Graham Linehan [Father Ted, Black Books] in which he appears as the head of a large corporation, seemingly part homage to C J from The Fall And Rise Of Reginald Perrin. The humour here is quite broad, depicting the basement dwelling IT HelpDesk, and it is truly a traditional sitcom, shot on video, on brightly-lit sets and taped in front of a studio audience.

Kevin Cecil and Andy Riley, who wrote the third series of Black Books, have come up with a sci-fi comedy Hyperdrive, which depicts the crew of the HMS Camden Lock, as they try to sell Britain to the Universe in 2151. Once again a great ensemble cast - Nick Frost (Spaced), Miranda Hart, stand-up Dan Antopolski and Paterson Joseph, while Kevin Eldon (Nighty Night, Big Train) shines as the unhinged security officer - creates a good feel even if the show itself doesn’t reach great comic heights.

Taking interior dialogue to its ultimate expression, Peep Show follows the lives of flatmates Mark and Jeremy, played by Robert Webb and David Mitchell. Not only do we hear everything they think, the show is also shot from their point of view. In 2004, this original, inventive and cripplingly funny show won the prestigious Golden Rose of Montreux for best sitcom. Usually shows begin to falter after a while, but writers Jesse Armstrong and Sam Bain have kept up the high standards throughout three series; sadly poor ratings may spell the end of production. There’s some comfort as David Mitchell and Robert Webb have just shot a TV pilot for a new sketch show for BBC Two, adapted from their Radio 4 series That Mitchell and Webb Sound.

Jesse Armstrong also co-created The Thick Of It with Armando Iannucci [brassEye, Alan Partridge], and the show beat both Extras and Help to win Best New TV Comedy of 2005 at the British Comedy Awards. Whereas Yes, Minister painted a cosy world of the same bureaucrats running the country, regardless of which party was in power, the spin of new Labour has begotten a comedy with teeth which paints a much bleaker vision. Often seeming more like a documentary, it shows policies made ‘on the hoof’ and spin doctors who create news and sack ministers as they feel appropriate. Chris Langham may have beaten Ricky Gervais and the Little Britain team to win BCA’s Best Television Comedy Actor for his performance as minister Hugh Abbot, but the shining jewel is a bravura performance by Peter Capaldi as Scottish enforcer Malcolm Tucker. Maggie Thatcher claimed Yes, Minister was her favourite programme; I bet The Thick Of It scares the pants of her!

© James McGalliard 2006