My favourite stand-up comic is Stewart Lee, and one of his funniest routines is this one in 2005 at The Stand in Glasgow, where he takes on Braveheart and the full might of Scottish myth. For a long time I didn’t know where or when the performance took place, but through the magic of Youtube I found a video of the full set, of which the Braveheart segment is only a clip.
So here’s the Braveheart clip, as a taster in case you’ve never heard of Lee, followed by a complete video of the set. He’s a bit like Marmite, people tend to either love or hate him.
Moscow has banned a parade in honour of the Austrian winner of this year’s Eurovision Song Contest on the grounds that “it would provoke clashes between ‘gays and their opponents'”. Heartwarming to see the authorities are mindful of the danger to gay Russians from a homophobic society, or even those who champion the right to freedom of speech and assembly.
I usually avoid the Eurovision Song Contest, but here is Conchita Wurst’s winning number. If it gets Putin’s knickers in a twist, then it gets my vote.
I renewed the domain subscription for Beautiful Railway Bridge today. I’d been putting if off till the last minute – the lights would have gone out tomorrow – for several reasons. One is irritation at being being bombarded with reminders by WordPress when I knew the deadline and didn’t want to think about it until absolutely necessary. And part of the reason for not wanting to think about it was a reluctance to question whether writing a blog is worth the effort.
Yes, I get a great deal of pleasure from making a good blog post. But there’s always the fight with the worst broadband service in Britain, the faff of putting in all the links, and the maintenance involved in making over a thousand posts accessible and easy to find. And most of all there’s the self-imposed guilt when I don’t post on a daily basis.
The maintenance thingy is a shambles. And the images are scattered between this and an unused blog, when I really want them all in one place. It will take literally years to get everything sorted out, but that’s me in perfectionist mode – it might be better to ignore the trait as much as possible. Knowing where everything is probably matters only to me.
Which is a roundabout way of saying I’m still here and attempting once more to post every day. Ish.
Delia Derbyshire is most well-known, if she’s known at all, as the musician who transcribed Ron Grainer’s theme tune for the first Doctor Who into the electronic form we all remember. But she was also a pioneer in electronic music, producing effects on tape that weren’t replicated until synthesizers were invented.
Over the weekend, I’ve been blissfully wallowing in the 50th Anniversary programs, centred around The Day of the Doctor. It’s available on the BBC iPlayer for another 6 days. Just as interesting were a drama about the inception of Doctor Who in 1963, An Adventure in Space and Time, and a documentary about the Doctor Who phenomenon, Me, You and Doctor Who.
From the latter two I learned more about Delia Derbyshire, which prompted me to search out her other work. Here is her version of the theme tune. She was apparently much irked by later producers wanting to tweak it – she couldn’t understand why it should be changed on a whim.
Derbyshire should have had equal credit with Ron Grainer, who wanted it as well, but the BBC Radiophonic Workshop refused to credit the work of individual employees. This frustration was one of the reasons she left in 1973 after 11 years.
The soundtrack for a BBC documentary about the Tuareg people of N. Africa, Blue Veils & Golden Sands, is another example of her innovative genius. She used a bog-standard metal BBC lampshade to get the vibration effects, giving it a whack, then cutting off the first bit of the sound.
There was also some theatre work and a collaboration with David Vorhaus in a band called White Noise. In this 1969 track, Love Without Sounds, you can hear what an interesting singer she is.
Derbyshire left London in the early Seventies and gave up music, apart from a brief period in the Nineties. This is a BBC radio play about her life.
And here’s a Radio Scotland interview, in three parts, from 1997. She sounds so young.
Finally, here’s a clip from Me, You and Doctor Who, as well as some of her other music.
I’m very pleased that her work on the theme tune is at last recognized in the credits for The Day of The Doctor. Earlier recognition might have laid the foundation for a long and productive career.
What if there were a clockwork family who lived in the house by the railroad from Edward Hopper’s painting? That’s the starting point for this odd and disturbing film.
This is beautiful, a musical English love story narrated through the poems of John Betjeman, and starring Nigel Hawthorne. No dialogue, just the background sounds, music, and Betjeman’s poetry. Irresistible.
This year’s BBC Reith Lectures are on the subject of that mysterious place, the art world. I’ve never quite understood how it works. Fortunately, Grayson Perry is here to tell us, based on his 30 year career as a successful potter.
He’s an engaging speaker, direct, honest, witty, cynical, yet serious about art. The titles of the four lectures – Democracy Has Bad Taste, Beating The Bounds, Nice Rebellion, Welcome In!, I Found Myself In The Art World – let you know he’s going to places less honest commentators wouldn’t touch with a barge pole. It’s subversive and affectionate at the same time.
Perry gives the lectures in his alter-ego as Claire, but since this is radio, it falls to Sue Lawley to describe his frocks, all designed by his students.
Beautiful Railway Bridge of the Silvery Tay 