In which I arrange a marriage

A stirrup, yesterday.

Today the firewall goes up on the Times, and I am celebrating the day on my STILL FREE blog by launching yet another of my doomed attempts to blog more often than once a week and about more than Doctor Who and Strictly Come Dancing. We shall see.

Anyway, it seems apt to begin this doomed attempt - what do you mean, "self-fulfilling prophecy?" - by commenting on something I read in yesterday's Times, which I bought specifically for the Eureka magazine inside, and which did not actually come with a Eureka magazine inside, and if I want to read the Eureka magazine online I now have to pay to do so. Anyway. No point linking to the piece as it is NO LONGER FREE, but it was their write-up of the case about whether troops still have human rights in war zones. (Apparently they do not.)

I'm sure that I am not the first to mention the glorious name of the outgoing Chief of the Defense Staff, Air Chief Marshall Sir Jock Stirrup. There are simply not enough people on this planet called things like Air Chief Marshall Sir Jock Stirrup and I fear those that are left will soon die out. Unless - UNLESS - Air Chief Marshall Sir Jock Stirrup were to marry the lawyer representing the complainant in this case, the admirably named Jocelyn Cockburn. Yes, people: *they were involved in the same case*. Their eyes will have met across a crowded courtroom, he on one side, she, literally and figuratively on the other, and yet joined by the force of nomenclature that no man can tear asunder...

Surely love must follow. And as we all know from our close study of the Bard, first comes love, then comes marriage, and then comes the baby in the baby carriage. Surely the world deserves nothing less than Air Chief Marshall Sir Jock Stirrup-Cockburn and Lady Jocelyn Stirrup-Cockburn and their children The Honourable Jack and Alfred "Hitchcock" Stirrup-Cockburn.

You know, I think my dad might have been one of the judges on this case. I'm going to MAKE IT HAPPEN.

Hang on. Would Cockburn-Stirrup be better?

Doctor Who: The Big Bang and full series review

So hurrah, it wasn't an RTD-style apocalyptic wig-out, nor was it All A Dream! In fact it was very good. In brief: the universe has ended and the Earth is the last to go (please switch off the lights). The doctor, freed from the Pandorica, hatches a plan to save space and time, but at the expense not only of his own life but the very fact of his having existed at all. Fortunately Amy can bring people back by the power of her mind, so as long as she can remember the Doctor everything will be OK. But can she? Well, what do you reckon? The man spent half of this episode in a fez. Who'd forget that?

This was not an episode to please those who like to think too deeply. Those, for example, who might think "if the Doctor has never existed, surely the Earth wouldn't have survived long enough for Amy to reach her wedding day and remember him back to life, because [insert any of the gazillion times the Doctor has saved the planet over the years before now] would never have happened". Or those who might get deeply irritated that, having set up the Pandorica as the greatest prison ever created, the Doctor manages to get out by a whimsical piece of timey wimey trickery involving being saved by sending his saved self back in time to hand over the screwdriver to Rory. And for anybody who prefers proper science to "er, Amy's only half dead and when she sees herself as a kid it'll be fine, and as for the universe, when the light from the thingy goes onto the whatsit, everything will be OK", well, fergeddaboutit.

Hmm. I seem to be talking myself out of liking this. But come on Marie, who cares? This isn't 'Horizon'. It was clever and neat and it had junior Amy Pond in it - I LOVE junior Amy Pond (Caitlin Blackwood) and desperately hope there will be more of her next season - and the Doctor in a fez! (OK so River and Amy destroy the fez, but as he says, he can buy another fez. Do it, Doctor.) There was lots of peril and a fossilised Dalek and antics in a museum, which is a good place for Doctory antics to take place, and River Song - with more River Song to come - god I love River Song, I want to be River Song when I grow up - and when the Doctor finally went back over his life as he made his way out of history, it was all rather understated and nicely done, and turns out whoever brought it up in the comments was right, that WASN'T a jacket-based continuity error in the Angels episode. Well spotted, that man. So yes, very good. Very good indeed.

Which means we end the series with high marks. The good episodes (my own faves? Vincent, and Amy's Choice) were great, and the bad episodes (Victory of the Daleks, and that tedious two-parter with the green scaly leotard monsters) weren't that bad. I have learned to love Matt Smith's Doctor - so what if I don't want to jump him, his absent-minded dotty professor schtick is hilarious - and Amy Pond has been an equally dotty and highly entertaining sidekick.

And yet and yet and yet... I just haven't cared about this series the way I used to care. Aside from that Vincent ending, which seems to have switched on the waterworks everywhere except for in my own eyes, it has all been, emotionally, a bit 'so what'. The Doctor never gets that fussed by anything: surely he should be at least slightly concerned by - say - the imminence of his own removal from the world? And Amy's much emphasised love for Rory would be more convincing if, for example, she didn't make jokes about wanting to snog the Doctor in front of Rory on their wedding day. As for Rory, I've never believed in him as a character - and I don't ever like the 'spunky girl and wet pathetic lovelorn admirer' dynamic, as it makes me worry that I'm going to end up with a wet pathetic lovelorn admirer of my own one of these days - so I wasn't at all bothered either time he got killed, and when he decided to sit outside Amy's box for two thousand years I know I was supposed to be moved but I just rolled my eyes. Purrlease. How boring is this man? Could he not at least request to have the box moved into a library to help him pass the time? And yes RTD's series were messy and soapy and hideously erratic, but they were wonderfully emotional too, and I cried my eyes out on numerous occasions. In this series, if I wasn't laughing or scared I was bored. Fortunately I was laughing or scared most of the time. (Well, you know, Doctor Who scared. By which I mean, would have been scared, if I was eight.) So if I had a request for next series, it would be this: yes to the cleverness, yes to the zaniness, but please try for a bit more emotional depth next time.

For the love of Brosnan

Lalala I haven't watched it I HAVEN'T WATCHED IT.

Well what the hell else have I been watching then?

Pierce Brosnan movies. Obviously. And I have been writing about my admiration / love / obsession / pathological disorder about Pierce Brosnan over on the Beat Website. Which has lots of other fantastic and slightly more serious articles for you to read. Once you have finished reading mine, naturally.

What's that you say? A sample, so that you can decide whether to click or not? Very well...

Pierce Brosnan is everything a movie star should be: handsome, debonair, with perfect teeth and a full head of hair, able to keep his head when all around him are losing theirs and blaming it on the script / director / co-star / catering, this is a man who even managed to retain his dignity, not to mention his sex appeal, while dressed as a lobster on The Muppet Show.

Ah, go on, go on, go on, go on, go on.

Doctor Who: The Pandorica Opens

"There's only one way to settle this. FIGHT!"

Like the Spanish Inquisition, Steven Moffat's greatest weapon is the element of surprise. We all knew that Rory was bound to be brought back from the dead, but hands up who foresaw his reincarnation as a half-killer-robot Roman Legionnaire? So that would be no hands then. Verily my eyes nearly popped out of my head.

It was a terrific episode that sometimes teetered on the brink of lunacy but never quite toppled over. Looking back on it, it packed such a lot in that I'm not sure whether it was even the usual length. Firstly, a 'greatest hits' prologue where River Song (yay!) escapes incarceration again to bring the Doctor a Van Gogh painting of the Tardis exploding, with help from various characters from previous episodes of the series (the duffer episodes on the whole, sadly - Winston Churchill, I mean you) plus a blue-faced baldie in a Star Wars-style alien bar, and a message written into cliffs in a nod to Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy. This was followed by a lengthy interlude modelled on Indiana Jones - this ep was homages a-go-go - where the Doctor and co find the Pandorica - basically a big box - underneath Stonehenge in Roman Britain. Some particularly pleasing business with a headless, one armed Cyberman guard followed, plus the cyberman's arm and its head operating independently. If I'd be pre-pubescent I'd have lost my lunch, in one direction or t'other, when the cyberhead opened to reveal the rotten human skull within. Help me Doctor Jones! At some point in all this Roman Rory showed up. How? Because miracles happen and not everything can be explained and OH LOOK WHAT'S THAT OVER THERE? Amy didn't remember him. Then she did. Because it was like he'd never been born only it wasn't because some residue is always left like the ring and even though she'd forgotten him some memory still remains because love conquers all even the death of time, even the destruction of the universe, what's that you say, how, well, I'll tell you how, it's because OH LOOK WHAT'S THAT OVER THERE? Then every baddie in the new Who universe turned up to claim the contents of the box. This was crap. Mainly because it reminded me how crap all the evil aliens are. Oh look, the crap iDaleks. Oh look, the crap ones that look like baked potatoes. Oh look, the kitchen sink. And so on. And the Doctor stood on a bit of Stonehenge with a really powerful microphone which was sadly not calibrated to work terribly well with my TV speakers so I don't actually know exactly what he said but it was some variation on COME AND HAVE A GO IF YOU THINK YOU'RE HARD ENOUGH. Matt Smith: don't tell anyone, but it turns out that I do quite like you after all.

And THEN the Pandorica opened to reveal not, as I was almost correct to expect, the Doctor himself, but a CHAIR for the Doctor to be TRAPPED in, because IT IS ALL A TRAP and it turns out that this whole series is a strange projection of the mind of Amy using psychic dust and some books she read as a child but conveniently keeps sitting on a side table even now that she's an adult, with her model of the Doctor, so that River Song can discover them when exploring her creepy house, just before blowing up the Tardis, but not before dosing us all with a hefty amount of WHAT THE FUCK and also HANG ON A SEC and WHICH UNIVERSE ARE THEY IN ANYWAY and DON'T TELL ME IT WAS ALL A DREAM and while we're on the subject RORY, DEFINITELY SEXIER AS A ROMAN, THOUGH LESS SEXY WHEN KILLING AMY WITH HIS KILLER ROBOT GUN HANDS plus I SERIOUSLY CAN'T FIGURE THIS ONE OUT and really I DON'T KNOW HOW YOU'RE GOING TO GET OUT OF THIS ONE, STEVE but IF IT IS SOME TIMEY WIMEY VARIATION ON IT WAS ALL A DREAM I AM GOING TO FLIP MY LID but in the meantime IT IS GOING TO BE MORE CLEVER THAN THAT or at least I HOPE SO and if they are in a universe ALL OF AMY'S IMAGINING maybe NONE OF THIS MATTERS ANYWAY and I bloody hope that MOFFAT IS BETTER THAN RTD AT RESOLVING THESE THINGS but really THERE IS ONLY ONE WAY TO FIND OUT.

And thus, see you next week.

Too Much Information

Yesterday, reading yet another terrible sex scene in an otherwise well-written novel, I got to thinking, not for the first time, why it is that it is so difficult to write about sex well? And I think I finally thought of an answer that makes sense, which is that sex, ultimately, is just another everyday bodily function that doesn't need to be described at length because everybody who's ever done it pretty much knows what it's like. And yet sex scenes have a terrible tendency to go on and on, as if they are describing the experience to somebody who has no idea what it is.

Consider eating an apple. As an author, you might just say "I had an apple", and everyone is fairly clear on what that means, because most of your readership will have eaten apples before. If you want to make it clear that it's a particular kind of apple experience, you might give a little more detail, such as "I bit into the apple, and the flesh crumbled in my mouth to a dry heap of powdery disappointment." Again, we've all been there. What is totally unnecessary is the following:

The apple gleamed in the bowl, its shiny red and green skin so inviting. I longed to take it, to sink my teeth into its firm yet yielding flesh. I picked it up, its luscious curves filling my hand to perfection, and carried it over to the sink, where I let the long, cool stream wash over it, my mouth watering like the tap itself. Then I opened my mouth wide, feeling my jaw tense slightly in anticipation. I bit. My teeth pierced the apple's skin and all at once my mouth was filled with juicy wetness. Its sweet, sharp tang was so delicious, better even than I had imagined. I moved my teeth up and down, chewing, chewing that melting apple flesh, my tongue wrapping itself around around its liquid goodness. I swallowed, and peristalsis wafted the apple down to my stomach, which rumbled in appreciation.

Writers: as a rule, if you're giving more information about sex than you would do about a meal, then that is TOO MUCH INFORMATION.

Doctor Who: The Lodger

"And the goalkeeper's job is to keep hold of the ball and stop it going into the goal, right?"

Halfway through Sunday afternoon, I thought to myself 'I really need to watch yesterday's Doctor Who so that I can blog about it'. And then I remembered that I already had. This is not a good sign.

From what I can recall, 'The Lodger' featured The Doctor taking a room as James Corden's lodger to investigate dodgy goings-on in the flat upstairs, which was swallowing local people and keeping poor Amy stuck on the Tardis in a timewarp. Much of the action, such as it was, that ensued was the Doctor's attempts to appear normal and human, which - especially as Matt Smith - he is incapable of (though he manages pretty well in every other episode? Never mind). So he air kissed everyone hello, and turned out to be brilliant at football, probably because the episode was timed to go out on the same day as the first England match, and for an extended sequence he ran around wearing only a bath towel which made me miss David Tennant A LOT. James Corden meanwhile got fed up with it, especially because he couldn't woo his platonic best girl friend because the Doctor was getting in the way. But he loved the Doctor anyway, the way we all do, particularly after they did a mind-meld thingy (Corden's performance hit a high after that - "Oh my God it's Amy Pond!") and then - well here's the thing: I have NO RECOLLECTION WHATSOEVER of the denouement or what was happening in the upstairs flat or how they got out of it and how the episode ended. Which does suggest that the episode was sorely lacking in tension. Plus in general I never think it bodes well when what I purport to be a "review" is actually a synopsis because I have nothing to say about whether I enjoyed the episode or not. I mean, I didn't fall asleep. I was there for the duration.

So: not a high point. But not bad enough to be memorable either. I will rate this one with a solid, forgettable: "OK".

Beatrice and Virgil by Yann Martel

Beatrice and Virgil is the aforementioned book I just finished, the one I thought was fantastic but has only been garnering lukewarm reviews.

I suppose I can see why. It's quite an unusual book and it's certainly not without problems. The central character, Henry, is a Yann Martel-esque writer, sent into a spin of writer's block when his publishers rubbish and reject his latest book, an experimental work about the Holocaust. He receives a strange letter which leads him to an even stranger taxidermist, also called Henry, who has written a play called Beatrice and Virgil, which also turns out to be an experimental work about the Holocaust. The play within the book and the framing device together form the book we are reading, which is, of course, an experimental work about the Holocaust, so it all ends up a bit like reading an Escher drawing.

The weakest part of the book is the story of the two Henrys, which is an odd mixture of autobiographical / naturalistic and improbable. But the play within the play is wonderful. Beatrice, a donkey, and Virgil, a monkey engage in a Waiting for Godot-like dialogue, which starts beautifully: Virgil describes a pear to Beatrice, who has never seen or eaten one. You can read that exchange over at the New York Times website, but to give you a flavour, as it were:

BEATRICE: And what does a pear taste like?

VIRGIL: Wait. You must smell it first. A ripe pear breathes a fragrance that is watery and subtle, its power lying in the lightness of its impression upon the olfactory sense. Can you imagine the smell of nutmeg or cinnamon?

BEATRICE: I can.

VIRGIL: The smell of a ripe pear has the same effect on the mind as these aromatic spices. The mind is arrested, spellbound, and a thousand and one memories and associations are thrown up as the mind burrows deep to understand the allure of this beguiling smell — which it never comes to understand, by the way.

BEATRICE: But how does it taste? I can't wait any longer.

VIRGIL: A ripe pear overflows with sweet juiciness.

BEATRICE: Oh, that sounds good.

VIRGIL: Slice a pear and you will find that its flesh is incandescent white. It glows with inner light. Those who carry a knife and a pear are never afraid of the dark.

BEATRICE: I must have one.

But gradually the exchanges between Beatrice and Virgil become more sad, then more frightening, and the story around the play takes the same trajectory, leading, inexorably, to a pair of explosive endings. But these endings are nothing in comparison to the devastation of the postscript to the book, which had me putting the novel down in a state of shock.

Beatrice and Virgil is a much darker, much angrier, much messier book than Martel's Booker-winner 'Life of Pi', and I'm sure it will prove both less successful and less popular. But I preferred it. Maybe it's because the tale of a writer struggling to make his way forward after a big success resonated with me, whereas others may find it irritating; and maybe I am more forgiving of flawed novels that try for something unusual, because I know how hard it is to get something complicated right (it's hard enough to get something simple right.) But I think it's Beatrice and Virgil themselves; they broke my heart, just as they should, and the sadness their story created in me made the last part of the book hit harder than I could have imagined. I put this book down with a genuine sense of disquiet and a dark mood I found hard to shake for several hours. Nevertheless I recommend this book extremely highly, if you are prepared to forgive it its flaws.

Strictly Come Madness

I *was* going to post something nice and intellectual about the Hay Festival, or maybe the excellent book I have just finished which has been getting weirdly average reviews (what book is that, you ask? No, you'll have to wait) but a matter of great national urgency has been brought to my attention - I speak of course of the latest Strictly Come Dancing debacle, and the resultant departure of Brian Fortuna.

The full story can be read at the D***y M**l website ici but to summarise: in their great wisdom, the producers of Strictly Come Dancing have decided to remove Brian, Ian, Matthew, Darren and Lilia from the competition and place them in a professional supergroup "dedicated to performing routines on a scale never before seen on Strictly" - or just possibly, dedicated to performing routines on pretty much the scale they have always been performed by the very same people on Strictly, while they were still quite able to carry on coaching celebrities for the weekly show as well.

Darren and Lilia have got used to being stiffed by now; their refusal to take part in the Strictly tours meant that every year of late they were each saddled with lemons who were unlikely ever to get past the opening weeks. Ergo they will probably not notice or care. Brian has made his attitude clear by quitting. Ian and Matthew's feelings are not yet known on the subject but I can't imagine they are delighted. Other people who are not delighted include: me.

Seriously, BBC: you're removing Brian, Ian, Matthew, Darren and Lilia from mentoring? So on the men's side, apart from the newbies, you are leaving us with Brendan, James, Anton and Vincent. Brendan, James, Anton and Vincent. Is it possible that the BBC are making the mistake of thinking that the more headlines you get, the more popular you are? BBC: NO. Anton is mainly famous for being annoying, stupid, and racist, and for losing a lot because he doesn't know how to choreograph Latin routines. James and Brendan are famous for being loudmouths who are hated by EVERYBODY. And Vincent - who to be fair, I actually do like - is mainly known for having been the third wheel in the Vincent - Flavia - Matt love triangle. In other words, for being publicly dumped for a cute foetus from Eastenders. Ironically, if any of the dancers in the whole of Strictly history were to be put on a pro-performance-only footing, I'd vote for Vincent and Flavia, whose showdances are regularly the most entertaining thing on the show.

I think the Strictly producers have seen the ratings dropping against X Factor, felt a desperate need to shake things up, and to make things younger and shinier and ITVier, and in their panic have forgotten one of the key things about the show: lots of us watch it year after year because we like the pro dancers so much. You know, the pro dancers that we LIKE. Otherwise known as Brian, Ian, Matthew, Darren and Lilia. Maybe we'll like the new ones, maybe we won't, but it takes a couple of seasons to warm up to them, so in 'refreshing' the show you are actually dumping many people's reasons for watching it. Let's face it, most of the celebs that they can persuade to rock up for that many months are by definition past in, because otherwise they wouldn't have the time to train. So they won't be the ones getting us to switch on. So for many of us, the pro dancers ARE the stars of the programme.

What thinking went into the decision I can't say. Maybe the producers want drama and drama equals people crying and people cry most when paired with obnoxious dancers like Brendan, James and Anton. Maybe they want sex appeal so they got rid of the gay ones (because gay people don't watch Strictly) and replaced them with straighter guys. I don't know. But from here it looks like madness.

Why does nobody ask me to the meetings where these decisions are made? Surely it can't be because I "don't work for the BBC" and "have no idea what I'm talking about". But for the little it's worth, if I were in charge of Strictly, the main thing I would do would be to make it a hell of a lot shorter. Fewer couples, fewer weeks, shorter episodes, so that you don't lose the will to live mid-season - and I speak as a fan. I would also put it on at a different time, maybe even on a different day. And I would get rid of Bruce and Tess, but that's just personal taste. (Seriously though, a whole 'nother year of listening to Bruce's terrible jokes?) I may not be a BBC exec but I do know that the best way of not losing all your viewers to X Factor is not putting Strictly Come Dancing on at exactly the same time as X Factor, thus neatly dividing the "we want to watch talent-based family entertainment shows" audience into half. But if you do that, you might not win the battle for Saturday night, and that's the kind of thing that matters a lot to execs and not at all to audiences.

Doctor Who: Whatever the hell last week's was / Vincent and the Doctor

Shall we all be in agreement that last week's Doctor Who wasn't very good, and move on? I only have the vaguest recollections of it. From what I do recall, it was like I myself had a time machine and travelled back in time to a point just before the last series of 'old' Who was cancelled, and then remembered why. All people running around in scaly leotards carrying stunguns which can apparently be exploded just by pressing a button on the sonic screwdriver. The only thing of significance that happened was that Rory died; I might have cared more if he hadn't also died two weeks previously, and is now turning into a comedy "why can't you stop dying all the time" type character. They are bound to bring him back from the dead, otherwise why place the engagement ring so carefully on the Tardis console? I will save my tears. Also, how come the Doctor can now stick his hand in the "it will be like you have never been born" time crack and pull it out unscathed?

This week's, penned by Richard "Love Actually, Notting Hill actually, Four Weddings and a Funeral actually, I'm dead famous actually" Curtis, was better. After an art history lesson from Bill Nighy (why aren't you the Doctor? Why?), the Doctor and Amy go back in time to save Vincent Van Gogh from a monster only he can see. Depression? Psychosis? No, a great big space dinosaur. The idea of an invisible monster is quite scary, but in reality it wasn't at all really, unless you are totally freaked out by nineteenth century French furniture being knocked over (my mother would probably have been behind the proverbial sofa.)

Fortunately the episode was saved by a great turn from Tony Curran as Van Gogh, and a thoughtful script that didn't dodge the tricky territory of Van Gogh's depression (Curran, curled up on his bed, sobbing with despair that the Doctor and Amy will leave him) and eventual suicide. (The first episode of Doctor Who ever to have one of those "if you have been affected by issues in this programme" phonelines?) I was promised tears aplenty, but I didn't shed any; I'm guessing that the blubworthy scene in question was when Vincent was taken to the contemporary Musee D'Orsee to see an exhibition of his own work and hear Nighy describe him as one of the greatest painters of all time, and one of the greatest men. Lovely grown-up fantasy stuff. The rest of the interest was in watching Vincent and Amy flirt outrageously; which I think is meant to be poignant in the post-Rory era, but actually just made me hope they don't bring back Rory after all, and Amy can carry on making eyes at all the other male guest stars.

Only three to go until the end. James Corden! River Song! Exploding Tardis! Bring it on!

Prematurely balding actors needed

Rumours of wifi in Hay proving unsubstantiated, I will in fact be blogging all about it now that I've returned. That's an epic post which needs proper attention, so just for fun in the meantime, I will share, without comment (none needed), this job advert a friend of mine (young woman, full head of hair) was recently sent:

Prematurely Balding Actors Needed for THE Film of 2010, CASTING CALL

London, Gloucestershire Unpaid (Expenses Paid)

Description

The film will last approximately 25 minutes, it will be dense, muddy and frenzied, have something of the high school teen flick about it, and be filmed entirely at night. Centred around the resurrection of EPOS and his last days on Earth, the film will be a howl clad in pre-ripped denim, the script puked out by the actors as though attempting to break from the confines of their bodies or like a speech from the scaffold with a noose about the neck, an offering from the ‘Abandoned Generation’, writ large. ‘Please excuse our unsightly, real, protruding guts’ etc.

A band of prematurely balding outlaws try themselves as pet mediums and style themselves as saints, spin donuts in car parks, spit black and howl under the crumbling stars.

The film is to be shot between the 20th the 29th August in London and Gloucestershire. Whilst we are unfortunately unable to pay you for your time, you will be chauffeured, fed and sheltered alongside some of the finest company to be found on the island.

Roles:

EPOS THE DEAD – (age 17 – 25) Charismatic messiah figure, reluctantly resurrected. Hollers spells. Chews Oreos/ Spits Black. Levitates.

THE OUTLAWS – (ages 17 – 25) Inhabited by tapeworms that take sporadic control of their vocal chords and bring on convulsions. Pates gleaming in the kitchen light under thinning hair. Spin donuts in heavily modified cars - Body kits, underglow, mesh and grills.

SON WOUNDS OF EPOS - (ages 17- 25) Grown from portions of EPOS’ ass. Lousy copies, incredulous bald patches, tonsures abound. Their speech deteriorated like an over copied tape.