Hello. S'been a while. I've been on hols and stupidly busy. And here I am on a Friday and, gulp, I haven't even switched my telly on since Sunday.
Maybe I'm regressing to being one of them interweb teens who think tv is boring and pointless, and only watch 30 second videos of dogs falling off swings on Youtube?
Alternatively, it's because I've been hugely busy and out/working late every night.
There's been plenty of stuff I want to see - that Charlie Brooker quiz (although apparently the 'slebs get in the way of Mr Brooker's patented diatribe. Who Do You Think You Are? is always good value. That drama about the financial crisis.
The good news is my Sky+ HD is finally working now, and it's a very nice capable thing. It works fine, the HD picture can be superb (and can be oddly pixelly in the background sometimes), the updated software is functional and quick, and it makes watching and recording anything a doddle.
Note my lack of passion there. As I've said before, it's all very well done but there's no spark, passion or cleverness. Unlike, say, Sky's incredibly slick sports coverage, the presentation is good but not special. I s'pose that's what a monopoly does - although I shouldn't complain, for the price it's truly excellent and the box also looks lovely.
Maybe I'm missing the little dancing TiVo logo man more than I care to admit... sniff...
More telly news as and when I actually watch some telly.
Friday, 17 July 2009
Tuesday, 23 June 2009
Limited ambitions
As I'm STILL without any telly at home, here's something from the past.
Cue the twanging harps and wibbly dissolve...
Picture the scene, Britain, mid-nineties, a typical indie tv production office (cheap furniture and staff in the open plan bits, expensive fittings and execs in the surrounding offices).
I was producing my first show, and we were due to shoot a one-off pilot episode to test the concept. It was a mix of factual items and comedy nonsense, all around a reasonably strong formatted idea, and had a tried-and-tested set of people appearing in it. Well, apart from me, moonlighting as a games reviewer. I was (a) free; (b) had seen the games so could comment; (c) free, and (d) looked stupid in the wig they made me wear so gave everyone else a cheap laugh.
Speaking of cheap, the show had a TINY budget. Weeny. Infinitesimally small (sp?). We filmed it in a disused old benefits office in Poplar, opposite Kwiksave (now it's an Aldi - is that up or down market?) and a canal full of sludge and broken Kwiksave trollies. The only pub nearby (you can tell I haven't changed much) said that we had to sit in the 'saloon bar' as we had a lady with us. Er, she was a lesbian and more macho than anyone else - but I wasn't going to argue with the man-with-three-teeth behind the bar.
Anyhow, the set looked ok and we'd come up with the monitor-point-of-view shot idea that made it just about filmable on the money we had. (Basically, we'd see a wide of a room and the characters enter - we'd then cut to a fixed camera 'within' the big tv in the corner, with a curvy-not-flatscreen-in-them-days effect on it, and use that for the rest of the scene, saving on relighting and moving camera. Most scenes ended with the main character pressing a button on the tv, cutting to footage so it was surprisingly effective)
Anyhow (ii) I'd spent three months honing the show, making sure the comedy stuff was easy to film and not too visual, as we couldn't afford props and redressing the set was a no-no. (Although we did a Dickens Xmas past/present/future thing, and the set looked jolly fine covered in Kwiksave Bargain Tinfoil as the future. The characters remarked on how the future looked quite like the present, just covered in tinfoil. Postmodern an' everything, eh?)
Anyhow (iii), the exec producer liked the scripts, the actors were happy, the content was good, I was cooking on gas, as we'd say in them days.
Until...
The boss came in. "I've written the pilot episode", she announced to everyone, "It's much better than your silly scripts". And with that she hurled a script at me.
Er... um... this was wrong on SO many levels. The boss had no sense of humour - she admitted as much. She hated the secondary character, the only really good actor and comedian. The Carry On-style innuendo and postmodernism made her cringe. She could write, and write well, but drama not comedy.
Her script was incredible. It had a robot supermodel in it, loads of outside scenes and a variety of perplexing remarks I think the boss thought were jokes. But weren't.
I went in to see her and said we couldn't film it, it cost too much. She said she'd pay herself for the extra time.
Sigh.
So we did it, as written. Every last scene. The robot supermodel, Candy LaBelle - I can and will never forget the character name - was an American actress hired at huuuuge expense for 3 days (£300!). I say actress, but, bless, she couldn't act. She had lots of complex techie lines to say and it took 30+ takes to get anything useable.The final denouement had her blowing up. We used a blow-up doll for that. Somehow.
Ooof it was awful. I mean really unfunny, illogical and slow. I cut it together, crying into my Sky-issue plastic coffee. I took it to the boss, gave her the VHS and walked out of the room to hide in the disable toilet. Pretending the Sky coffee had given me the shits.
She called me in half an hour later, stony-faced and ashen. I started to try and say that I thought it was a bit wooden, and too long, and-
She stopped me.
She told me it was awful. Shit. Dreadful. To cut it to pieces to rescue it, somehow, as we couldn't reshoot it and had to use it. But drop in new bits, filmed later. Some jokes perhaps. She'd leave us alone from now on, she knew comedy wasn't her thing but she now realised that you can't be overly ambitious on 10p an episode. That our brand of silly jokes, cheap jibes and implausible campery sort of worked, for no logical reason.
I left feeling ten thousand feet high. We made the eps we'd written and they were funny. Damn funny. The show rated really well, everyone in the office thought it was incredible, I was the toast of indie producerville. EP 4 went out - Candy LaBelle - hacked to bits but still not too good. We'd just about rescued it (even if some bits made no sense)
And the boss left me alone, for 12 whole episodes, a record in that office. She promoted me to a new show on a big channel, and most of my team came with me. She then had a hissy fit saying we'd ruined the show for the team taking over, that we'd all got the new show on our minds and forgotten the old one (which was wrong as the episodes that she was watching go out had been made long before we'd been promoted, and were the funniest of the lot)
I end this anecdote brutally as I've a train to catch. I think we've all learnt something there. I don't know what it is, apart from "leave me be please lady", but there you go.
Cue the twanging harps and wibbly dissolve...
Picture the scene, Britain, mid-nineties, a typical indie tv production office (cheap furniture and staff in the open plan bits, expensive fittings and execs in the surrounding offices).
I was producing my first show, and we were due to shoot a one-off pilot episode to test the concept. It was a mix of factual items and comedy nonsense, all around a reasonably strong formatted idea, and had a tried-and-tested set of people appearing in it. Well, apart from me, moonlighting as a games reviewer. I was (a) free; (b) had seen the games so could comment; (c) free, and (d) looked stupid in the wig they made me wear so gave everyone else a cheap laugh.
Speaking of cheap, the show had a TINY budget. Weeny. Infinitesimally small (sp?). We filmed it in a disused old benefits office in Poplar, opposite Kwiksave (now it's an Aldi - is that up or down market?) and a canal full of sludge and broken Kwiksave trollies. The only pub nearby (you can tell I haven't changed much) said that we had to sit in the 'saloon bar' as we had a lady with us. Er, she was a lesbian and more macho than anyone else - but I wasn't going to argue with the man-with-three-teeth behind the bar.
Anyhow, the set looked ok and we'd come up with the monitor-point-of-view shot idea that made it just about filmable on the money we had. (Basically, we'd see a wide of a room and the characters enter - we'd then cut to a fixed camera 'within' the big tv in the corner, with a curvy-not-flatscreen-in-them-days effect on it, and use that for the rest of the scene, saving on relighting and moving camera. Most scenes ended with the main character pressing a button on the tv, cutting to footage so it was surprisingly effective)
Anyhow (ii) I'd spent three months honing the show, making sure the comedy stuff was easy to film and not too visual, as we couldn't afford props and redressing the set was a no-no. (Although we did a Dickens Xmas past/present/future thing, and the set looked jolly fine covered in Kwiksave Bargain Tinfoil as the future. The characters remarked on how the future looked quite like the present, just covered in tinfoil. Postmodern an' everything, eh?)
Anyhow (iii), the exec producer liked the scripts, the actors were happy, the content was good, I was cooking on gas, as we'd say in them days.
Until...
The boss came in. "I've written the pilot episode", she announced to everyone, "It's much better than your silly scripts". And with that she hurled a script at me.
Er... um... this was wrong on SO many levels. The boss had no sense of humour - she admitted as much. She hated the secondary character, the only really good actor and comedian. The Carry On-style innuendo and postmodernism made her cringe. She could write, and write well, but drama not comedy.
Her script was incredible. It had a robot supermodel in it, loads of outside scenes and a variety of perplexing remarks I think the boss thought were jokes. But weren't.
I went in to see her and said we couldn't film it, it cost too much. She said she'd pay herself for the extra time.
Sigh.
So we did it, as written. Every last scene. The robot supermodel, Candy LaBelle - I can and will never forget the character name - was an American actress hired at huuuuge expense for 3 days (£300!). I say actress, but, bless, she couldn't act. She had lots of complex techie lines to say and it took 30+ takes to get anything useable.The final denouement had her blowing up. We used a blow-up doll for that. Somehow.
Ooof it was awful. I mean really unfunny, illogical and slow. I cut it together, crying into my Sky-issue plastic coffee. I took it to the boss, gave her the VHS and walked out of the room to hide in the disable toilet. Pretending the Sky coffee had given me the shits.
She called me in half an hour later, stony-faced and ashen. I started to try and say that I thought it was a bit wooden, and too long, and-
She stopped me.
She told me it was awful. Shit. Dreadful. To cut it to pieces to rescue it, somehow, as we couldn't reshoot it and had to use it. But drop in new bits, filmed later. Some jokes perhaps. She'd leave us alone from now on, she knew comedy wasn't her thing but she now realised that you can't be overly ambitious on 10p an episode. That our brand of silly jokes, cheap jibes and implausible campery sort of worked, for no logical reason.
I left feeling ten thousand feet high. We made the eps we'd written and they were funny. Damn funny. The show rated really well, everyone in the office thought it was incredible, I was the toast of indie producerville. EP 4 went out - Candy LaBelle - hacked to bits but still not too good. We'd just about rescued it (even if some bits made no sense)
And the boss left me alone, for 12 whole episodes, a record in that office. She promoted me to a new show on a big channel, and most of my team came with me. She then had a hissy fit saying we'd ruined the show for the team taking over, that we'd all got the new show on our minds and forgotten the old one (which was wrong as the episodes that she was watching go out had been made long before we'd been promoted, and were the funniest of the lot)
I end this anecdote brutally as I've a train to catch. I think we've all learnt something there. I don't know what it is, apart from "leave me be please lady", but there you go.
Tuesday, 16 June 2009
Catastrophe!
Pluses to Sky + HD: stunning picture on both SD and HD, quick channel changes, one box instead of two, one BLACK box matching my Blu-Ray player.
Minuses: it only worked for a day, and is broken, saying "no signal". The installers are checking the dish but as everyone else in the block is fine, it's not that, is it? 48 hours without telly... oh, the humanity.
Minuses: it only worked for a day, and is broken, saying "no signal". The installers are checking the dish but as everyone else in the block is fine, it's not that, is it?
Saturday, 13 June 2009
Bye bye old friend
Well as I type this a Sky man (as in an engineer from the satellite tv company, not as in someone who with a jetpac or cape) is installing Sky + HD, so my dear old Tivo has been flung into a cupboard.
I did sigh slightly as I went to switch it off for the last time, the wee Tivo logo - a little man, improbably, made of those four letters, swaying slightly in the corner of the screen as the cloudy sky background did the familiar-but-still-swishy animated loop it always does.
I put the Sky box in last night (without the '+' capabilities of recording and that) and have to say HD is very good indeed. I sat through some right shite just to see it in HD, just like everyone does when there's something new on offer. When Sky first started, I had a dish and proudly showed off the four channels to gawping onlookers. Oddly enough my mates mainly came over after 10pm perusing the German and Italian channels for the legendary gameshows-with-ladies-of-little-clothes. There were a few of them - chin,chin! one of the theme tunes went, as busty presentresses opened their carefully-hinged bras and revealed prize logos stuck to one of their chests.
Anyway...
I got a stereo telly just before then, a posh Sony with speakers on ears. It was reet fancy, a fully flat screen in 1995 and everything. Hearing music like off of a CD was quite a gimmick... for about five minutes.
Before that I can remember when C4 started, a long hot summer holiday as a kid, little to do except watch their endless preview broadcasts, six minutes on the hour, every hour, on the portable TV in my bedroom. I can't remember the change from B&W to colour, not really.
Watching Jonathan Ross in HD was... well, the same really, colours brighter, sharper image obviously (boy do most people look older and/or more heavily made-up, including Mr Ross). I did notice how limited the HD range is - I expected more channels really. BBC HD, for example, didn't show the trooping of the colour this morning - surely it's filmed in HD? Not that I approve of such programmes, obviously...
Putting on boring old standard def Sky News made me realise just how nice HD is. But then the new Sky box seems to give a much better picture on standard stuff too, so hey ho.
The Skyman is finishing up, must catch him before he jets off up into the stratosphere. I have to say Sky's EPG and box are nicely put together, well designed and simple to use, if slightly more functional and basic than the lovely design and intuitive nature of TiVo. But when I press channel up or down, the channel goes up or down INSTANTLY. For us TiVoites, that's astonishing, as it takes around 5 seconds to change anywhere. A cable linked to the Skybox and send '1' then '0' then '1' and then a pause... and then channel would change. Believe me it made channel hopping a nightmare...
Comparing Sky+ and TiVo is like comparing a PC - universal, popular, functional - to a Mac - fancy, well-designed but a bit too all-knowing. I say this typing on my week-old MacBook with my iPhone next to me, a dramatic switch to the dark side after 20 years of PCness.
Skyman is now on the roof, checking the second feed for the recording thingie. I've even read the instruction book. The bit about how you can only record TWO programmes at once whilst watching another nearly made me fall over. With TiVo it was like early video recorders, you could only record what you were watching.
Sadly, I can now watch and record more TV than ever, at high-definition resolution and with brilliant digital sound - just as the tv industry cuts production of anything and everything to save money in a recession-hit world. Oh well.
I did sigh slightly as I went to switch it off for the last time, the wee Tivo logo - a little man, improbably, made of those four letters, swaying slightly in the corner of the screen as the cloudy sky background did the familiar-but-still-swishy animated loop it always does.
I put the Sky box in last night (without the '+' capabilities of recording and that) and have to say HD is very good indeed. I sat through some right shite just to see it in HD, just like everyone does when there's something new on offer. When Sky first started, I had a dish and proudly showed off the four channels to gawping onlookers. Oddly enough my mates mainly came over after 10pm perusing the German and Italian channels for the legendary gameshows-with-ladies-of-little-clothes. There were a few of them - chin,chin! one of the theme tunes went, as busty presentresses opened their carefully-hinged bras and revealed prize logos stuck to one of their chests.
Anyway...
I got a stereo telly just before then, a posh Sony with speakers on ears. It was reet fancy, a fully flat screen in 1995 and everything. Hearing music like off of a CD was quite a gimmick... for about five minutes.
Before that I can remember when C4 started, a long hot summer holiday as a kid, little to do except watch their endless preview broadcasts, six minutes on the hour, every hour, on the portable TV in my bedroom. I can't remember the change from B&W to colour, not really.
Watching Jonathan Ross in HD was... well, the same really, colours brighter, sharper image obviously (boy do most people look older and/or more heavily made-up, including Mr Ross). I did notice how limited the HD range is - I expected more channels really. BBC HD, for example, didn't show the trooping of the colour this morning - surely it's filmed in HD? Not that I approve of such programmes, obviously...
Putting on boring old standard def Sky News made me realise just how nice HD is. But then the new Sky box seems to give a much better picture on standard stuff too, so hey ho.
The Skyman is finishing up, must catch him before he jets off up into the stratosphere. I have to say Sky's EPG and box are nicely put together, well designed and simple to use, if slightly more functional and basic than the lovely design and intuitive nature of TiVo. But when I press channel up or down, the channel goes up or down INSTANTLY. For us TiVoites, that's astonishing, as it takes around 5 seconds to change anywhere. A cable linked to the Skybox and send '1' then '0' then '1' and then a pause... and then channel would change. Believe me it made channel hopping a nightmare...
Comparing Sky+ and TiVo is like comparing a PC - universal, popular, functional - to a Mac - fancy, well-designed but a bit too all-knowing. I say this typing on my week-old MacBook with my iPhone next to me, a dramatic switch to the dark side after 20 years of PCness.
Skyman is now on the roof, checking the second feed for the recording thingie. I've even read the instruction book. The bit about how you can only record TWO programmes at once whilst watching another nearly made me fall over. With TiVo it was like early video recorders, you could only record what you were watching.
Sadly, I can now watch and record more TV than ever, at high-definition resolution and with brilliant digital sound - just as the tv industry cuts production of anything and everything to save money in a recession-hit world. Oh well.
Friday, 29 May 2009
Hey hey USA
So I've been in the States for a bit, and here's a unordered list of What I've Noticed About Yank TV:-
1 EVEN SHORTER ATTENTION SPANS
The evening entertainment magazine shows, from veteran Entertainment Tonight (ET) to new guy TMZ (Tee-Em-Zee of course) by way of Inside Edition and countless others, are now so jump-cutty and frenzied they're impossible to watch.
Mary Hart on ET, bless, has been presenting the show forever.. well, since 1989, when Sky Movies started to show it here. She sat alongside John Tesh, a man with a face that looked like it had been hit with a pan - and with a nifty sideline in Richard Clayderman-stylee naff piano music. The two of them read out links and the show was nice to everyone.
Not now. John is long gone, some shouting man with no appreciable personality is there. Mary doesn't look any older than she did two decades ago, just tighter and... er, bigger. As in the Botox and surgery to her face, US-TV-Enormo-Hair and fixed grin makes her head look massive.
But now each shot lasts a second of two, even when a presenter is talking, the camera constantly cutting and zooming. The reports are even worse - the word 'soundbite' being too long for most clips. They did a 'summer movie preview' and I swear there wasn't a single entire line of dialogue in the whole thing. How are you supposed to judge a film if they cut so fast between clips you've no idea what it looks like?
(The answer, oh Blogateers, is - of course - da yung'uns like it, and you look things like that up on the web nowadays. But I don't care. It's like watching bits of broken crockery in a blender - bouncy and noisy and pointless)
TMZ has the novelty of (a) being based on a website; and (b) pretending to be a documentary, with 'journos' pitching ideas to the 'editor', then clips popping up. Very odd. But everything is still in. Tiny. Lit. Tle. Bits. 'n'. Pieces.
2 EVEN MORE ADS
If you thought it wasn't possible to cram in more ads on the already saturated American airwaves, you'd be wrong. Branded segments of programs (that's how the US'ers spell it, without the extra 'me', spelling nerds) like a minty chewing gum sponsoring a bit of the somehow-better-when-in-the-US Soup featuring sweary bits of dialogue from reality shows, telling them to clean their dirty mouths... to even more blatant product placement (an ep of some useless drama thing set entirely in a Subway sarnie shop), it's all there.
3 EVEN MORE REPEATS
Most new shows are on twice a week, an 'encore' showing in primetime some other day, usually low-rated weekends, to boost numbers and save money.
4 EVEN LONGER SHOWS
NBC's The Biggest Loser is two hours long now. The American Idol results show, which is basically 5 minutes of 'you've won! you haven't!' is an hour long, sometimes 90 minutes, in addition to the two hour main show. The 'season finale' of Celebrity Apprentice (Joan Rivers AND her daughter!) lasted THREE WHOLE HOURS.
Jesus.
5 EVEN MORE IRRITATING TRAILERS
Especially, but not exclusively, on cable stations, a box will pop up with clips, animations, teasers, graphics and captions in the corner of the screen after each break, trailing the next show, or the next episode of this show, or some other show altogether. Countdown clocks to new episodes or series also dominate the screen, especially on TLC which seems to specialise in shows about people who have lots of kids. Sextuplets, 14 kids in total, whatever - just screaming children and shouting parents.
6 EVEN ODDER ADS
The recession means the ads for Viagra, Cialis and other medication seem to dominate even more, with their comedy list of side effects. A pill to 'reduce gas' has a huge list of problems it could cause including 'anal leakage'. So you don't fart but you shit yourself. Champion.
1 EVEN SHORTER ATTENTION SPANS
The evening entertainment magazine shows, from veteran Entertainment Tonight (ET) to new guy TMZ (Tee-Em-Zee of course) by way of Inside Edition and countless others, are now so jump-cutty and frenzied they're impossible to watch.
Mary Hart on ET, bless, has been presenting the show forever.. well, since 1989, when Sky Movies started to show it here. She sat alongside John Tesh, a man with a face that looked like it had been hit with a pan - and with a nifty sideline in Richard Clayderman-stylee naff piano music. The two of them read out links and the show was nice to everyone.
Not now. John is long gone, some shouting man with no appreciable personality is there. Mary doesn't look any older than she did two decades ago, just tighter and... er, bigger. As in the Botox and surgery to her face, US-TV-Enormo-Hair and fixed grin makes her head look massive.
But now each shot lasts a second of two, even when a presenter is talking, the camera constantly cutting and zooming. The reports are even worse - the word 'soundbite' being too long for most clips. They did a 'summer movie preview' and I swear there wasn't a single entire line of dialogue in the whole thing. How are you supposed to judge a film if they cut so fast between clips you've no idea what it looks like?
(The answer, oh Blogateers, is - of course - da yung'uns like it, and you look things like that up on the web nowadays. But I don't care. It's like watching bits of broken crockery in a blender - bouncy and noisy and pointless)
TMZ has the novelty of (a) being based on a website; and (b) pretending to be a documentary, with 'journos' pitching ideas to the 'editor', then clips popping up. Very odd. But everything is still in. Tiny. Lit. Tle. Bits. 'n'. Pieces.
2 EVEN MORE ADS
If you thought it wasn't possible to cram in more ads on the already saturated American airwaves, you'd be wrong. Branded segments of programs (that's how the US'ers spell it, without the extra 'me', spelling nerds) like a minty chewing gum sponsoring a bit of the somehow-better-when-in-the-US Soup featuring sweary bits of dialogue from reality shows, telling them to clean their dirty mouths... to even more blatant product placement (an ep of some useless drama thing set entirely in a Subway sarnie shop), it's all there.
3 EVEN MORE REPEATS
Most new shows are on twice a week, an 'encore' showing in primetime some other day, usually low-rated weekends, to boost numbers and save money.
4 EVEN LONGER SHOWS
NBC's The Biggest Loser is two hours long now. The American Idol results show, which is basically 5 minutes of 'you've won! you haven't!' is an hour long, sometimes 90 minutes, in addition to the two hour main show. The 'season finale' of Celebrity Apprentice (Joan Rivers AND her daughter!) lasted THREE WHOLE HOURS.
Jesus.
5 EVEN MORE IRRITATING TRAILERS
Especially, but not exclusively, on cable stations, a box will pop up with clips, animations, teasers, graphics and captions in the corner of the screen after each break, trailing the next show, or the next episode of this show, or some other show altogether. Countdown clocks to new episodes or series also dominate the screen, especially on TLC which seems to specialise in shows about people who have lots of kids. Sextuplets, 14 kids in total, whatever - just screaming children and shouting parents.
6 EVEN ODDER ADS
The recession means the ads for Viagra, Cialis and other medication seem to dominate even more, with their comedy list of side effects. A pill to 'reduce gas' has a huge list of problems it could cause including 'anal leakage'. So you don't fart but you shit yourself. Champion.
Monday, 11 May 2009
Founding a tv company
So with all the bad news swirling about, I was talking to a friend who said how lucky I was to run my own company, and have the 'stability' of doing so for years. This is lucky year 13 for my company (sort of) so he might have had a point.
But then I thought back to how it all started, and the night it nearly didn't happen.
I had cosied up to a senior exec at a big independent producer. It wasn't her job to add to the portfolio of mainly youthy, mainly entertainment shows this company made - and made very well - but she said she could help.
I'd got in via a guy who worked for me, who'd gone for a job interview in a period of unemployment, turned up a bit worse for wear but made an impression anyway. So the two of us went to see her, were kept waiting for ages - and we'd been to the pub so were a bit, er, the worse for wear. My mate wanted to walk out, I wanted to wait and see... well, anyway, she turned up, met us, chatted, introduced us to the bosses and we came to a deal to set up a joint venture company.
So I meet their head of new business, and we get on well. He works out a deal, we agree terms, and all that needs to happen is that this guy meets my other mate, who I'll be forming the business with.
Now this friend was easily my best mate in London, and it's fair to say we got on incredibly well despite being very different characters. We'd worked together well in the last job, despite the inevitable ups and downs of working with friends. And he was as enthused as me at the idea of setting up our own thing.
I decide it'd be good to meet in a pub, and off to Victoria Park me and my mate went as it was next to New Business Guy's (NBG for briefness) house. It turns out NBG was a drinker. Oh yes. A VERY big, VERY fast drinker, the sort who drinks half a pint in a sip. I'm quite a drinker, but pints of beer I find hard to drink quickly. My mate, however, is a legend when it comes to boozing, someone who could drink solidly for 36 hours and seem just slightly tired at the end of it. He could drink ANYONE under the table, under the ground or under anything ever.
The two of them are getting on OK, but the drinking is accelerating, and it's obvious my mate isn't exactly enamoured by NBG. "Twat" was his one-word judgement when NBG went off for a piss. "Quite an, um, character" was NBG's judgement as my mate went off to pee, rolling his eyes. I don't think tall, posh, clever NBG had ever met a tattooed, long-haired, leather-jacketed, burly bearded biker guy before. He seemed to view my mate - someone crucial to the business we were setting up - as some sort of amusement that would shock the oh-so-trendy types populating the parent company.
Things got worse. I tried to keep up and felt very ill. The subject of private lives was brought up, my mate fiercely protective of his... NBG seeminlgly yearning for more danger and edge than his lovely nice safe wife-kid-house-big job life was offering.
I was getting sicker and sicker as the two of them got drunker and drunker. They even arm wrestled at one point. I have no idea who won as I went off to vomit copiously. I got back to the table and they were both mute, arms folded, drinking shorts. I said I must've had something bad to eat and would have to go home. Goaded by NBG, my mate stayed and had more shorts. I watched from outside, having managed to grab a life-giving cup of tea from the jellied eel shop next to the pub (hey it was 1997, they still existed in Victoria Park Village)
My mate stumbled out on his own as I watched NBG asleep on the pub table. We wandered off, deciding to walk to Stratford where he lived. We walked through what is now the 2012 Olympic site but was then just wasteland with warehouses, barking dogs and skanky drug addicts slumped in corners. Now this I'd have considered scary except (a) my mate could more than handle himself, even when a bit pished; and (b) I was more concerned with him saying over and over again he couldn't work for that... well, insert every rude word ever here.
I pleaded and cajoled, seeing my dream slip away of a company I owned a stake in, guaranteed funding for a bit, the excitement of working with one of the biggest and most prestigious indies. But to no avail. We got to his place, ordered pizzas, drank booze and decided that was that.
I stumbled into a cab home at 2am, depressed and confused and drunk and ill, the worst night of my career so far.
Next morning I had a 10am meeting with NBG and boy did I feel rough. I was expecting exactly the same negative reaction from him, and on my way in I planned a speech saying how I'd decided to stay where I was after all.
NBG greeted me with "well, what a night!" and then said how wonderful he thought my mate was, how great things were going to be, and how he was looking forward to another "session" on the booze.
Gulp.
In my weakened state I nodded feebly, filled in the forms and went off to Stratford.
I knocked on my mate's door not sure what to do or say. He greeted me cheerily as he ate a slice of cold pizza. "What a shitty night!", he said, laughing.
Er...
So I started on my spiel of how NBG seemed fine with everything (a raised eyebrow there) but I know my mate wasn't keen to work with him and I understand that and I-
My mate stopped me in my tracks. "As long as I never have to deal with the twat I'm fine. The bastard we work for now is worse."
And with that he signed the documents and our company was born. Six months later, my mate - still without ever having dealt with NBG at all - met a lovely American lady, decided to get hitched and emigrate, and we went our separate ways business-wise.
My old mate now runs his successful own company Stateside. NBG left the parent company at some point, has surfaced in many different forms in telly and the interweb, and still likes a pint or several drunk at lightning speed.
And I don't do lager any more.
But then I thought back to how it all started, and the night it nearly didn't happen.
I had cosied up to a senior exec at a big independent producer. It wasn't her job to add to the portfolio of mainly youthy, mainly entertainment shows this company made - and made very well - but she said she could help.
I'd got in via a guy who worked for me, who'd gone for a job interview in a period of unemployment, turned up a bit worse for wear but made an impression anyway. So the two of us went to see her, were kept waiting for ages - and we'd been to the pub so were a bit, er, the worse for wear. My mate wanted to walk out, I wanted to wait and see... well, anyway, she turned up, met us, chatted, introduced us to the bosses and we came to a deal to set up a joint venture company.
So I meet their head of new business, and we get on well. He works out a deal, we agree terms, and all that needs to happen is that this guy meets my other mate, who I'll be forming the business with.
Now this friend was easily my best mate in London, and it's fair to say we got on incredibly well despite being very different characters. We'd worked together well in the last job, despite the inevitable ups and downs of working with friends. And he was as enthused as me at the idea of setting up our own thing.
I decide it'd be good to meet in a pub, and off to Victoria Park me and my mate went as it was next to New Business Guy's (NBG for briefness) house. It turns out NBG was a drinker. Oh yes. A VERY big, VERY fast drinker, the sort who drinks half a pint in a sip. I'm quite a drinker, but pints of beer I find hard to drink quickly. My mate, however, is a legend when it comes to boozing, someone who could drink solidly for 36 hours and seem just slightly tired at the end of it. He could drink ANYONE under the table, under the ground or under anything ever.
The two of them are getting on OK, but the drinking is accelerating, and it's obvious my mate isn't exactly enamoured by NBG. "Twat" was his one-word judgement when NBG went off for a piss. "Quite an, um, character" was NBG's judgement as my mate went off to pee, rolling his eyes. I don't think tall, posh, clever NBG had ever met a tattooed, long-haired, leather-jacketed, burly bearded biker guy before. He seemed to view my mate - someone crucial to the business we were setting up - as some sort of amusement that would shock the oh-so-trendy types populating the parent company.
Things got worse. I tried to keep up and felt very ill. The subject of private lives was brought up, my mate fiercely protective of his... NBG seeminlgly yearning for more danger and edge than his lovely nice safe wife-kid-house-big job life was offering.
I was getting sicker and sicker as the two of them got drunker and drunker. They even arm wrestled at one point. I have no idea who won as I went off to vomit copiously. I got back to the table and they were both mute, arms folded, drinking shorts. I said I must've had something bad to eat and would have to go home. Goaded by NBG, my mate stayed and had more shorts. I watched from outside, having managed to grab a life-giving cup of tea from the jellied eel shop next to the pub (hey it was 1997, they still existed in Victoria Park Village)
My mate stumbled out on his own as I watched NBG asleep on the pub table. We wandered off, deciding to walk to Stratford where he lived. We walked through what is now the 2012 Olympic site but was then just wasteland with warehouses, barking dogs and skanky drug addicts slumped in corners. Now this I'd have considered scary except (a) my mate could more than handle himself, even when a bit pished; and (b) I was more concerned with him saying over and over again he couldn't work for that... well, insert every rude word ever here.
I pleaded and cajoled, seeing my dream slip away of a company I owned a stake in, guaranteed funding for a bit, the excitement of working with one of the biggest and most prestigious indies. But to no avail. We got to his place, ordered pizzas, drank booze and decided that was that.
I stumbled into a cab home at 2am, depressed and confused and drunk and ill, the worst night of my career so far.
Next morning I had a 10am meeting with NBG and boy did I feel rough. I was expecting exactly the same negative reaction from him, and on my way in I planned a speech saying how I'd decided to stay where I was after all.
NBG greeted me with "well, what a night!" and then said how wonderful he thought my mate was, how great things were going to be, and how he was looking forward to another "session" on the booze.
Gulp.
In my weakened state I nodded feebly, filled in the forms and went off to Stratford.
I knocked on my mate's door not sure what to do or say. He greeted me cheerily as he ate a slice of cold pizza. "What a shitty night!", he said, laughing.
Er...
So I started on my spiel of how NBG seemed fine with everything (a raised eyebrow there) but I know my mate wasn't keen to work with him and I understand that and I-
My mate stopped me in my tracks. "As long as I never have to deal with the twat I'm fine. The bastard we work for now is worse."
And with that he signed the documents and our company was born. Six months later, my mate - still without ever having dealt with NBG at all - met a lovely American lady, decided to get hitched and emigrate, and we went our separate ways business-wise.
My old mate now runs his successful own company Stateside. NBG left the parent company at some point, has surfaced in many different forms in telly and the interweb, and still likes a pint or several drunk at lightning speed.
And I don't do lager any more.
Thursday, 7 May 2009
Fish News!
Let's ignore all the bad news about telly right now, and here's one of my Anecdotages from The Far Far Distant Past, a world where big companies spent lots of money on channels no-one watches.
(Like the channel amusingly called Watch today, hoho)
Here's when I was in charge of news for a day.
So it was the silly cable channel I was Head of Stupid Ideas for. I was in really early, for impress-the-boss-early-on-in-your-contract sort of reasons. I mean, 8am in tellyland, it might as well have been midnight.
Boss wanders in, flapping and yacking to Head of Programmes/Programming about random tabloidy things.
He sidles up to me and says he's fackin' bored with the noos (always made me smile, how a newspaper man couldn't pronounce news), go on, think up somethin' stooopid to make the nooos more interestin'.
I have to say here the news was three minutes of a person reading the news from a foot-pedal operated autocue, rarely with any clips (they cost money) just the occasional still (paid for by the newspaper group wot owned the channel). It was Dullsville Street, Boringtown, Bland County.
I can't remember how or why - this was quite a while ago - but I suggested how about the news presented by a goldfish, with thought bubbles popping up with short, snappy captioned comments. I'd like to think this flash of genius (ahem) was spontaneous or off-the-cuff, but it probably wasn't. I remember having a big book of ideas and being a swotty teacher's pet-type, writing things up I thought might work.
(Long since ditched that, btw)
Anyway, boss said "Bingo. Gerrit on air in an hour", news reader man sitting one desk away from me scowled at me with venom - he was about to be replaced by a 10p pet - and the head of programming/programmes chortled to himself, no doubt thinking about the headlines in the papers the next day.
I then got a cab to the local pet shop (not easy to find in the pre-Google days), bought a fish, a bowl, a little shiny arch for the bowl, some gravel and some food (hey, I know how to prepare), and I was back in the office 30 mins later.
We didn't hit the hour deadline - we had to type in news for bubbles to pop up, and find a nice bubbly watery sound track, it took time. News reader was pleased to be typing the stuff up; less so when the boss came over and stuck a sticky label to his jacket saying "Executive Producer, Pet Division (Small Fish Dept)"
Anyway, 2 hours later, Britain's Wettest News went live for a trial bulletin. It wasn't actually broadcast, something I've just remembered, slightly making this anecdote pointless, but it's a blog typed up LIVE AND DIRECT (insert Sky News whoosh here) so these things happen.
And, you know, it was funny. BLUB-BLUB-BLUB - POP! - thought bubble… PING! BLUB-BLUB-BLUB - POP! - another one. The fish behaved itself, the tabloid execs all chortled, and "we're on our way to h'another television triumph" the boss announced, patting me on the back.
I went to grab a sandwich, returning as they set up for the bulletin. The boss was even more thrilled when I said we could just film the fish for five minutes and then use the same footage every day, meaning he could flog the camera.
Only one small item. Our newsreading star, under the harsh tv lights, had… er, kicked the watery bucket literally minutes before air. Someone - surely Executive Producer, Pet Division (Small Fish Dept) - had forgotten to move it.
The boss was mortified. "Get another one, an heir and an spare!", he commanded, and I went to my desk to pick up my pass and the ten poonds for the taxi. Just then head of programming/programmes came over. The cost of the computer stuff to do the captions worked out five times dearer than just filming a bloke on a desk. And the bloke on the desk was the nephew of someone High Up in the company, and somewhat unhappy at his new role. And being replaced by a small creature with a seven-second memory span.
The idea was quietly dropped. My boss was soon onto other things, like why we showed the same ads every commercial break (answer: no advertisers) and why the psychic woman always seemed to be talking to the same people every night on her live phone in (answer: only a few viewers, plus most of the calls were the poor staff working on the show, as otherwise it would fall off air).
Anyway, thought it might make a change from the current bad news flooding tellyland. (Insert gag about news and flooding here).
*Oh, yes, ITV cancels The South Bank Show - well, I saw the one about William Goldman, superb programme and great subject, and there were NO ads in it, just trailers for other ITV shows. It wasn't sponsored by anyone. When it finished and was followed by boxing highlights - way to segway between items, ITV! - there were 7 ads, including one for kebab-flavour Pot Noodle. Lord Melvyn of Bragg's flagship show, ABC1 audience, no ads during, Pot Noodle ad after - ITV SOOO wanted this show dead.
**Oh (ii), in Future TV News, the government replied to my email about product placement (see below). Love to say it was a specific, detailed response but alas not. A cut-n-paste jobbie with no ref to my lovely idea of using prod-place money to fund pub-serv progs. Oh well.
(Like the channel amusingly called Watch today, hoho)
Here's when I was in charge of news for a day.
So it was the silly cable channel I was Head of Stupid Ideas for. I was in really early, for impress-the-boss-early-on-in-your-contract sort of reasons. I mean, 8am in tellyland, it might as well have been midnight.
Boss wanders in, flapping and yacking to Head of Programmes/Programming about random tabloidy things.
He sidles up to me and says he's fackin' bored with the noos (always made me smile, how a newspaper man couldn't pronounce news), go on, think up somethin' stooopid to make the nooos more interestin'.
I have to say here the news was three minutes of a person reading the news from a foot-pedal operated autocue, rarely with any clips (they cost money) just the occasional still (paid for by the newspaper group wot owned the channel). It was Dullsville Street, Boringtown, Bland County.
I can't remember how or why - this was quite a while ago - but I suggested how about the news presented by a goldfish, with thought bubbles popping up with short, snappy captioned comments. I'd like to think this flash of genius (ahem) was spontaneous or off-the-cuff, but it probably wasn't. I remember having a big book of ideas and being a swotty teacher's pet-type, writing things up I thought might work.
(Long since ditched that, btw)
Anyway, boss said "Bingo. Gerrit on air in an hour", news reader man sitting one desk away from me scowled at me with venom - he was about to be replaced by a 10p pet - and the head of programming/programmes chortled to himself, no doubt thinking about the headlines in the papers the next day.
I then got a cab to the local pet shop (not easy to find in the pre-Google days), bought a fish, a bowl, a little shiny arch for the bowl, some gravel and some food (hey, I know how to prepare), and I was back in the office 30 mins later.
We didn't hit the hour deadline - we had to type in news for bubbles to pop up, and find a nice bubbly watery sound track, it took time. News reader was pleased to be typing the stuff up; less so when the boss came over and stuck a sticky label to his jacket saying "Executive Producer, Pet Division (Small Fish Dept)"
Anyway, 2 hours later, Britain's Wettest News went live for a trial bulletin. It wasn't actually broadcast, something I've just remembered, slightly making this anecdote pointless, but it's a blog typed up LIVE AND DIRECT (insert Sky News whoosh here) so these things happen.
And, you know, it was funny. BLUB-BLUB-BLUB - POP! - thought bubble… PING! BLUB-BLUB-BLUB - POP! - another one. The fish behaved itself, the tabloid execs all chortled, and "we're on our way to h'another television triumph" the boss announced, patting me on the back.
I went to grab a sandwich, returning as they set up for the bulletin. The boss was even more thrilled when I said we could just film the fish for five minutes and then use the same footage every day, meaning he could flog the camera.
Only one small item. Our newsreading star, under the harsh tv lights, had… er, kicked the watery bucket literally minutes before air. Someone - surely Executive Producer, Pet Division (Small Fish Dept) - had forgotten to move it.
The boss was mortified. "Get another one, an heir and an spare!", he commanded, and I went to my desk to pick up my pass and the ten poonds for the taxi. Just then head of programming/programmes came over. The cost of the computer stuff to do the captions worked out five times dearer than just filming a bloke on a desk. And the bloke on the desk was the nephew of someone High Up in the company, and somewhat unhappy at his new role. And being replaced by a small creature with a seven-second memory span.
The idea was quietly dropped. My boss was soon onto other things, like why we showed the same ads every commercial break (answer: no advertisers) and why the psychic woman always seemed to be talking to the same people every night on her live phone in (answer: only a few viewers, plus most of the calls were the poor staff working on the show, as otherwise it would fall off air).
Anyway, thought it might make a change from the current bad news flooding tellyland. (Insert gag about news and flooding here).
*Oh, yes, ITV cancels The South Bank Show - well, I saw the one about William Goldman, superb programme and great subject, and there were NO ads in it, just trailers for other ITV shows. It wasn't sponsored by anyone. When it finished and was followed by boxing highlights - way to segway between items, ITV! - there were 7 ads, including one for kebab-flavour Pot Noodle. Lord Melvyn of Bragg's flagship show, ABC1 audience, no ads during, Pot Noodle ad after - ITV SOOO wanted this show dead.
**Oh (ii), in Future TV News, the government replied to my email about product placement (see below). Love to say it was a specific, detailed response but alas not. A cut-n-paste jobbie with no ref to my lovely idea of using prod-place money to fund pub-serv progs. Oh well.
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