Monday

Monday

Jeremy Corbyn has decoys. It’s an odd thing, wandering around the Labour party conference. Every now and then you think, hello, that’s Jeremy Corbyn over there. But then you look at again and discover that, no, it’s just another chap of a similar age with a similar beard and a similar dress sense. But there are a lot of them about. At least twenty. I would take photos but that would be intrusive, and we are gathered together in the spirit of inclusivity, not intrusitivity!

As well as spotting Jeremy Corbyn’s dopplegangers, I was also attending conference. First was Ellie Reeves delivering the report of Britain’s global role. She gave a brief history lesson on Britain receiving refugees, which included the people on the Windrush apparently. Then she went on the awfulness of the Tories. Then was Glenis Wilmot, who said the ‘yes’ campaign should concentrate on what would happen if we left the EU, how awful it would be, and we should add emotion to our argument.

Then there was Alan Johnson, beloved Labour veteran and occasional star of the best reason to scrap the license fee, This Week. If we leave EU, he said, then Scotland will leave the UK. The social dimension to the EU needs to be enhanced not diminished. We may have to use EU rights to fight the TU bill.

What I was hoping to hear was the answer to the question of what our counterargument is going to be to the ‘no’ argument. Because they are just going to repeat ad infinitum that hundreds of thousands of people are coming into the UK every year, stealing jobs, driving down wages, adding pressure to housing, schools and hospitals and so on, and that the only way to stop hundreds of thousands of people coming into the UK every year is to leave the EU. But there was no answer.

(I very nearly asked that. But weirdly I didn’t feel like being booed live on television by 1000 delegates. We are together in the spirit of inclusivity and unity! Plus I have no mandate to make an idiot of myself. So I held back. But I think we do have to have a better answer to the UKIP argument than calling anybody who repeats it a bigot or racist. We can’t just argue on the points that we like, we have to win the argument in the areas we don’t like too)

Maria Eagle reminded us of recent great achievements in Sierra Leone and saving refugees in the Mediterranean, even Afghanistan (some would regard that as a mistake, I wouldn’t). Europe is the centre of the world, we need to widen debate. She mentioned she was in favour of a nuclear deterrent but Jeremy had still asked her to be Shad Fo Sec.

Paul Kenny of the GMB was next, we have to be in Europe to protect workers rights, remember who Labour was founded to represent, the clue is in the name (pregnant women?)

(He was dead against sharing a platform with the CBI. I’m not convinced. If we’re making the argument that being in the EU is good for business why would we set ourselves up in opposition to the CBI? If they’re not sharing a platform with us they’ll be sharing a platform with David Cameron.)

Delegates reminded us this would not be a vote on Cameron’s ‘reforms’, we should campaign for a principled, unconditional unequivocal yes. There were no dissenting or even differently nuanced opinions (hence my own reluctance to poop the party).

Diane Abbott, also of everyone’s favourite Thursday night televisual trainwreck This Week, made it clear that outward-looking internationalism is at the heart of the Labour movement. Rather than inward-looking internationalism, presumably. She said she would like to ‘single out’ Yvette Cooper for her work on refugees which is an odd way of saying ‘thank’. She was against intervention in Syria because she does not approve of ill-fated military intervention, and she has clairvoyantly decided it will be ill-fated in advance. She’s not my favourite politician in the world, as you may have gathered, but she was strong on international development and improving the lives of women in poor countries, and more power to her for that.

Next was Hilary Benn, who was a powerful speaker with a very considered turn of phrase, where every word had been thought through. Re: Syria “Each death is a rebuke to the world’. He’s against boots on the ground intervention without a UN security council resolution (on past experience I’m sceptical that anyone will be left to save by the time the UN agrees to act) but he was emphatic that “This has got to stop”. And keen on a Palestinian state.

Jenny Formby was next, briefly saying that Jeremy Corbyn will solve everything, she didn’t go into details how.

Angela Eagle was next (there are two Eagles in the shadow cabinet). Most of her speech was more stuff about how awful the Tories are and how awful the TU bill is. We need a “race to the top” to improve the economy. She says Britain has been leading the world in a green economy (really? I mean, really? Compared to Germany or Sweden?) and says we should work with business but she didn’t go into details. And then her speed ended with “and that’s how we will win a race to the top!” as though she had just explained how.

There were then delegates on the various motions – John Hamett on how we must fight the extension of working hours on Sundays, workers must have a work-life balance – I think he made a very good point that opening for longer hours won’t mean people have more money to spend in shops, it won’t boost economy.

More delegates spoke against the TU bill. Len McCluskey growled that the “Mentality of a one-party state is creeping in” and then gave a VERY ANGRY POETRY RECITAL. I’m sure Emily Dickenson wrote her work to be bellowed in righteous, desk-stabbing fury.

As before, the delegates were all pretty much saying the same thing, no difference of opinion or even nuance. The most memorable moment was when Cathy Atherton got her wheelchair stuck and Jeremy Corbyn and John McDonnell gallantly leapt in to help.

Margaret Beckett gave a short speech on the stability and prosperity annual report. There were no graphs this time, alas, but she thanked Ed Balls for his hard work. Ed Balls! There’s a blast from the past. Bring back Ed Balls I say. He got a huge round of applause, mainly from me.

And then it was time for the speech of our shadow chancellor, John McDonnell. He began by saying he rejected austerity politics, and then asked, rhetorically, what does austerity mean. To my shame I couldn’t help thinking it means (c/o Wikipedia)

In economics, austerity is a set of policies with the aim of reducing government budget deficits. Austerity policies may include spending cuts, tax increases, or a mixture of both.

...but he went with the definition of the Conservative party and the right-wing media, that austerity is and only is spending cuts. And I’m afraid my confidence in him didn’t soar when he said we should ‘pay down the deficit’but I’m sure it was just a slip of the tongue.

Most of his speech was what you’d expect and which no-one would disagree with. A real living wage. Fairer more progressive taxation (fairer AND more progressive). Make multinationals pay their taxes! And – actually I thought this bit was brilliant – we should TEST our plans to make sure they work before implementing them. This is a breakthrough, I think. Politicians actually using the scientific method to find best practice rather than just following ideology and blind faith. So hooray for that.

He went on. We need a national investment bank. New forms of companies, mutualisation. We should review the remit of the bank of England to include other things besides inflation. HMRC needs to modernise and reduce avoidance (they could sort out their website too IMHO). We must have “pragmatic idealism” and – this was another good bit – he wants all the good people who left to come back.

I don’t know. I thought the bit about testing plans was fantastic. And asking good people to come back was also a lovely thing to say. The rest was kind of what you’d expect, for better or for worse. Though there was a weird bit where he said “We don’t need snappy slogans. We need straight talking and honest politics”, which is our snappy slogan.

After we broke for lunch I went off to the fringe for the European Parliamentary Labour Party and S & D Group in the European Parliament – A New Agenda for Social Europe: Building on the Past to Confront an Uncertain Future (capitalisation is the house style). I’d missed the beginning, because of John McDonnell, but it was an interesting ‘bonus feature’ for the earlier EU discussion. Cath Speight re-iterated Paul Kenny’s wish that Labour should not share a platform with the CBI (it’s not part of the motion fortunately) though Alan Johnson said, when asked, he’d be happy to share a platform with anybody who wasn’t trying to grind down the workers (I paraphrase). Mary Liddell of the Telegraph warned us to beware, that ‘yes’ in the referendum is not a foregone conclusion. Alan Johnson stressed we should face head-on the issue of sovereignty and he did thankfully explain how he’d argue against people saying too many people were coming into the country, by pointing out that being in the EU means we take less refugees than we otherwise would (because they can’t get from Calais to Dover) and if we were outside the EU there would be more immigrants coming from outside of Europe, not less. I’m afraid to say not only was I not convinced that argument would sway a UKIP supporter, I wasn’t convinced it would make sense to anyone who was paying attention. We should stay in the EU in order to keep out refugees? It’s topsy-turvy. We need a clearer message than that. And we can’t just pick and choose to argue on the points where we can win. We need a better answer or we will lose.

My next fringe meeting was about UK Music, an area of particular interest to me, not just for old times’ sake but because what applies to UK music applies to the rest of our creative industries. Michael Dugher, who knows how many string sections were on each Beatles record and how they got screwed with the Northern Songs deal (okay he got it slightly wrong but this is not a Beatles trivia competition). His points were that the creative industry is an INDUSTRY and should be treated as such, equal as other industries. We should defend the BBC, it makes a huge contribution to creative industries. Labour is for workers and artists, musicians and writers are WORKERS (Yes!)

James Heath from the BBC – BBC is largest investor in UK creative economy, tune of £2 billion, their focus is not on cutting back but on doing more for less.

A lady from the CBI (I’m sorry, I didn’t get her name) made point that there are new models, crowdfunding, digitisation, consumers more willing to pay for content, creative industry sector is growing by 10% a year (that’s just my Big Finish work TBH) and worth £77 billion (okay maybe not). It is a huge ‘soft power’ influence of UK elsewhere in world.

John Kampfner of the Creative Industries Foundation asked 'How come the fastest-growing sector of UK economy struggles to get its collective voice heard?' It is all that people associate with Britain. When David Cameron went to China he met a Chinese student whose first question to the Prime Minister was ‘when will there be a new series of Sherlock?’ (Because in China they’d lock Moffat up if he didn’t produce a dozen episodes a year. “Write more Sherlock or you never see your family again!”) He went on, we must diversify content to reach a wider audience. One in 11 jobs in UK are in the creative industries. Including me.

I was back in the main hall in time to hear the speech made by our shadow Work and Pensions secretary, Owen Smith. He stressed that those two words, Work and Pensions, would be the words that would lead us back into power. So it was kind of strange that after that, for the whole of his speech, he never mentioned Pensions again. If it was down to me they’d be line one page one of our manifesto (because old people VOTE), but Owen had other stuff to talk about. A “new generation” of Labour. A list of different types of workers Labour represents (no creative industries, no freelancers). More stuff on how the Tories are awful. How Labour will introduce a Proper Living Wage (my capitalisation). And how Labour will build the housing we so desperately need.

That’s another catchphrase that’s entered the lexicon along with spirit of inclusivity and appetite for change. If ever you mention housing it’s the housing we so desperately need. I’ve heard it so many times the next time I play Monopoly I’ll be asking for the housing I so desperately need. I mean, it’s true, it is housing we so desperately need, but once you make it a catchphrase it starts losing its meaning (see: aspirational hardworking families). Excuse me, I'll just have another glass of the wine I so desperately need.

I wish he’d said more (anything) about pensions and not bothered with the dumb jokes. We need to “smash the Tory welfare trap”.

After him was Michael Dugher, giving his speech proper to the main hall (the previous thing was a fringe event). After a round up of recent sport things (lost on me) he moved on to the Tories cutting arts council budgets and council arts budgets when we need sustained investment in arts, culture and ‘grassroots sport’. IMHO sport can look after itself, it has loads of money, but I realise that’s my own personal prejudice for getting picked last for games in 1985 rearing its grudgemental head.

He went on. We need a fundamental rethink to tackle regional disparities and we need more fairness in funding. He’s launching a review, a new plan for publically funded arts and culture.

And the Tories are a “clear and present danger” to the BBC. Narrowing its remit. Cutting it down. Attacking the principle of public sector broadcasting. When £1 of license fee money becomes £2 added to economy.

On the one hand, I loved this. I agree with him totally. I support the BBC and I think if Labour is for anything it is for campaigning for the BBC. But on the other hand, I couldn’t help thinking that the more Labour campaigns for the BBC, the more it will convince Tories and the people who are against the BBC that they are right to think that the BBC is a ‘left-wing’ organisation and that they are right to attack it. But then again, they are already convinced of that 100% so I’m not sure anything that Labour could do could make any difference. Someone has to stand up for the BBC and I’m so glad that Labour are now 100% for it. Because the BBC is our CULTURE and it MAKES US LOADS OF MONEY and it MAKES US LOOK GOOD ABROAD and those are all things that we can’t get, and will never get, anywhere else. It’s another NHS.

After Michael it was time for the treasurer’s report. Keith Vaz warned everyone not to try to leave, he had already had all the doors locked. We learned that the Party while is back in the Red is no longer in the red (I can’t believe they didn’t make that joke, sitting duck) and will be re-opening its diversity fund and local campaigns fund.

Then there was discussion about a change to the rules of the NEC selection. I read the proposal, it made some sense but if you read it closely you could spot areas where it was open to abuse IMHO, so it had to be rejected. All the other proposals, mostly correcting typos in the rules, were passed unanimously. I was so tempted just to stick my hand up as a ‘no’, like shouting out when the vicar asks ‘is there any just cause or impediment?’ at a wedding but sanity prevailed.

After that, a quiet, intimate fringe meeting with Progress to see ideas being pitched about how Labour can help the self-employed – which by 2018 will be more people than are working in the public sector – and so the next time a Labour Works & Pensions secretary makes a speech he should include freelancers and sole traders. The discussion touched on copyright theft which is, of course, a personal axe that I like to grind, so I gave a very very abbreviated version of my 30-minute rant on how we should stop people ripping off our intellectual property, how the default should be that any work is OWNED and not in the public domain, and that anyone who sticks one of my books up on the internet should have their goolies chopped off (I didn’t get to the last bit but it was implied). Peter Kyle MP humoured me with a look of fear in his eyes.

And that was Monday. Tuesday is leader’s speech. Should be interesting, not just in terms of the speech but in terms of the atmosphere and surrounding brouhaha. In the words of a famous Brighton resident - Stay tuned!

That reminds me, I must have a ride on the J-NT bus.

Too Busy Thinking About My Baby

And so this is Christmas, and what have you done...

Well, at last I have a spare moment, so it’s time for a long-overdue blog. I make no excuses, but the short-and-the-tall of it is that I’ve been very busy over the last few months. Terrifically busy. Early starts and late shifts and everything. In fact, since the last blog I’ve written over 4 hours’ worth of scripts, plus rewrites of other scripts, script-edited over half a dozen others, plus a DWM Fact of Fiction, a review, plus all the introductions, synopses and a telesnap commentary for the DWM Missing Episodes – Second Doctor volume 2. Oh, and I started work on another two scripts and wrote an introduction to a reprint of one of my novels. Plus some other bits and bobs I’ve forgotten.

So you might understand why, at the end of the day – whenever in the early hours that may be – I’ve been disinclined to tap out a blog. Plus my life has undergone a fundamental re-assignment of priorities, so blogging has been bumped down the list *.

So what have I missed? Well, I’ve had two Big Finish Doctor Who audios released. The first was a Companion Chronicle called The Ghost in the Machine starring Katy Manning as Jo Grant with Damian Lynch as Benhamin Chikito. It’s a spooky, claustrophobic tale of tape recordings developing a life of their own, a bit Sapphire & Steel, a bit The Stone Tape, and whatever remains must be original. Katy is superb in it, Louise Jameson did a fabulous job directing it, and it seems to have gone down quite well. It’s my last entry in the Companion Chronicles range (which is being brought to an end) and one of my best ones, though what I’m most proud of is the diversity of styles and subjects that I’ve covered, from hard sci-fi to history to comedy to psychological horror to Rod Serling tribute to ghost story.

And I get to name-drop Katy Manning and Louise Jameson in the same paragraph. Jo and Leela. Sometimes my life is like the eight-year old me is having a particularly vivid Doctor Who-themed dream. Maybe that’s what it is.

The Ghost on the Machine can be ordered here. 

The other Big Finish Doctor Who audio was The Space Race, a story set in November 1963, in the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan, then part of the Soviet Union. I wasn’t overwhelmingly confident of my script for this one, to be honest I thought I’d messed it up, but nevertheless it seems to have gone down quite well, for which I give all credit to the stars, Colin Baker and Nicola Bryant, the director Nicholas Briggs, noise wizard Howard Carter and the rest of the cast, particularly Samantha Béart who did a fantastic job brining pathos to an outlandish role. The story deliberately starts off very Quatermass, very switches-and-oscilloscopes, and then does something completely different. There are some serious ideas in there, some cutting edge hard-sci fi (or what I think passes for it!) and I was so proud of each of the three cliff-hangers I was dancing around the room when I wrote them. But a few critics have pointed out that it is, essentially, a bit of a shaggy dog story and I can’t really disagree.

The Space Race can be ordered here. I previously blogged a little about it here.

Whilst those were being released another story was being polished and recorded, namely Psychodrome, starring Peter Davison as the fifth Doctor, along with his companions Tegan, Nyssa and Adric. Yes, Adric is back, portrayed by Matthew Waterhouse. As I grew up with a picture of Adric on my bedroom wall (the one of him in his spacesuit from Four to Doomsday, naturally) it was a massive thrill to finally get to write for the character. It’s always a thrill to write for the fifth Doctor, Tegan and Nyssa so this was extra-exciting for me. As for the story, well, it’s a strange one, different from pretty much anything I’ve ever done before, or that anyone has ever done before in Doctor Who at least. The starting point was to tell a Big Dumb Object tale like Rendezvous with Rama. The end point was somewhere else entirely. It’s set early on in the run of fifth Doctor stories – between Castrovalva and Four to Doomsday, chronological-shelving-fans – and addresses a few of the tiny bumps in continuity between those stories, by showing the four TARDIS travellers getting to know and trust each other, and to learn a little bit more about where they are all coming from and take stock. But it’s also about a lot more than that, and to say any more would spoil the surprises.

Psychodrome can be ordered here.

Since I last blogged the fiftieth anniversary of Doctor Who has been and gone. Wasn’t it all marvellous? Watching An Adventure in Space and Time I started crying when the Daleks turned up and didn’t stop until the end. Peter Davison’s The Five(ish) Doctors was hilarious. And Steven did a fantastic job with the anniversary episode, rising to the challenge of impossible expectations by pulling out all the stops, switching off all cynicism and engaging his LITTLE BOY FAN BRAIN. Which is the only way to write these things, I find, with punch-the-air excitement, with boldness, and with love.

Apart from The Space Race, my other small contribution to the jamboree was a 6-page article for the anniversary edition of Doctor Who Magazine, an article called The Wonder of Who setting out to define, once and for all, the indefinable magic of Doctor Who. It was commissioned as a feel-good piece and basically I just wrote why I, personally, love the show and hope that others felt the same. I think I did a pretty good job, no doubt I’ll add it to this blog when the dust has settled, and even though it wasn’t listed in the magazine contents I like to think it was singlehandedly responsible for that issue of the magazine being the biggest-selling edition since the early 1980s. But then, I like to think a lot of things.

That magazine also contained a Fact of Fiction on the story The Five Doctors, which I wrote back in September (so it doesn’t fall under the things-I’ve-done-since-the-last-blog rule). As it’s one of my favourite Doctor Who stories it was sheer joy to write about it and point out all the little things I’ve noticed over the last thirty years, including an Amazing Moment that no-one else have ever spotted, the source of the phrase ‘A man is the sum of his memories’ and all my theories about quite how the Easy as Pi chessboard might work. There was a lot to say about the story so it ended up being a very long article, as I also sought out the great and the good from the world of Doctor Who for their favourite moments, including Terrance Dicks, Peter Howell, Mark Gatiss, Russell T Davies and Steven Moffat amongst many others. So maybe that article was also the reason why the magazine sold so well. Maybe I’ll do a similar one for the 100th anniversary on The Day of the Doctor, if I’m still here (I’m sure Doctor Who and Doctor Who Magazine will both be going strong).

The month after that, in the current edition, I wrote a Fact of Fiction on the recent Matt Smith Christmas episode A Christmas Carol. The most exciting part of writing this article for me was that Steven very kindly, and unprecedentedly, sent me a copy of his very first draft of the episode, one that was so ‘hot-off-the-press’ it still had asterisks in the right-hand column to indicate how much of it he’d written in his final sitting. So the article explores the writing process of a Steven Moffat script in unprecedented detail. Of course, he got most of it bang-on in the first draft, but it’s interesting to see which scenes were problematic and how they were rewritten and which ones were plain sailing. And I love the episode so it was an unadulterated pleasure.

That magazine was closely followed by a special edition, The Missing Episodes – The Second Doctor volume 2. Originally there were going to be three volumes but one very plucky chap went and found nine of them so we revised our plans (and this volume was brought forward, not to pre-empt any further potential discoveries but because the planned Matt Smith behind-the-scenes volume wasn’t ready). For the magazine, I wrote introductions to the various stories; I’m particularly proud of my write-up for The Web of Fear, given that the story has been recently (mostly) recovered so I couldn’t just write a review and had to come up with something more creative, more personal. And it was interesting taking an in-depth look at all the other stories, with my admiration for The Abominable Snowmen increasing while my dissatisfaction regarding The Ice Warriors also went up a notch. And I discovered to my surprise that episode five of The Wheel in Space is actually really good! Who knew? For the magazine, I also wrote a telesnap commentary for the entirely missing story Fury from the Deep, based on the camera scripts, an audio recording and the telesnaps, which was easier-going than my previous efforts as the story holds fewer mysteries but in a way slightly harder work because the first two episodes are awfully dull, with the Doctor, Jamie and Victoria barely appearing and lots of lengthy arguments about pipes. But I sprinkled lots of Morris magic, so hopefully that didn’t show.

And I think that’s all. No, that’s not quite all. This month Big Finish released Afterlife by Matt Fitton, which I script-edited (which with his scripts basically involves just reading them and sending him an email saying they’re great). BBC Books have announced that they’re going to reprint my Doctor Who novel Touched by an Angel with an exciting new cover (they haven’t even let the previous edition go out of print first). I’ve written a new introduction for it and some of the typos have been corrected so even if you’ve bought the previous edition, you have no excuses, you must buy it again.

Touched by an Angel can be ordered here.

That’s everything. Oh, I attended a few recordings of other scripts but they haven’t been announced yet so my lips are sealed. Suffice it to say on several occasions my ‘career’ has been more like having won a competition. 2013 has been good. But 2014, oh, 2014 is going to be phenomenal.

* Don’t worry, it’s good news.

Slight Return

I’ve been a bad blogger. I’ve let myself down, and let my blog gather dust, letting it resemble one of those un-updated pop group websites that has ‘New album due in 2008’ as the latest item in the ‘News’ section. So I’m sorry about that, it’s been a cause of constant, but very mild, and very ignorable, irritation for me over the past few months too.

My excuse is, of course, that I’ve been busy. I’ve written and re-written about seven or eight hours’* worth of scripts over the past three months, plus a 10,000 word article for Doctor Who Magazine, so it’s not as if I’ve been lounging on a chaise longue waiting for inspiration to strike. The thing is, it’s very difficult to justify the time to write a blog if you have somebody who has paid you money to write something waiting for you to hand it in. It just doesn’t look professional if, rather than working on the thing that you’re meant to be working on, which has a deadline stampeding towards you and studios booked and actors pencilled, instead you’re writing a blog on your top ten favourite twist endings in Brotherhood of Man songs or doing something utterly superfluous like reviewing the latest James Bond film.

So that’s the reason. Because it looks bad, and I don’t want the people who I’m supposed to be writing for to see me frittering away my creative-typing time rather than giving paid work priority. I don’t want to give them cause to wonder what it is they are paying me for. I want them to have the (entirely correct) impression that I am working hard on whatever it is I have been contracted to do, slaving away into the evenings, nights and early mornings, burning candles at both ends and not going out to the pub, cinema or theatre or playing endless Killer Sudokus. Which I am not doing.

Oddly, this rule doesn’t seem to apply to twitter, which has been an outlet for the ever-growing stockpile of marginally amusing trivia that fills my brain. And if you have one safety-valve outlet, you don’t get the pressure build-up that requires another. It’s all a question of plumbing. And while, yes, I should be too busy to tweet (and sometimes, thankfully, get so into The Writing Zone that  I don’t) I’d defend it in two ways.

Firstly, that it’s not really writing as such, but more the equivalent of telling a joke to the bloke sitting opposite you at the office based on what you’ve just heard on the radio. As a freelancer, thankfully I am spared the social rigmarole of office life – the relentless bloody birthday cards - and I can’t write if I can hear a squirrel clearing its throat in the back garden, never mind cope with music or a prattling DJ, so for radio read ‘the BBC news website, the Media Guardian website and, at a push, Chortle’. But nevertheless there is that need to discuss, to feel connected, and to have a social outlet for the fruitless guff that would otherwise clog up the cogs of the mental machinery.

Following on from that, reason two, is that it’s a useful reminder that when you’re writing, you’re writing for an audience, a throng of punters, and it’s good to have that pressure, that feeling that there’s a thousand people sitting in the auditorium with their arms folded and ‘I’ve had a shit day, amuse me’ expressions on their faces. It’s good to be conscious that what you’re writing will have readers, listeners or viewers, because sometimes it can feel like the only people you’re writing for are the producers or script editors of the project.

That’s why it’s so important to write with the hope (if not the certainty) that what you’re writing will get seen, heard or read, that it will get published in some form, because it’s bloody hard to motivate yourself to spend days, weeks, months on a script if you think that the only person in the world who will ever read it will be one producer who will take six months to get around to it and won’t be giving it their full attention when they do and who will only be reading it to look for reasons to reject it. I’m not bemoaning the state of the world – I’ll save that for another day – just saying how difficult it is to motivate yourself to go through that process when you have other people offering you money to write stuff that will actually be read, heard or seen. ‘Get paid and get made’ always has to take priority.

* This sounds vague. I’m not vague about how much I’m written, I’m just vague on how many hours and minutes it will turn out to be.

Johnny Remember Me

And he’s back.

After what I am sure has been a welcome respite, I’ve decided to start doing the blog again. For two reasons. One, for the first time in months I’m not filling every waking minute typing three different things on three different keyboards at once like Bruno from Fame. Honestly, I’ve been up til three o’clock some nights, and once even ‘pulled an all-nighter’.

And secondly, I have things coming out to promote, which is more or less this blog’s raison d’être. And if by some unfortunate oversight a day passes in this month without me having something to plug, well, I’ve accumulated all sorts of things to talk about over the past months. Films and plays and pop concerts I’ve attended, albums I’ve bought, books I’ve read, TV programmes I’ve slept through, holidays I’ve been on, exhibitions I've visited. I even went to a Doctor Who convention and had a story broadcast on Radio 4 Extra. It was very exciting.

The main thing I’ll be plugging this month is my new Doctor Who novel, Touched By An Angel, available now from amazon.co.uk, amazon.com, or, if you are a burglar, a medium-sized cardboard box in my office.

I’ll also be plugging my new comic strip in the Doctor Who Magazine, and my Big Finish audios, Doctor Who: Tales From The Vault and Dark Shadows: The Blind Painter. And a Doctor Who documentary DVD extra. Plus there are some book signings and conventions I'll be attending.

And, in the absurdly unlikely event that this blog isn’t enough for you, and my wittering on twitter hasn’t driven you to distraction, I’ll also be plugging some interviews I’ve done; at the moment I seem to do as many interviews about writing as I do the actual thing.

The one other thing I’ll be doing is trying to stick to the 300 word limit.

Senses Working Overtime

Have been a bad blogger, sorry. Sorry it’s been so long since my last spurt of wisdom.

Two excuses. Excuse one is that I’ve been extremely busy on half-a-dozen different writing projects, and when you’ve got people breathing down your metaphorical neck, it’s hard to find time to type recreationally. Plus after a hard day writing, it can feel like you’ve run out of words, that it’s just more work. Plus it Looks Bad; if you’re overdue delivering a script or article, it’s not a good idea to give the impression you have lots of time to spare on bloggery for no money. No, the people with the money must come first.

And secondly, because I’ve been busy, I haven’t done that much to spurt about. Not been to the theatre or the cinema since the last blog. I suppose I could review some of the films I’ve seen on DVD, TV shows on telly, albums I’ve downloaded, but the need hasn’t felt pressing. I intend to get around to writing my thoughts on The Secret State by Peter Hennessy and Shepperton Babylon by Matthew Sweet. And Tony Blair’s A Journey, when and if I ever finish it. And all the other books I’m currently half-way through reading. Plus we had a lovely wedding anniversary party. And, ooh, those politicians have made me angry.

It’s not as if I don’t have things to plug. The last three issues of the very fine Doctor Who Magazine have featured a comic strip by me called The Golden Ones, which will be concluding in the next issue, out next week. It seems to have gone down pretty well, the artwork and colouring has been fantastic, the Axons are monsters whose return has been long overdue, and everyone loves an alien invasion. If you’ve liked the first three parts, be warned, part four will take the top of your head off.

But I’ve got a few things to spurt about now. I’m on a diet, which I find utterly fascinating. I went to the BFI for Missing Believed Wiped, so expect a spurt on that. And then I went to see the gorgeous and unbelievably talented Marina And The Diamonds at the Roundhouse, so I must commit my thoughts to posterity on that show before I forget them. Plus there’s Nev Fountain’s brilliant Mervyn Stone books, I must recommend them. But, alas, I’ve already gone over my three hundred word limit, so that’ll all have wait ‘til tomorrow.

Hello Hello I'm Back Again

And he’s back.

Not sure for how long, though. I’m having a sort-of day off today. I have a hangover. But tomorrow it’s back to the creative typing, I have things I have to write, and will soon have things I have to re-write.

Only under three hundred words shouldn’t be too much of a burden – though it’s one that’s easy to let slide – but it does get in the way. Sometimes I only have so many words in my head, and I have to use them for work. Sometimes I’m finding the work so arduous I’m tempted to blog instead, a temptation which must be resisted. After all, it doesn’t look terribly professional to be asking for an extension on a deadline whilst one is bashing out missives on the internet. And sometimes I’m not in the mood; too tired from staying up late tapping at a keyboard or lying awake worrying about a potential lapse of plot logic that nobody would ever notice.

Whether to go back and fill in the missing days? Too much like hard work. Not sure whether to continue – certainly, if I make it to 2010, this blog will no longer be updated on a daily basis, I’d just end up repeating myself.

I don’t have that much to write; I’ve led a very dull existence over the past two weeks (though marital bliss has indeed been blissful). But, when I get around to it, expect reviews of Inventing The Victorians, Nation, The Table-Rappers, A Scanner Darkly, Collision, Doctor Who And The Waters Of Mars and Balans restaurant. Oh, and expect plugs for my new Doctor Who Big Finish thing, out now, The Eternal Summer. Apparently it’s very good. I haven’t heard it, but those that have are saying kind things.

Whatever You Want

Two hundred glorious blogs. It’s a landmark moment. A milestone. A number which is arbitrarily considered to be of significance because it ends in zeroes.

I’ve been a bad blogger. The last couple of weeks, maybe month, I’ve been pulling blogs out of my ‘bottom drawer folder’. I’ve still got about twenty-odd left, including 900-odd words on Why Richard Huish College Destroyed My Life. And, you’ll be pleased to learn, no more pointless pop lists.

If anyone’s still ready this, I have a question for you. Why? And what would you like to read? More reviews? Music stuff? Telly stuff? Observational stuff? More humorous rants? Politics? Books? Tips on writing? Stuff I’ve written?

Thing is, I’m tapping away quite a lot at the moment, work things, so I’ve been putting off the blog until late at night and discovering I’ve run out of words. It’s a principle, maybe a superstition, that in writing you have to put more words in that you send out, that you read more than you write. You only have to look at an internet forum to discover what happens when people write more than they read. It’s like people who talk more than they listen; they’re not learning from the world, they’re imposing their own stupidities upon it. Usually whilst jabbing out an index finger or a lit cigarette in order to make their point.

Still, plenty to write about coming up. I’ve three Big Finish things coming out in the next month or so, plus some others things TBA, a comic strip in the next Doctor Who Storybook – I’ve seen some of the artwork, and it looks stunning, and the story, well, it was a struggle but I got there in the end.

So expect lots of horn-tooting. Taking a deep breath now...

I Forgot To Remember To Forget

Oh dear. I seem to have missed a day on my daily blog. I shall have to post twice today to make up. I think what happened was that I posted my thoughts on Torchwood late Friday night, and when it came to post my Saturday blog, I thought I’d already done one. You see, I don’t pay the slightest bit of attention to this blog either.

Maybe I’ve been distracted. After spending three weeks writing two hours of a thing I can’t talk about, and naughtily taking three days off in the middle of it to write a kid’s drama script for a BBC competition, and rewriting my sketch for The Works evening, I’ve written rather a research-heavy article and now, after re-writes to the thing I can’t talk about, the plan is to spend any spare time in the rest of the month writing a new sitcom script, or sorting out my film idea.

I have a list of things to blog about which I haven’t got around to. My thoughts on recent telly – loving Krod Mandoon, Mock The Week and Mitchell & Webb, despairing quietly at Psychoville, Getting On, Mumbai Calling and Taking The Flak. Or my thoughts on the frequency of fried chicken outlets as an economic indicator for the physical and intellectual well-being of a neighbourhood (I can understand one fried chicken outlet, but two next to each other?) Or my thoughts on watching Star Trek and The Wrath Of Khan, and the odd, melancholic feeling you get watching a movie you know better from the 3-D Viewmaster slideshow. Or more pop lists; top ten songs that sound slighty like The Beatles' ‘Tomorrow Never Knows’, that sort of thing. Or a slideshow of my walk along the Thames Path.

The fun never starts!

Anniversary Waltz

Time to crack open the vimto and parp those party blowers, this is the one hundredth blog! Celebrating and commemorating a whole century of glorious missives about nothing of any great importance with bits in bold at the beginning.

Who can remember where they were, the first time they read ‘Under Three Hundred’? No-one, frankly. It’s not that memorable. It’s not like when we all heard the news that Lady Diana died, we all remember what we were doing then. We were listening to the news.

How long can I keep this going for? A while yet, I’m afraid. For each blog I’ve posted I’ve written another which I’ve put aside for those inspiration-free rainy days or when I have too much else to do. The idea being that if I am killed in a freak yachting accident (which would have to be an extremely freak accident, as I don’t go anywhere near yachts during the normal course of events) my blogging can continue from beyond the grave. Though I haven’t prepared a ‘if you are reading this that means I am now dead’ blog. Maybe I should. Might be a laugh. Might also be tempting fate.

I don’t quite know how many people read this. As I occasionally get responses from people I don’t know, and occasionally people I do know tell me they read my blog when I thought they didn’t, the number is probably slightly more than I think but not as many as I would like. Which sounds about right.

What have learned? I’ve learned that it’s easy to write three hundred words on practically any subject. The only problem is that half the time I end up running out of space and having to stop abruptly before I’ve arrived at any sort of point.

It's Not Easy Being Green

Part two of my Paul McGann and Sheridan Smith Doctor Who adventure Hothouse will be made available on the Big Finish website today. I look forward to reading what the response is; indeed, if there even is a response. Because, although I work on the principle that reviews aren’t important, I shouldn’t let them affect my personal happiness, I can’t help reading them. Although it’s too late to change anything, it’s still useful to know what went down well and what didn’t. To identify where your weaknesses may lie.

But, as I’ve mentioned elsewhere on the blog, I won’t enter into discussions because I’ll look like a berk. I’m not saying that other authors who enter into discussions about their work look like berks, it’s just that if I did, I would.

That said, a Doctor Who website, Dr Who Online, has set up a ‘q & a’ section with me in their forum. My mugshot is now above Joe Lidster’s, which I feel must be significant. I’ve resisted doing these sort of things in the past but if it helps promote Big Finish and my work, I’m happy to oblige.

My reluctance stems partly from fear of coming across like a berk and partly from not being comfortable with the idea of ‘superfans’; of there being an ‘us’ and there being a ‘them’. I’d much rather be treated as an equal.

Anyway, Hothouse. To qualify a statement I gave in an interview somewhere, when I said I wanted it to feel like Spooks. I meant in terms of pace. Because radio is inherently a slow medium, and with Hothouse I was trying to avoid the syndrome of fade-out, music, fade-in, which means each scene change takes five seconds. I was trying to make it feel fast. That’s all.

I Didn't Have The Nerve To Say No

Not all of the blogs I’ve written have appeared on this site. I also keep a word file of ‘Iffy blogs’; blogs I’ve written whilst in the throes of righteous anger or which turned out, upon reading back, to be a bit more harsh than I’d intended.

So that’s where my more contentious musings have gone. To be pondered over, considered and re-written. Because I’m acutely aware that anything written on the internet never goes away. Quite a lot of it never gets looked at, and never will, but it’s always there, never more than a google search away. So anything I write, I check over, thinking, ‘Could this come back to bite me on the bum in five, ten, twenty years time?’

Hence the positivity. The love you take is equal to the love you make and the smile that you send out returns to you.

It’s interesting, though, to think that in about ten years we’ll have a generation of adults who will have to spend the rest of their lives knowing that every adolescent flame-war on an internet forum has been preservered for posterity. Soon after that, there’ll be children looking up the arguments their parents had as children. Then grandchildren. And so on... until they all get bored.

And for the celebrities and politicians of the future, they will have their juvenile scribblings forever available to public scrutiny. In fact, everyone will be able to point and laugh at the foolishness of everyone else. It’ll be a great day for the human race when that happens. The internet – a recipe for world peace.

Kind of like my theory that the Third World War should not be conducted with nuclear weapons but as a continent-spanning Scrabble contest on Facebook.

Because that way, the English would win.

More Than Words

On one of Stephen Fry’s recent podgrams, he expounds upon the delights of the English language. Which, I suspect, is what you’d expect if you had a talking Stephen Fry doll with a cord coming out of the back. He even strays – I’m guessing inadvertently – into an old Fry & Laurie sketch:



Well, tonight, Matthew, I shall be Stephen Fry...

(RASPING INTAKE OF BREATH)

Mmm. Frussity-gusset nimbly-pimbly wibbly fluffy-bot, tish-pish, Aaaaaaaalan!

Mmm. Dimbly-wimbly Marjorie trousers moist lemon-soaked-napkins American cousins a smarter investor national treasure smooth-talking bar-steward Twinings. Aaaaaaaalan!

Baaah! Dear Oscar said Harry Pocoyo Blackadder Mr Wooster-sir Mr Dalliard Twitter I-phone I-Mac I-frussity-gusset Garboldisham Vivian Stanshall Prince Charles m’colleague Hugh bipolar gay the moistness and fluffiness of the BBC pausing to pick a buttercup though who leaves buttocks lying about the place... and Alan’s buzzer goes... Aaaaaaaalan!

...and witter about the delights of the English language. That is, the words we have for things which are mildly aggravating, confusing or nonsensical.

Take, for instance, brouhaha. It’s like a hoo-ha but with added brou. It may involve a hubbub, a hullaballoo or some hurly-burly. It may start as a to-do, a squabble or a rumpus but turn into an imbroglio or a fracas. It may even result in a kerfuffle or a ballyhoo.

Aren’t these simply the best words ever?

Or you have gobbledegook. Which is like a combination of poppycock, folderol and balderdash. With a side order of piffle, claptrap, gibberish and hogwash. The whole rigmarole and palaver.

That’s why English is the greatest language in the world. It’s the only language which has so many words for things that we don’t understand and for having arguments. You get a sense of where our priorities lie.

That’s the problem with the French - they have no word for brouhaha.

Word Up!

This blog’s been going for about a month, so I’m thinking it might be time to start actually telling people about it. After all, I’m not writing this for me. I’m writing this for... no, I am writing this for me. (ROCK STAR) And hey, if anyone else likes it, that’s just a bonus (/ROCK STAR).

It’s been fun. I’ve kept it up. In fact, I’ve ‘banked’ about two weeks of future blogs, just in case the day comes when I can’t think of something to witter on about. I’ve even made a list of another month’s worth of subject matters upon which I feel I have some burning wisdom to impart. So it looks like I’ll be doing this for a while yet.

As a preview – coming up – more reviews, more heroes, more obsessions, my thoughts on the evils of computer games, whether Christians were ever fed to lions, whether Charles Dickens would have written for soap operas, my enemies, and... ducks. I also do requests, so if there’s anything you want me to witter on about, please scissor out the appropriate letters from the newspaper of your choice, Pritt-stick them to a sheet of A4, attach with an elastic band to a convenient rock or house brick and hurl in my general direction.

What I do need help with, though, is getting the word out. I’m loathe to toot my own trumpet – only one percent of men can do that successfully – but any other suggestions are welcome as I am quite profoundly lacking in initiative. If you’ve enjoyed something I’ve written, tell your friends. Link to me. Spread the joy like flaming beacons upon a mountaintop. You have my permission.

I guess what I’m saying is that it’s not a secret any more. I’m going public.

Put It In Perspective

Time for another moan, I think. There’s nothing more constructive than a good moan. It’s therapeutic. It gets things off of chests which might otherwise prove burdensome. How can the human race hope to improve if people aren’t prepared to find fault? Moaning, my friends, points the way to the stars.

And yet... whenever someone complains about something like, oh, a chat-show host saying ‘titties’ or something, it’ll be followed by the inevitable response, ‘Don’t you have more important things to worry about?’ Their point being, why moan about mere trivialities? Get a sense of perspective!

A sense of perspective is good. I’m not knocking perspective. It’s a useful thing, it helps you tell the difference between small things which are nearby and large things which are a long way away. But, ooh, this response really gets my goat, and not just my goat, it gets my entire farmyard. It’s so smug, so knee-jerk, so... lazy. (Though the lazy use of the word ‘lazy’ in criticism is another irritant I shall salve through the power of moaning at a later date).

I mean, are these people leading by example? Are they busy, out crusading for liberty and justice? No. They’re on the internet, moaning at people for moaning. Glass house, pebble in flight. What could be more trivial? (Expect possibly this blog, moaning at people for moaning at people for moaning.)

I worry about the important things. Scarcely a day doesn’t go by without me fretting about global warming. I also fret about my family, my friends, my bank account. But the trivial... oh, the trivial is what day-to-day life is about. Trivial is gossip. Trivial are the stitches that make up life’s rich tapestry.

Trivial things are well worth complaining about. After all, you have to start somewhere.

Positivity

A word about reviewing. I’ve been paid to review stuff in the past so I like to think I know what I’m talking about (even though I don’t). And if I’m reviewing stuff here... well, a word about where I’m coming from.

It’s fun, giving things bad reviews. It’s easy; you can be devastatingly sarcastic, exaggerate for comic effect, invent colourful abuse. Writers better than me have made a career of it. But it’s something I’ll be steering to avoid.

Reason one – writing on the internet is peculiarly permanent and might one day be read by goodness knows who. Reason two – I’ve worked on things that have turned out to be rubbish, despite the best intentions and hard work of all involved, so I realise that pointing out where others have ‘gone wrong’ is not merely unfair and hypocritical, it’s ignorant. Nobody sets out to humiliate themselves, after all.

Reason three? Because just as success breeds success, failure breeds caution, loss of confidence and reduction in investment. I want original TV dramas and comedies to be successes, because then more TV dramas and comedies will get made, which means I stand a better chance of getting work (and having something decent to watch). Purely selfish reasons.

And because with each TV drama that fails, half-a-dozen other more challenging dramas won’t get made, and with each TV comedy that fails, half-a-dozen other more adventurous comedies won’t get made. The more failures there are, the more the TV people will go safe, mainstream, middle-of-the-road. So we all have a vested interest in ac-cent- tchu-uating the positive and not dwelling too long on the negative.

And reason four – I’m not an idiot. I’m not going to slag off someone’s work if there’s a chance I might have to work with them one day.

The One And Only

I’m not the first Jonathan Morris to have a blog. In fact, I’m not even the first Jonathan David Morris to have a blog. Up until last April, there was another JDM, in the US of Stateside, blogging terribly insightful things about American politicians and so forth. I only found about him when he wrote here most amusingly about the frustration of having the same nomenclature as me. And as Father Jonathan David Morris, who, to say the least, holds some opinions with which I differ. He’s even argued with my hero Richard ‘Well That About Wraps It Up For God’ Dawkins!

He’s not the only Jonny D Morris out there. There’s another who writes books about Shakespeare, whose career will no doubt be ruined should I ever start writing books about Shakespeare too. Plus, of course, there’s the actor from Bread and the guy who did the bear with the sore head on Animal Magic...

It’s such a bore having the same name as someone famous. Oh, the tedious ritual of being introduced to people, for them to go ‘What, like the actor out of Bread?’ Or even worse, ‘Really? Can you do your tetchy penguin voice?’ As though having the same name as a famous person mystically confers upon you their abilities. It’s like they can’t help themselves, can’t resist the temptation to make the most obvious, fatuous remark.

But the way I look at it, it can take hours, even days, to find out if someone is a complete idiot who isn’t worth knowing, but thanks to having the same name as somebody else who used to be on television, I get to find out straight away. It’s a real time-saver.

Just remember that the next time you ask me if I’ve seen Terry Nutkins recently.

Secret Messages

It’s odd writing these entries, because at the moment, the fact that I have a blog is a secret. So if you are reading this that must mean I persevered with the blog for a while longer, and eventually told people about it, or they found out about it, and you’re so bored you’ve decided to look through the archive posts to pass the time.

The reason why is, you get so many blogs which are embarked upon in a fit of determination which become sporadic and perfunctory as the bloggist’s enthusiasm wanes. I don’t want that the happen here. I want to know I have enough things to say to keep a blog bouncing along before I invite scrutiny.

Because, as in so many things, my main priority is in trying to avoid looking like a berk. I’m not saying other people’s blogs make them look like berks. I’m saying that looking-like-a-berk is a state of affairs I avoid by the narrowest of margins at the best of times. One false step and... oh, what a berk I do look.

I have no fixed timescale in mind. Maybe two weeks, a month, and then I’ll let friends know. Then hopefully this blog will be linked to others that people actually read and appreciate, and word will gradually get out without fanfare. And then people will check out this blog, decide it is quite possibly the most tedious, unnecessary and berk-brained thing they have ever read, and either give up or bookmark it for precisely that reason.

But it’s odd, at the moment, sending these words out into oblivion. Tapping to myself, basically. Writing the words that no-one will hear. Whether that state of affairs ever changes... well, if I give up, I’ve only wasted ten minutes a day.

No More Talk

New years resolutions? Same as last year. To get more things done. To be tidier. To let my fingernails grow. And to avoid internet discussion forums.

Which is another of the reasons for this blog. I can get opinions out of my system without having to enter into a debate. Because, you know, I’ve wasted enough time arguing with people on the internet. It’s fruitless, it doesn’t help you win friends or find work, and in the past it has made me so very furious I’ve had to go and jog around Greenwich Park for a couple of hours.

The problem is, well, it’s like that old Monty Python sketch where Michael Palin goes into the room to have an argument with John Cleese. That’s exactly what logging onto an internet discussion forum or newsgroup is like. Except for the ones where you go to be abused by Graham Chapman.

But it’s not like a debate where, say, two sides might express differing points of view, provide relevant evidence, then arrive at a conclusion. No, it’s about two – or two hundred – sides who will never back down, never change their positions, never admit they’re wrong, and who will keep on arguing, no matter what, until they win. And I include myself in that. Oh, how I so shamefully do.

The thing is, on the internet, there’s no such thing as right or wrong, fact or fiction. There’s only a matter of opinion. Or different levels of ignorance and obstinacy. ‘Yes, well, you can prove anything with facts...’

Last year I managed to last until April. This year I’m aiming for the whole year. No posts on Outpost Gallifrey whatsoever. And I’ll try not to read it, though it’ll be difficult, as I have lots of things out this year.

That's Not My Name

This blog is all under my own name. Unlike much of what is posted on the internet, it’s not anonymous, it’s not pseudonymous, it’s not nom-de-plume-enous. It’s all directly attributable to me, for good or for dreadful. But why?

I can understand the temptation to post incognito. It means no repercussions, taking no prisoners, taking no responsibility. It means you can say what you really think, even if it’s not actually true. It means you can call people names.

Not for me. I’m not writing this under my own name because it forces me to be nice – hopefully I don’t need to be forced – but because, unless you’re a Chinese dissident or a cynical BBC producer posting on the Guardian blogs, there’s no good reason for concealing your identity. It’s hypocritical, it’s a license for cowards to bully, and it always raises the question, ‘Who are you, and why are you so scared that others might find out?’

Two examples. There once was a frustrated comedy writer – I can’t remember who – who went on a message board, anonymously slagging off a comedy show. ‘Who wrote this crap?’ was his gist. Except, alas, he wasn’t as anonymous as he thought. Cue a posting from the show’s producer. ‘If you think it’s so crap... then I’m guessing you don’t want to write for it any more...!’

Example two. A badly-written show is getting a critical mauling. Cue several postings from a concerned viewer saying that the criticism has been unfair and that they personally enjoyed the show a great deal. You’ve already guessed the punchline. Yes, it was the show’s writer.

But this has my name attached, so I can never be caught out. And besides, in the unlikely event I write anything worthwhile, I want to take all the credit.

Look At Me

So. Jonny has a blog. Why?

Well, self-promotion. To create a somewhere on the internet where I can put up examples of my work and hopefully increase general awareness of myself. A somewhere to which I can direct interested parties. The usual reasons.

What for? Wittering, mainly, I suspect. What it won’t be for, though, is self-involvement. I don’t intend to regale the world with stories of what I had for breakfast, or bowel movements, or pictures of my cat. Because I don’t have a cat, for one thing. Or breakfasts, come to think of it. Although I do have bowel movements. But no, the point is to try to generate material which might actually be of interest to someone other than myself. To avoid self-absorption.

The idea being, to update the blog as frequently as is practical; how often that will be I don’t know. Daily, daily except for weekends, weekly, occasionally. To warm up the fingers and get the brain whirring before I go off to write much more interesting and amusing things for people who are actually going to pay me.

What about? Not sure yet. Thoughts. Reminiscences. Reviews of television shows, films, plays, books, places. Hero worship. Short stories, script excerpts, anything I can come up with. Essentially anything which might be of interest to others, where I feel I have wit, wisdom or opinion to impart. Although I reserve the right to be as inconsistent, ill-informed and biased as everyone else in the land of blogs.

No rules, except one. No more than three hundred words. These pieces are intended as stretching exercises, not ten-mile runs. So I don’t want to spend more than, say, half an hour on each one, which means I don’t want to write more than I have written here.

BTW I think there will be a female Doctor Who in 2018 probably played by an actress like Jodie Whittaker.