Event Reminder

I'm reading and giving a talk this evening at 6.30pm at the RADA bar, Malet St. Lovely day for it*.

*Joke only works if you happen to be in England today listening to the horizontal rain battering against your window like machine-gun fire. Yep, I'm expecting a huge turn-out tonight.

Shhhhhhh............

Don't tell anyone, but I've been unfaithful. I've been writing for another blog... It was only once - it meant nothing to me - it will never happen again... Well not until they ask me anyway.

The Boy

The short posts at the moment are because I'm working away from my computer, in the library, where I am currently reading Germaine Greer's The Boy. It's a scholarly art historical work about the representation of pubescent and post-pubescent males throughout history, with particular concern to how this reflects changing notions of gender and sexuality. In practise, what this actually means is that I am sitting in a public library looking at huge glossy reproductions of young men with their cocks out. I am getting some interesting looks.

Note to predictable DJs everywhere

ABBA wrote some songs other than Dancing Queen. Some of them are actually quite good.

Nicko & Joe's Bad Film Club: Glitter

I have just got back from the Barbican Centre's Bad Film Club, where every month comedians Nicko and Joe screen a lovingly-chosen execrable movie and then talk all the way over it. This month's movie was the Mariah Carey vanity project, Glitter, selected by special guest extra comedian Sarah Kendall.

It's impossible to convey the experience of watching a film as uniquely dreadful as Glitter in the company for three very funny people with microphones, but it made me laugh so much that first I cried, then I started hiccuping, then the hiccups got uncontrollable and I snotted all over my face. This in itself is remarkable, as usually the hiccups stage is followed by compulsive involuntary burping, and if I really can't stop laughing after that, I start to gag.*

I wouldn't advise anyone attempt watching Glitter except under controlled conditions, as it is a Mariah Carey movie, starring Mariah Carey and Mariah Carey's breasts and Mariah Carey's songs, and Mariah Carey is in almost every scene, and in these scenes Mariah Carey is almost exclusively filmed from the right, because Mariah Carey doesn't like the left side of her face. It also stars Max "bag a Spice Girl" Beesley as an allegedly hip, allegedly American DJ-producer called Dice, who gets Mariah Carey into bed by charming her with his xylophone playing. The most convincing actor in the entire movie is a cat. If you are still dithering, consider that the film is set in the eighties. There. I have done all I can.

It is a huge disappointment to me, if not to the event organisers, that I won't be able to come along to next month's screening of the Arnie classic Commando, because that night I am doing a reading at Hornsey Library. I know that you had all already planned to come to Hornsey Library to see me read, but given that there is limited space, I won't mind if some of you decide to go and see Commando instead. Just remember to bring a tissue.

*At times like this I feel I should remind you that I am an international bestselling author.

I Predict A Breakdown

Getting yoghurt out of the fridge for breakfast, I found myself with the song 'I Predict A Riot' going around my head. (Something to do with those boistrous bifidus digestivus bacteria?) What confused me was that it didn't seem to be the Kaiser Chiefs singing - the voice was quite different. And then I realised that I was hearing Alan Fletcher, aka Doctor Karl Kennedy from Neighbours, and the version he performed with his band Waiting Room on a documentary I saw about Neighbours a few weeks ago. Witness, if you dare:



Karl Kennedy has taken up residence inside my head and is singing to me. Disturbing.

Garfield Minus Garfield

My new favourite website.

Mad Men

Well. It was cracking, wasn't it? For those who didn't watch, this is a new series, a late 1950s / early 1960s-set drama about advertising men and women who work on Madison Avenue in NYC. To summarise: I am a man! I work in advertising! I am misogynist! I smoke a lot! But underneath it all I might just be unhappily married / gay / even more of a tosser than I appear on first glance / that guy who played the sexy mayoral candidate in Sex and the City! I am making it sound shit. It wasn't shit. It was great. Sure, it suffered from first episode-itis, where each of the themes clunk down as they are laid (THIS IS A SEXIST OFFICE, THAT IS WHY PEOPLE KEEP TELLING THE SECRETARY TO SHOW MORE OF HER LEGS) but I'm sure that will calm down in time. The acting was good, the script, when not clunking, was sharp, the design was beautiful, there were a couple of genuine surprises when things did not go exactly as predicted, a few of the characters appeared to demonstrate actual complexity, and it had Mel from Flight of the Conchords in it which is reason enough to tune into anything. I would particularly recommend this to women who will enjoy the toe-curling sexual attitudes on display - note for example the scene where the new secretary asks the in-house doctor to prescribe the pill, and he gives her a full vaginal examination (wearing repulsive brown latex gloves) whilst simultaneously warning her not to become a slut or he will withdraw the prescription, and at the same time boasting of his own conquest of one of the other secretaries. Neat. Nasty. 10pm, Sundays, BBC4.

Oh Dear

I just saw the headline "Prince Returns From Afghan Tour". And my first thought was: Prince did a tour of Afghanistan?

A Grumpy Question

My letterbox is made of metal and makes a loud clunking sound whenever anything is pushed through it. Why is it, then, that on Mondays to Fridays, my post is delivered at about 11.30, when I have been up and working for ages, but on Saturdays, when I'd like to sleep in, it comes at around 8.00 and wakes me up every single week?