Spent today in a recording studio, second day of a thing which has sort-of already been announced but which I’m not going to say what it is. It went well, everyone was marvellous and I drank far too much black coffee.
Speaking of things being recorded, though, I can now begin plugging stuff for 2010; the first being the audio tale Jago & Litefoot: The Spirit Trap, as announced in Doctor Who Magazine. Out in June as part of a ‘Series One’ box set. Litefoot and Jago are, respectively, a professor of medicine and a theatrical entrepreneur, first seen many years ago in the Doctor Who adventure The Talons Of Weng-Chiang and more recently heard in the recent, absolutely terrific, audio adventure The Mahogany Murderers. They’re portrayed by Trevor Baxter and Christopher Benjamin (who was a terrific Falstaff at the Globe a couple of years ago).
It was written in late November last year and recorded on December 18th, so follow this link here to read the relevant blog. That’s a pretty fast turnaround, which suits me, as it means there’s less time for procrastination and vacillation. In the story, our heroes investigate the phenomena of table-tapping...
As ‘research’ I read Matthew Sweet’s fantastic book on the Victorians, which was utterly useless for my purposes as Jago & Litefoot is set very much within the fog-and-gaslight world of the twentieth century’s romanticised version of that era; the world of Sherlock Holmes and Fu Manchu. I also read The Table Rappers by Ronald Pearsall, which was a useful, if awkwardly-written, account of nineteenth century spiritualism, séances, clairvoyance and so on; largely from a sceptical viewpoint, though Pearsall (bizarrely) concludes that a few practitioners, such as D D Home, were probably genuine. Well, I suppose it’s good to keep an open mind...
