So yeah, if you’ve watched the video below, and I hope you have done considering the sheer amount of toil involved, you probably know that yesterday I went with Katy to London, and watched a historic day in the history of History unfolding: the transfer of power from one Prime Minister to another.
If you had the 2560×1920 version of this, it’d be your desktop wallpaper too.
We tubed to Embankment station and walked down Whitehall to College Green. The plan was to get to Parliament and see if we could blag our way into the last Prime Ministers Questions. We were unsuccessful, unsurprisingly. But walking down Whitehall, who should we see heading towards Downing Street, but none-other than TV’s Huw Edwards. I’m not sure if he noticed me excitedly saying to Katy “Holy shit! It’s Huw Edwards… fucking hell! Huw Edwards!”, whilst wildly pointing at him. I hope he did.
Bizarrely, despite the old adage saying that the camera adds weight, he seemed to have a fatter face in real life than I remember from the TV. Rubbish geeky quip: maybe the BBC studio uses 2.35:1 ratio cameras and they squash the picture?
When we got to Parliament, we were told by a woman working there that there were no tickets available until “about 12:30″ (the time PMQs ends) – she seemed completely oblivious to the significance of the day.
It was like a village fete. I even saw a vicar walking about.
College Green was a hub of excitement – and according to Wikipedia – the roof of an underground car park. All of the news crews were there. You can tell its a big day when they’ve got the gazebos out. The BBC were there, Sky were there. ITN were probably there but they didn’t make themselves very visible. Even the Austrian national broadcaster, ORF were there.
Quentin Davies, a man who claimed the Tories had no principles, being interviewed. He jumped ship to Labour, presumably because he had, er, no Conservative principles either.
As we got in everyone’s way, we noticed a number of big names. There was Julie Etchingham (Newsround circa-1996) presenting live for Sky, Jon Sopel (a man who is fluent in French, unneccessary fact fans) presenting live on News 24. I was surprised to see Andrew Rawnsley there, not only because ITV seemed to have opted for broadcasting mindless bullshit in the form of This Morning, rather than covering the most important political event in ages, but because his jaw is even more massive in real life. I’m not sure why I keep judging celebrities on their faces.
Quentin Davies, the Tory defecator defector was there being interviewed too, as was Tessa Jowell. On watching the News 24 coverage when I got home I was impressed with her. When Jon Sopel interviews her if she thought she still had a job, the ultra-Blairite said that she’d love to stay in the cabinet, despite it being obvious that she was destined for the figurative rolled up carpet in the back of Brown’s figurative Mafia car. Knowing this, quite incredibly, she said “but that’s not what today is about”, religiously defending the incoming Brown regime. That’s pretty impressive, as if I were sacked, I wouldn’t religiously defend my former employer. But then, I don’t do anythingreligiously.
As PMQs drew to a close, we wandered down from College Green back to Whitehall, where by now crowds were starting to gather. There are some hinged barriers in front of the gates of Downing Street which are used to keep the proles back whenever people need to get in and out – despite the barriers being in use, as we were all standing in a big crowd waiting for Tony to fuck off, normal pedestrians, seemingly uninterested by the day’s festivities tried to push their way through the crowds carrying multiple bags of shopping from Tesco’s, only to get frustrated and turn back when they realise the barriers were in use.
Not being funny, but who goes and does their shopping, then on the most important and widely publicised political day of the year decides to go home via Whitehall? Would they just have walked past Downing Street without giving it a second thought? Is that how Londoner’s operate? “Oh, it’s only Downing Street, so what?”.
We witnessed Tony come back from PMQs as his car swept into Downing Street for one final time. After maybe half an hour the gates opened again and his car whisked him off to the Palace. It was a bit underwhelming in a way, as the whole car passing bit lasted maybe twelve seconds, and the windows were tinted so we couldn’t even see him.
Across the road were some anti-war protesters dressed as Guantanamo detainees – despite having the best viewing spot of everyone gathered there, they unfathomably decided to wear black bags over their heads so they couldn’t see what was going on. I’m all for staying in character, but this was history in the making, and they missed it.
Gordon Brown lightens the serious mood by walking like a robot.
After this, following a tip-off from the political blogs, we headed down to the Treasury, as we knew that’d be where Gordon Brown was leaving from before heading off to the Palace himself. Katy and I got a spectacular viewing position – if it weren’t for the hundreds of armed police officers in the vicinity, I could have easily happy-slapped Gordon Brown as he left. Take a look at the video to see for yourself.
Sky’s Jeremy Thompson (doing a pre-record, in which we were clearly visible in the background) and Jon Craig were there (doing a live), and the BBC’s Carol… someone or other was there. Michael Crick was there for Newsnight too.
Man gets into car, shock.
Again, this only lasted a few seconds after quite a long wait. Brown walked out, waved a bit, got into a Ministerial car and was off. The media were calling it a “limousine”, whereas Katy rightly pointed out it was a red Vauxhall of sorts… which doesn’t look or sound too fancy.
After this was over, we headed down Horseguards Road, round the back of Downing Street, heading towards the Mall. Excellently, parked up on Horseguard’s Parade were Tony Blair’s Removal Vans. Here’s a photo with me by them:
Worldwide relocation? Blair’s not moving to The Hague is he?
I could have been standing literally inches away from Tony Blair’s guitar or Cherie Blair’s juggling balls.
Yesterday, Katy and I went down to London to watch the big Prime Ministerial changeover. Here’s what happened in video form. Words and pictures to follow shortly:
So I was out and about shopping, like a normal person, today in Northampton, when who should I bump into but Sir Menzies Campbell, leader of the Liberal Democrats!
Well, that’s not entirely true. My being there was entirely pre-meditated. I’d read that he was coming in a most excellent newspaper, so being the awful politics nerd that I am, thought I’d turn up.
It was quite tight for time as Ming was scheduled to turn up at half two, and I had workthirty miles away at five. Ming was 40 minutes late. And I was 20 minutes late for work. If I were a half-decent satirist, I’d probably remark about the LibDems… getting to work on time policy? Something like that? I don’t know.
Also, I turned up about an hour early, so spent an awkward hour milling around the Market Square. I didn’t know exactly where Ming would be – only that he’d be somewhere in the market. As you may recall, I’m pretty awful at looking busy, so basically started doing laps of the market whilst becoming increasingly concious that I was doing nothing.
Whilst waiting I noticed the weirdest thing – periodically, they’d be a loud speaker play a jingle, followed by an announcement advising you not to litter, as there’s a fine. It just felt a bit Orwellian – perhaps like the almost identical device out of The Prisoner.
But anyway, there were about twenty people gathered around the market square eventually – mostly LibDem councillors (including apparently the youngest LibDem councillor in Northampton, who I briefly spoke to about, er, politics, unsurprisingly), and the press. To be honest, I was expecting bigger crowds: I was probably the only genuine member of the public there.
Is it me, or does he look like he hasn’t enough skin the cover his body, so it’s been stretched too much?
When Ming arrived with his surprisingly lightweight entourage (about five people) after doing the hand shaking thing that important people do, him and everyone there moved into the market where he could meet some “ordinary people”. It was at this point I noted that he didn’t have a police escort or any (visible) security guards, so I could have happy-slapped him, in retrospect.
At one of the market stalls, there was an embarrassingly staged moment where one of the market traders showed Ming that he’d set up some sort of display with oranges on it – the premise being “the future’s bright, the future’s orange” – attempting to pun on the LibDem colours. I don’t think Ming had the heart to tell him that the LibDem colour was in fact Gold/Yellow/Not Orange.
As he moved along – and as I was walking literally next to him, being an awful twat and poking a camera in his face constantly – a real member of the public accidentally got in on the action and started harassing Sir Ming. “I want to personally invite you to my house“, she shouted, trying to highlight some undoubtedly tedious issue. In the end, Ming just ignored her – which I suppose is the only course of action when you’re confronted with a nutter.
Ming Campbell official market banter:
Punter: “Fancy seeing you on the market stall!”
Campbell: “I don’t cost anything!” (Poor Ming is known for struggling with banter and being quick witted)
I also noticed that Ming doesn’t have laces on his shoes – is this because is old so isn’t flexible enough to bend down to tie them?
Sir Menzies’s Minging Feet (this awful pun is a feat worthy of Heat magazine)
The story basically ends here – Ming milled around the square for a bit, before going back with the LibDems to their lair (or “council offices”, as they’re known). On the way back, realising it was my only chance to work towards completing my collection of photos of myself with minor politicians, I barged into Ming again and asked for a photo with him – the results of which you can see above.
Last night, I went all the way down to London for a gig so peculiarly tuned to my interests I thought that it might be a set up to put me on some modern day Beadles About equivalent.
It was Frank Turner, supporting Rage Against the Machine guitarist Tom Morello (“The Nightwatchman“) in an anti-war gig organised by the Stop the War Coalition. Oh, and it was compered by Mark Steel. I think its pretty difficult to get a better collection of celebrities and causes – what made it all the more spooky was that the venue (The Scala) was a six-minute walk from St Pancras station.
This actually meant that to get there I probably took less steps than it would take me to walk to my “local venue” in Leicester.
What with it being in London, and being a gig organised by some undoubtedly nutty left-wingers, I wasn’t sure what to expect. Unsurprisingly, there were some proper Marxists outside handing out leaflets and getting people to sign petitions. For some reason, when coerced into signing the petition (against the war, not capitalism), I gave away my real home address. I think this might end up being a mistake.
We (JD and myself) were frisked by some security guards on the way in. I was patted down by a security guard. As this happened, I pre-empted any sort of search by trying to explain that my pockets contained, er, my phone, wallet, camera, PDA, iPod and London map book (I was travelling lite). When I offered to prove this, he didn’t seem to care, and just waved me in. My PDA could have contained a flick-knife SDIO card for all he knew.
For a left wing gig populated by socialists who love sharing and holding hands, I thought £6 for two Cokes at the bar was a bit expensive.
The gig started with some Stop the War Coalition chap coming on stage and doing some spiel about, er, the war, before introducing Mark Steel, who did some talking, before introducing the first act: Frank Turner.
Frank played a short set including most of his, er, “well known” songs – Thatcher Fucked the Kids, and so on. I’d love to write more about what he did, as he was good, and I enjoyed his music, but I can’t really think of any way to explain what happened, other than “a man played a guitar and sang for a bit”.
The next act was more “interesting”. Susheela Raman sang some Tamil folk songs and did some “covers” of more popular songs. I’m not sure it quite gelled with the rest of the acts – whereas the others were strummy guitar things with English language lyrics, she did the sort of stereotypically screechy “non-western” folk-music noise and sang in Tamil – which sort of makes any of the political points she was trying to make more difficult to understand.
Ed Harcourt, who was the third support, was alright too. Perhaps a bit generic. He ended his set by doing some clever bit where he recorded samples of him playing different instruments live, and built up a song live. First he hit a drum for a bit, then did something on the guitar. Then did something else, and something else. It was really quite clever. I guess you had to be there.
It was Morello everyone was there for though. Before he came out on to the stage, Mark Steel did some stand-up-come-political-rant about the war, which was excellent. If there were an audio version of YouTube, I’d upload it, as I had the foresight to take along my iTalk iPod thing to record most of the gig.
Morello finally came on stage at around 21:45. Whilst the time might not seem like an important detail, it was utterly critical to my and JD’s success. We had to catch the last train at 23:15 or we’d be trapped in London overnight. If I weren’t an atheist, I’d have been praying that the gig didn’t over run.
So he played some songs – his solo stuff. Which is quite good, really. I like how still does vaguely rage-esque bits in otherwise acoustic songs. When playing a cover of This land is my land, this land is your land, or whatever it’s called, he pushed his hand against the neck of his guitar and continued to strum, creating something resembling the unique Rage sound.
At one point, someone in the audience yelled out “Play Bombtrack” – for the uninitiated, this is a Rage song. The audience cheered wildly – more than at any other point in the gig. “I’m not going to play that tonight”, Morello responded. But the audience still cheered and clapped. You could tell he was backed into a corner. Let’s face it – most of the audience were there to see the guy from Rage Against the Machine, and wanted to see RATM songs – myself included. Excellently, he relented and played the first bit of Bombtrack, but unfortunately, didn’t play all of it. The audience still cheered. Perhaps admitting defeat, he said to the audience “if you behave yourself, perhaps you’ll be rewarded later on”, like a parent – if we were good enough to endure his “alright” solo stuff, he’d play what we really wanted to hear.
It must be a bit depressing as an artist to have fans only want to hear your old stuff.
True to his word though, he played a bizarre acoustic version of Guerilla Radio – which was also well received.
It was getting pretty tense as the gig neared the end. The encore began at 22:52 – our train was leaving in 23 minutes. Morello finished his set at 23:03, and literally as the last chord was still echoing, we had to start moving in order to catch the train in time. The audience were still cheering wildly, shouting “more” as we left the building. I then had perhaps the worst eight minutes of my life, as I tried to run (although JD would contest it was a light jog) to the station, knowing how much was riding on me making it on time. JD cleverly left the iPod recording, so I’ve got eight minutes of audio at the end of myself, hideously unfit, puffing and panting and complaining my way through central London.
We narrowly made it – with only a couple of minutes to spare. I was about ready to die. But it was worth it, as I’d just seen one quarter of my favourite band play live. And it was for a good cause, even if it is about four years too late to stop the war. Excellent.
Last night I went and tolerated Nizlopi playing in Leamington Spa to do my part of an agreement with JD. Last week he came to see Reel Big Fish with me (who were incredible) – so I’d said I’d endure this for him. It was an interesting evening.
Unlike every other gig I’ve been to, this gig was compered by a performance poet. As you might expect, he was a fairly young bloke who wore one of those old-man flat-caps that have inexplicably become fashionable again, and he seemed to be deliberately wearing it at the most optimally fashionable angle (approximately 25 degrees off of a line perpendicular to the front centre of his head). He also consistently tried his best to rhyme his sentences even when not reciting a poem.
He did his first poem, which was going quite well – explaining how Bush was bad, and Blair was bad and were war criminals. Y’know, generally agreeable stuff that can be said in a way that sounds against the grain and revolutionary. Towards the end of his first poem he said something like “the UN are in Afghanistan controlling the opium trade”.
“Hang on!”, I thought – the UN aren’t anywhere near Afghanistan. NATO are though. And controlling the opium trade? I thought the invasion of Afghanistan had resulted in a massive boost for the opium trade as NATO struggle to control it and more people turn to grow it as the only source of viable income?
He then completely undermined everything he’d ever said, as well as everything he’s ever likely to say, by claiming that the Bush administration were responsible for 9/11 and that it was “fact to him”. Hmm…
The two other poems he performed between the other acts were slightly more sane. But I couldn’t take him seriously any more.
There were two normal support acts – two instantly forgettable “I’ll strum a guitar for a bit and maybe sing over it” types.
Unfortunately, I didn’t think Nizlopi were that spectacular either. This is probably because I’m not a fan though, and being surrounded by a couple of hundred sycophantic fans is going to make any outsiders feel slightly awkward. They did some fan pleasing stuff – unplugging from their amplifiers and walking into the centre of the audience and carrying on, that sort of thing. I was a bit worried about one of the guys in the band though, as not only was he not wearing shoes (a sure sign of madness), he seemed to be getting into it rather too much. Maybe it’s just that the bands I’m used to tend to transmit nothing but naked aggression in their lyrics, whereas Nizlopi were a bit more… feelingsy than that.
Afterwards was the best bit – there was an “after-party” at a nearby pub, where the poet from the gig invited people to go up on stage in this pub and “express themselves” (that was the phrase he used). It would have been beret-level pretentious if it hadn’t been bought crashing down to a cynical earth by being again compered by the performance poet and his questionable political insight, starred a hilarious rapper with a Birmingham accent, and been spoilt by some twats shouting “get off the stage” at the bad acts – which is a pretty bad thing to do. It’s much more grown-up to slag someone off on the internet the day after – there’s less of a chance of them hearing after all.
One of the acts was a woman who said that she was going to sing a “depressing song”. She wasn’t wrong. With no music accompanying her she went on for what felt like an eternity about her own funeral, or something.
Another of the acts was excellently hilarious though. It was a rapper calling himself “Jimmy Davis”, who’s gimmick seemed to be name-dropping himself in every other sentence. He even echoed himself manually, ’singing’ the lyric “Jimmy Davis Davis”, as if his lyrics were so forgettable he wasn’t even getting to the end of each line before forgetting what he’s already said.
It’s also a good job that “Jimmy Davis” rhymes with quite a few words, as the rhyming scheme required he rhyme his own name quite a lot. “Make it” “Play this” “Deathwish” “Gunsmith” and so on. It’s a good job his name isn’t Jimmy Orange, really.
A Cardiffian woman called Sarah, who we met at the gig, and I tried to encourage JD to perform – he can play practically every instrument imaginable (presumably including the accordion, which you can watch me play here), but he wouldn’t budge from his “not playing an instrument” policy, which was irritating, because you could have had a cracking YouTube video of me offending people – nothing too out of the ordinary until you consider that it could have been set to some lovely music.
Today was one of the most important days of the university year: the European Union Simulation Exercise. I spent the day pretending to represent The Netherlands as we pretended to renegotiate the Common Agricultural Policy. It makes up 30% of one of my module grades, the module in turn making up 25% of my final grade for the year, which in turn makes up about 30% of my final degree grade. So two and a quarter percent of my final grade was effectively decided today.
More importantly: I got to wear a suit and be xenophobic. Here’s a picture to prove it (you’ll have to imagine a speech bubble with something xenophobic in it):
As you might imagine, I don’t wear suits very often, so it was quite an experience to actually commute on the train dressed like a business twat. I really wanted to wear one of my “CAPDOWN” t-shirts, as that is exactly what the Netherlands were after, but I was overruled by the rest of my group. But anyway.
I don’t know how James Bond copes with wearing a suit all the time and running about shooting at baddies. It makes even the simplest of actions contain many more units of hassle. Even something as simple as raising your arms causing the entire jacket to shift about awkwardly… and I don’t even want to mention the shoot-out and car chase today, it was that embarrassing.
The suit made me feel quite important though: I marched around with purpose until I realised that I was basically a walking sham. Yes, I was wearing a suit, but inside I was still a lazy student. It wasn’t until I’d been wearing the suit for an hour or so that I discovered that the “pockets” were in fact just flaps of fabric sewn on to look like pockets. I had immitation pockets – I can’t even begin to understand that design decision.
It turned out that my delegation, the Netherlands, was the only delegation to turn up dressed smartly. Whilst this was initially embarrassing, I think it Victoria, Zarar, Michelle, Michael and myself a psychological advantage. We had ironed clothes and little pin badges of the Dutch flag that showed that we meant business. I did subtle karate chops with my hands whilst speaking and rolled my eyes when others spoke in order to reassert my authority.
I’m desperately trying to think of a way to describe the day in a way that you readers might find engaging or interesting, but it’d be full of sickeningly obscure references (the decoupling of single farm payments was excellent) and in-jokes. Basically it was all good – especially how we managed to get the French to concede on several of their key demands simply by sending them a polite “hello” memo offering them nothing. Which was nice.
Just look at the picture of me in a suit – surely you don’t need any more material than that? Look, it’s James O’Malley in a suit!
Well that went moderately well. A few hours ago I presented a radio show on my university’s radio station, Demon FM as part of the “Cherry Poppers” strand, for radio n00bs. I think it went all right considering it was my first attempt. Don’t take my word for it, have a listen yourself.
I speak a bit fast and fail to construct a sentence far too often, but I think I’m at least semi-coherent. It’s annoying because I’d like to be good at ad-libbing – every time I have to do something where I speak to an audience, like a presentation or whatever, I always try and ad-lib assuming that I’m able to do it (nothing to do with it being less effort than having to write a script, honest), although I always seem to come across as a stuttering incompetent.
I had some quips and gags planned, which despite excessive planning, unfortunately managed to make their way out of my mouth and on to the collective conscience of society at large:
“Punk is all about rebellion, anger and sticking it to the man… plenty of that will be occurring, as long as it occurs within the Ofcom broadcasting guidelines, as I don’t want to be taken off air”.
“That was Propagandhi’s War is Peace, Freedom is Slavery, May All Your Interventions Be Humanitarian – or W I P F I S M A Y I B H for short.”
The gist of this. (Dropped as calling them sell outs might be libellous.)
But nevertheless, the songs were played out correctly, the right buttons were pressed – mainly because I wasn’t the one having to do that bit.
If you’ve had a listen to the recording linked above, you might think that I just recorded that at home and am merely pretending that I presented a radio show. If you want some proof, have a look at this picture of me in a real radio studio:
I’d like to thank JP and the other people at Demon FM for putting me on the radio. They are excellent people.
Will I have more radio adventures soon? I…I… don’t know.
As you might know, having watched the video blog below, I went to London yesterday with JD and Fundar. We went there to see the third series of That Mitchell & Webb Sound being recorded. It’s basically like their similarly named telly sketch show, only if you close your eyes.
Coke Price Watch: 500ml bottle; At the station; Cost: £1.00.
About 90 minutes later and we were in central London.
“Trains are great!”
Coke Price Watch: 500ml bottle; London St Pancras; Cost: £1.10.
Our first port of call was Camden market. It was a bit weird, as it was full of people in a different socio-economic group to me. Or at least people who dressed like it. Being a market, the place was covered in people hawking tat – even the shops were open at the front and sprawled out into the streets. It reminded me of seeing a news correspondent walk through a crowded Kabul market place, I mean, if Afghanistan was populated exclusively by goths.
One man even offered to sell us cannabis – not that I realised at the time.
Almost every other market stall was selling t-shirts with “hilarious” slogans. As you might know if you’re a regular viewer of my torso, I quite like t-shirts with slogans on. I’m currently wearing an excellent t-shirt with “I’m blogging this” printed on it, for example. The trouble is, it was like the t-shirts on sale were bought wholesale by people who are a few years behind everyone else. “National Pornographic” isn’t clever or funny and “I’m a bomb technician, if you see me running try to catch up” was old even when the first alchemists were inventing explosions for the first time.
Our next port of call was Leicester Square, where we went to get some lunch and have a look around.
When I wasn’t buying overpriced Coke, we were trying to be too clever for our own good. We put together an excellently long shot for the video, and then JD phoned his brother to see if he could see us on a webcam. He could, although unfortunately screenshot evidence of this incredible event does not exist.
After lunch we headed to Embankment, which is just next to Whitehall, where all of the big Government buildings are. I love London because its so easy just to stumble into landmarks. It makes it almost unremarkable when you realise you’re standing outside of Royal Bank of Canada head office.
It took us a second to realise that we were standing outside the Ministry of Defence. Unfortunately, as you might see if you’ve watched the video, I didn’t remember to take the opportunity to mention the MOD’s seven paper cuts last year. We walked past it and bumped into the Foreign & Commonwealth Office. I’m the sort of person who finds this exciting.
Standing outside the FCO was Tim Marshall, Sky News’ Political editor. In retrospect, I probably should have gone and harassed him – after all, he is a celebrity, and I assume celebrities love nothing more than idiot members of the public going up to them and talking to them because they recognise them, despite not being able to remember their name.
Sort of next to the Foreign Office is Downing Street. The Downing Street. Despite it just being an old house that you can barely see behind the multiple layers of security (a ramp, a big set of gates, a number of police with machine guns) it was dead exciting. I reeled off as much Downing Street trivia as I could on the off chance that the Policeman near me would say “Hey, you know your stuff, want to go in for a look around?” Unfortunately he just continued to look stern.
Excellently, it was about at this point that I tried to show-off my knowledge of history by explaining that Whitehall used to be one massive Palace of Whitehall before it was destroyed by a fire. Fundar, being a cynic and troll, accused me of making this up just seconds before we passed a sign explaining that a building was the last remaining segment of the Palace of Whitehall.
Just behind the foreign office, when we weren’t really sure where we were going, we stumbled upon the Treasury. Not just any old treasury too mind- Her Majesty’s Treasury. I missed a golden opportunity to see if I could get in because I’m a tax-man – it would have made an excellent scene in the video too. I did, however, have this excellent photograph taken of me:
“Do you take Maestro?”
After a bit more walking we ended up near Parliament and Brian Haw’s anti-war protest. MPs passed a law to try and get rid of Brian, by banning protesting near Parliament without a license a couple of years ago – unfortunately for them, Brian’s still there because he’s been continuously protesting since before the ban came into force. Interestingly, Brian’s patch of green is surrounded entirely by a massive roundabout, and the conspiracy theorist within me thinks that they’ve made it intentionally difficult to get to the centre where Brian is by altering the traffic light patterns, as I was stuck in the centre for a good five minutes before I dared cross the road.
We spent a few minutes standing outside Westminster Abbey. We were going to go in for a couple of minutes, but discovered that it costs eight pounds to visit a church. Although you could apparently “worship for free”. I didn’t think I could get away with pretending to be religious.
We walked down past the Palace of Westminster to the green where they do the live reports on the telly and did a bit for the video, before deciding to head to the Tate Modern. Exciting travel story: we took the circle line from Westminster to Mansion House.
It turns out that St Paul’s Cathedral is right next to Mansion House, and opposite the Millennium Bridge.
Unfortunately, it’s my sad duty to report that the Tate Modern is the most overrated place in history. Even more so than the Auschwitz “theme park” the Nazis set up during World War II.
The Tate Modern: Don’t ‘bovver’.
I feel like an idiot for not being able to appreciate modern art, but most of it is shit. One of the biggest pieces (in terms of physical size) was Matisse’s Snail (click that for a picture). It’s some coloured paper laid out on to a bigger piece of paper. It looks like something a child with learning difficulties could have made.
What makes it worse is the, er, back-story, as it isn’t even deep and metaphorical. According to the textual description next to it, Matisse saw a snail, and then laid out some coloured paper in a shape (very, very, very, very) vaguely resembling a snail. That’s it? That’s shit.
Beret-wearing sycophants probably look at the same picture and say in their trumped-up posh accent and say to each other “that’s bloody brilliant, oh, it’s just so inspirational. My god, it’s a work of genius.”
Another incredible work was a canvas painted almost entirely orange, apart from a strip down the right hand side which was painted a slightly darker orange, the premise being that the darker line is “disruptive”, or something like that. I’ve never seen such pretentious bollocks, and I’m a regular viewer of Newsnight Review.
It must be great being an artsy twat, as you’d experience such an exciting life. “Fuck me! It’s a lightswitch… that’s just, like, so powerful… on and off, representing despair and consequence“.
One of the more ridiculous things was some metal tiles on the floor. Apparently this changes the viewers interaction with art by allowing you to walk on it. That’s fucking incredible. I mean, walking on tiles. Genius.
Judging by my experience with one of the members of staff, they seem to have employed the snootiest minimum wage workers available. I was carrying a sealed Pepsi, bought from their own cafe through one of the galleries, and a Zoe Wanamaker-esque woman approached me, and said without even mentioning the brand, “I see you have a carbonated drink, could you put it away please? We’ve had people drop them before causing spillages”. I can’t imagine the disasterous repercussions of Pepsi getting near birdshit on a canvas, or whatever. I’d have thought the artsy Tate people would enjoy interpreting what the Pepsi stain represents.
In fairness, it wasn’t all terrible. Roy Lichenstein’s Whaam! was good. And there was a gallery of some framed pages of an old Soviet magazine showing the industrialization of the USSR, which was interesting. And I can’t really complain about the entrance price, as it was free.
After we left the Tate bitterly disappointed, we thought it finally time to head to the Drill Hall to see Mitchell & Webb. We took the tube to Goodge Street.
Coke Price Watch: 500mlish glass; Goodge Street Hamburger Union; £1.65.
Before the show, we went to Hamburger Union, which seems to be a medium-speed food chain exclusive to London. We filmed some more video here.
Coke Price Watch: 330ml can; The Drill Hall; £1.
Finally, we got into Mitchell and Webb ready for the recording. Our tickets had been validated and we had been allocated seats. Unfortunately, before we could go in the theatre, we had to wait in a tiny bar for around an hour standing up with around 200 other people. It was almost unbearable after a day of running around London. My legs hurt and I was overheating, but we stuck with it, as, after all, we were now at the primary reason why we were in London.
Mitchell and Webb recorded two shows at once, so we got approximately 90 minutes of new sketches from them, supported by Olivia Coleman and James Bachman And they were excellent. There were a few about a doctor arguing with a patient who got diagnosis’s off of the internet, which got progressively more surreal. If this sketch makes the translation to their second TV series, I imagine “I’m Bill Paxton” will become a well known catchphrase. You’ll know why when you see it.
In retrospect, I should have taken my iTalk and covertly recorded it so I could write more about this. I can’t remember many more of the things they did, but I remember enjoying it immensely. So, er, I guess I win.
I had an incredibly good day over all, and I don’t think even if I had bumped into Hitler on the train home he could have dampened my spirit that much. London late at night is surprisingly non-threatening, but we were in a reasonably posh area- right near Tavistock Square, of London Bombings fame, in fact. I imagine I’d be telling a different story if they’d been recording the radio show in Hackney or wherever. And you’d be reading this from my will rather than my blog.
It was also a research packed day – our serious scientific survey has conclusively proved that London prices are infinitely more expensive than rural England. Which, er, is no surprise really.
I would highly recommend listening to That Mitchell & Webb Sound when it’s broadcast on the radio – I’ll plug it on here when it is, as it’s dead good.
Well done for making it through nearly 2000 words too. Why not watch the video?
I saw the this evening’s lunar eclipse from a moderately unusual place. Specifically: the roof of a pub.
I know this is probably quite underwhelming since I sold the second sentence to you on the basis of it being “moderately unusual”. I’m not sure what you were expecting? A galleon on the high seas, and we had trouble navigating? Deep underground in a room with no windows? Reflected in the cold, dead eyeballs of an assailant?
It was quite good though – we (JD and myself) got to see the moon go slightly red over the course of about an hour. And being about 15 feet higher up than people on the ground made the moon much more visible. Obviously.
In the end there was about thirty people standing on the roof of this pub – which being a studenty pub was sort of over-looking some halls of residence. At one point a woman in one of the rooms opposite where we were standing came into her room, glanced out of the window and saw thirty people waving at her. She closed her curtains.
We ended up standing next to two clearly drunken students, who tried their best to perpetuate every negative student stereotype imaginable. They quoted The Mighty Boosh talking about the moon, and sang the Button Moon theme tune. Loudly. It was almost unbearable because their ability to sing seemed to be almost inversely proportional to volume they sang at.
As for the moon, whilst it was interesting to see, it was slightly underwhelming. I think I was slightly more excited by the prospect of being on the roof of a pub than the moon being a, er, half moon. The moon never seemed to go entirely red either- the top bit was always white, which felt like a bit of let down. I was expecting bright coke red, rather than the “internal bleeding” red that the moon was.
Overall, I give the moon 7/10. If you like this you might also like to try: solar eclipses, closing your eyes.
Happy New Year readers! Last night I went to my friend Andy’s New Year Party, and I had an incredibly good time.
I had planned to do a video blog of the last moments of 2006, and the room exploding into celebration, but unfortunately the lighting wasn’t very good so you can’t see (or hear) anything- and when I tried to get everyone to re-enact the countdown for take 2, no one joined in with me.
It was a good evening though- with only one fatal flaw. This was a New Years Party, yet nobody seemed to have an accurate clock. Seriously. For some reason, everyone around me started celebrating with still about twenty or thirty seconds to go, and I don’t know about you, but if I want to celebrate an arbitrary point in time, I at least want to celebrate it accurately.
Here’s some pictures of some drunken revellers and my sober self- because I think the internet doesn’t have enough pictures of generic drunks:
This is me, Craig and Nikki, and Nikki’s hideous scar. I was only able to muster the smile on my face after literally ten minutes of looking horrified.
Here’s Fundar and myself. He’s pointing at me because I asked him who his hero was.
This is Heggs and Bailey being drunk on the metaphorical alcohol that is life. And the metaphorical alcohol that is alcohol.
And here’s Bouff. I’m including this picture as he’s now begun straightening it after 19 years of having a big ginger afro. This is probably really uninteresting if you don’t know me in real life, but a few people reading are probably saying “what the fuck?” as I speak.
So yeah, I had a good time- it was certainly less awful than watching Saddam get hanged. Hooray!
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