This man's a genius...

Rob Newman. You've been away too long my friend. A teenage hero of mine from the days of 'The Mary Whitehouse Experience' and 'Newman and Baddiel', Rob(ert) decided to shun the comedy limelight many moons ago to concentrate on novel writing and lead a generally more politically active lifestyle. Recently he returned to our screens with his sublime 'History of Oil' stand-up show for More 4, and he's just had a six part series commissioned for BBC4 called the 'The History of the World Backwards', which goes out at the end of October. What am I, his friggin' biography? No, just a fan, happy to see him back and making me laugh once again. I've just spent half an hour listening to an edition of 'Genius' on Radio 4, where Mr. Newman was Dave Gorman's special guest, and the adjudicator of whether or not the ideas presented were really genius. And he was brilliant. Clever, witty, insightful, majestical. It was just like old times. Except Snap aren't number one with 'Rhythm is a Dancer' and I haven't got any Maths homework to finish.

Really? I mean, really?

Apparently Stephen Fry is involved in a new two-part documentary called 'HIV and Me'. During the series he'll return to a London Aids ward where he used to visit friends, meet up with his first love from Cambridge, and take an HIV test himself. Apparently, and this is the bit of the press release which caught my eye, 'the results of the test will be kept under wraps until the programme is aired'. Well, fingers crossed then, eh, Steve? I mean has it really come to this? A serious, emotive and potentially hard-hitting documentary about an incredibly sensitive subject, is tagged with, with, well - what exactly are they trying to say? Tune into the show to see if Stephen Fry has or hasn't got HIV? I'm suprised they haven't opened a phone-line, where viewers can take a fifty-fifty vote on the outcome.

Nice things were said (or in this case written)

After feeling a bit down concerning certain reviews for EWFH, I've managed to find a couple more which were really quite nice. First there's this from the Evening Standard...

PICK OF THE NIGHT
Earth, Wind for Hire 11pm, Radio 2
As one of the nation’s most indemand comedians and actors, it’s hard to see how Bill Bailey found the time to make this little gem, but we can be very glad he did. The musical comic pays an affectionate homage to tribute bands, beginning with a look at the origins of what has become a big business.

Yes, how did he find the time? Then there's this from Edd McCracken in the Scottish Sunday Herald...

WHEN it comes to tribute bands, forget the music the name's the thing. Brickies from Croydon and dinner ladies from Kirkcaldy morphing into superstars are secondary to how much fun you can have with a band's moniker. Any documentary called Earth, Wind For Hire (Wednesday, Radio 2, 11pm) understands this perfectly. Real comedian Bill Bailey opened the half-hour with a barrage of pun-filled tribute band names. Pink Floyd become Floydian Slip, Marc Bolan fronts T.Rextasy, and Blondie are Once More Into The Bleach. A Dutch Queen tribute band missed the point and named themselves We Are Not Queen.

In this jaunty perusal of the tribute phenomenon, Bjorn Again founder Rod Leissle revealed his ethos.
"The name should refer to the band they are supposed to sound like, " he said, "as well as giving the audience a hint as to what the act will be like." For his Abba tribute band this principle ruled out some wonderful names. Abbattoir didn't make the cut, while Abbaoriginie was problematic on account of the fact that there aren't many natural blonde native Australians. But Leissle's own theory would suggest that as well as producing eerily flawless versions of the Swedish supergroup's hits, Bjorn Again are out to win some souls for Christ too.

To the sceptic, these bands are what supermarket cava is to Grand Cru Champagne a cheap, wan imitation but Earth, Wind For Hire was told with all the bonhomie of an Abba hit and could break down the resistance of the snarkiest NME reader. Bailey wisely didn't make any excuse for their inherent naffness.
Like many cultural violations of the past 20 years, the baby boomers are to blame for tribute bands.
Thanks to their obsession with 1960s music and their suffocating dominance of the artistic radar, looking back finally became acceptable in the 1980s. It's no surprise that in the history of tribute bands the Bootleg Beatles were the first. They arose in 1979 from the wreckage of a West End show, Beatlemania, and are still on the road. So the baby boomers who were turned off by punk and indifferent to New Wave, flocked to the cosy womb of nostalgia and spawned a massive industry. Today there are more than 80 Pink Floyd tribute acts, 38 faux Queens, five different versions of Bjorn Again (that's right, they're a franchise), not to mention Stars In Their Eyes.

And before you all turn your sneering faces away, remember this: Nirvana only agreed to headline the Reading festival in 1992 on the condition that Bjorn Again were also on the bill. There were many lumberjack-shirted grunge fans standing with clods of mud in their hands waiting to pelt the antipodean impostors, Bailey included, until they saw Kurt Cobain et al standing by the stage lapping it up. And Earth, Wind For Hire had the same effect it was confoundingly enjoyable.

What I like about this review is how Edd seems to imply that he really wanted to hate it, but just found it so darn enjoyable that he couldn't. That's really something. Add to this another mention in The Independent and a four star review in Heat, yeah that's right, then we've managed to get some serious press coverage out of this (which I don't doubt is down to Bill. His name attached to it has given it much kudos) and for our first effort, we should be very proud. Now all we've got to do is try to sell another one (or two).

Comedy of the Week? Really?

Just watched the first episode of the new BBC1 sitcom 'Outnumbered'. God, it was tedious, perhaps notable only for the bit where the girl asked 'What's a hypocrite?' Well since the show was co-created by Andy Hamilton, a man who once vowed to never work for BBC1 again after the way the channel arsed around with 'Trevor's World of Sport', the answer would be Andy Hamilton.

'Outnumbered' - presumably referring to the amount of funny lines surrounded by the rest of the script. And soon to refer to the number of actors involved verses the number of viewers watching.

'Matt Damon!'

Watched 'The Bourne Ultimatum' today. Class. Really superb. In fact rewatched the other two over the last few days and it's just a really great spy trilogy. But for all the driving cars of buildings, surviving 90 mph traffic accidents, leaping off rooftops and such like, easily the most far fetched bit was when Bourne bought a pay as you go mobile and within seconds it was connected to a network and working perfectly. Er, not in my experience.

Oh yeah, and a Guardian journalist gets shot in the head. For some reason I really enjoyed that bit...

'Reasonably enjoyable'

Well, we managed to get a lot of press coverage for our R2 documentary in the end. The show was mentioned, in some capacity, in every major broadsheet, and was singled out as a Pick of the Day in most of them. It was also a RT Choice in the Radio Times. The reviews are also in and, well, they're mixed to say the least. A couple of positive ones, which obviously we'll keep and show to everyone, quite a few that mention the show and specific aspects, but don't really say if they loved or hated it, and a few that are very harsh. Two of which were by women. Not sure if that means anything. This one was from Elizabeth Mahoney in The Guardian

Earth, Wind for Hire (Radio 2), presented by Bill Bailey, takes a long look at tribute bands. It's more of a stare, really, an intense scrutiny lasting four weeks. I know it's summer and the schedules are all a bit empty, but really: four weeks? This could have sat very happily as a one-off documentary, not feeling quite so overstretched. Still, there were some fine moments, mostly in the playful names of tribute bands - my favourite was Once More Into the Bleach, a Blondie emulation - and the jocular mood of postmodern tomfoolery characterising some acts. The Bootleg Beatles once performed Imagine, breaking off so that the fake John Lennon could tell the crowd, "I can't play that - I haven't written it yet." Then there was a stage-door man advising someone asking for Nick Dagger, the lead singer of the Counterfeit Stones: "Now, you do know it's not the real Nick Dagger, don't you?" Bill Bailey's delivery of the script was, disappointingly, a bit wooden, apart from the obvious funny lines. Perhaps it was the thought of three more programmes.

Now, this piece strikes me as a bit odd. It seems to be criticising the fact that this is a four-part documentary, obviously feeling that tribute bands shouldn't warrant such in-depth treatment, but then only reviews the first part. I have no idea if she's heard any of the other shows, but it does seem strange to pour scorn over a series for being too long, but then only mention the first bit. It's like saying I read 'Genesis' and there's like loads more books in there which I haven't read, but this Bible thing's a bit overstretched in my view.

Weird. Particularly when she admits that there were 'some fine moments' in it after all. Well, did you like it or not woman? Have a go at the way Bill reads the script if you must, but let's have a bit of consistency. Reviews like this are so irritating. And then there was this one from everyone's tenth favourite Newsnight Review contributor Miranda Sawyer in The Observer, which is part of a longer rant about the state of R2 documentaries...

Earth, Wind, For Hire, the tribute bands doc, was a case in point. What a hilarious and intriguing topic and what a dull, dull programme. Perhaps it's because Radio 2, for some reason, has decided to stretch the subject over four half-hours rather than the more obvious single hour, but the programme sounded laboured from the start. Bill Bailey, a funny, lively man, must have been given the script late. It's the only excuse for an introduction that intoned: 'We'll be examining why they do what they do and discovering just what it takes to do it well and how they carve out a niche for themselves in what's become an increasingly crowded market.' What is this? A power-point presentation to napping marketing executives? Come on. We're talking tribute bands. Comedy gold, surely?

The problem we seem to encounter with some of these reviewers is whenever you mention Tribute Bands, people think it's just gonna be half an hour of funny names and taking the piss. Indeed, 'funny names' are often the first thing people mention. I started a thread on a website recently to promote the show, and within a couple of posts people were simply posting names of tribute bands (the same was true on the R2 message board). The fact is, these shows were always designed to be something a bit less frivolous. We could quite easily have spent a couple of minutes having Bill simply reel off a list of tribute band names (which is pretty much what Andrew Collins did in his slightly sneering 'Send in the Clones' R4 show from last year) and generally ridicule and belittle everyone, but that's neither fair nor true. These are music based documentaries that seek to celebrate just how good many tribute musicians are. Go and see The Bootleg Beatles. Yes, you'll have fun, yes you'll laugh along with the postmodern quips and pastiche of it all, but most of all you'll come away saying how good they were. Of course we play up the humour as and when we feel it's required, but you're not gonna get very far on R2 if that's all you do. Unfortunately, some people just can't see past that.

We realise, all of this has been a very sharp learning curve for us. Our first music documentary. We were specifically told not to 'funny it up' too much, for various reasons, but we were always adamant that we wouldn't simply take the mick. It's true that we would have loved Bill to have been more involved, and I'm sure the show would have been stronger as a result, but we have to accept that in the end he read the script as if it were just another voiceover gig. That's the problem - certain criticisms are all the harder to take when there's a grain of truth to them.

'You see, this is why we should hate kids'

I'm very protective about my love for 'The Simpsons'. Rabidly proprietorial, you might say. Because I've been watching the show for nearly seventeen years now. Yep, I was there at the start (well, almost) and can still remember the joy of watching that first Christmas special with my folks. We were hooked instantly and in terms of TV, it's given me more hours of pleasure than anything else, made all the sweeter by the fact that many of those moments were shared with my family. I really do think 'being there' during the classic years of The Simpsons is the closest my generation will get to the thrill of hearing the latest Beatles single or watching Ali fight live. Yes, it's that good.

And whenever I see the latest rent-a-celeb on some clip show raving about how great the show is, I think yeah, but I was there first so neh-neh-neh. It's quite a reasoned and philosophical viewpoint, I know.

Anyway, after years of would they or wouldn't they, they finally have. Done a Simpsons movie, that is, and I went to see it today. With my folks. And it was great. A true work of art, beautiful animation, crammed full of corking gags and a plot mad enough to justify it's big screen outing. My favourite joke features the desire for either alcohol or prayer at a time of crisis - you'll know it when you see it. And, of course, you'll be singing the Spider-Pig song for weeks.

And yet... there's a nagging voice at the back of my mind, sounding uncannily like Marge, that says 'I just wonder what it would have been like if they'd made it during the heyday?' Because, great though it is, some bits either fall flat or feel like they've been done already on TV. Bart's bonding with Ned Flanders and Lisa developing a crush on a young environmentalist in particular feel all too familar.

But, as many reviews have remarked, if the worst you can say about The Simpsons movie is that it plays like a couple of really funny TV episodes back to back, then that's some movie.

Go see. Now.