Why I love Stewart Lee - and why I hate myself for it.

Oh no - another personal "me" ramble. As if the internets hadn't enough of them. Once again, servers, routers and internet interfaces groan with unwanted familiarity to the grating digital scape of another weathered soapbox and its ill-edited magniloquence.

Anyway. Just watched Stewart Lee's Comedy Vehicle (for those who merited a life, catch it on IPlayer if you get the chance) and it was a reminder of why I love the man and how disappointed he makes me feel in myself.

Stewart Lee (for those who only limit their interest to the 40 top stand-up comedians) is best summed up by his own continuity propaganda. A cop-out on my behalf - I'd only end up fawning, looking for smart hyperbole to convey to others that subjective quality of belly-laughs that he instills in myself. See? Doing it already - I never belly laugh, though I wish I did. And if I did, I would like it to be at the hands of Mr Lee. And there goes the fawning.

I'm sure we've all got someone that we look up to so much the blood drains from our heads and we are resolved to chitter-waffle our admiration. Stewart Lee is one of mine. It's not a fanatical fixation with the man. I can go many days, weeks, months and years without passing a thought to his brilliance, nor do I clamber to own all merchandise revolving around him. In fact, so far as supporting his vocation, you could say I'm a piss-poor admirer, offering no fiscal remuneration for his entertainment (well, I did see him at Glastonbury in '98, but I doubt my ticket price really propped up his bank account).

But it's not about being a fan. I don't rush around quoting the man, nor, as I have said, have I invested in a shrine to the guy. I simply admire him. I admire him for being me.

Now, that's a comment which could take any reader down two dissecting paths. First off, given he is seven years older, Stewart Lee being a copy of me would really be a hard argument to sustain. Secondly, I'm not putting myself above or even near his identity. Quite the opposite. He is, I suppose, what I would liked James McLean to have been. If James McLean could have really had any real meaning to this universe, I think it would have been as a person with the mind and legacy of Stewart Lee.

See now I sound self-effacing. I am pretty happy with who I am, and chuffed with what I've been blessed with. I'm not brain-blastingly ugly (if such a term or such a man exists - and woe be the case if either does), I've been gifted with an artistic eye, a reasonably astute mind and some achievements that many would be proud of. Okay, I'm not the most charismatic gentleman at times, I've had my share of failures and mistakes, but the point is I'm not defacing the history of James McLean. I'm not looking to put myself down or douse myself with the pity bucket.

I guess what I'm saying is when I listen to Mr Lee, more often than not, his stand-up reflects my opinions and feelings on life. In some ways its quite cathartic to have someone manage to express similar observations more effectively than you do. We all get that when we see any oratory, be it comedy or serious - and as a meandering side-note, I think what I always find a little weird is seeing someone express observations that are similar and more effective than yours, that you hadn't even considered previously. It's one of the wonders of seeing stand-up; having a comedian express ideas that resonate that you had never considered until that moment. Hardly a revelation of an observation, but one that seemed pertinent.

I think the horror of having such admiration for any person is you know you could never possibly meet them. The same goes for any crush I suppose. Any unrequited crush has the very real risk of leaving the crusher unable to bolster their ego enough to a) be themselves and b) treat the other as they would anyone else. And the more one tries, the more one will fail to create an honest rapport and instead will build a horrifying non-representation of the person you want to convey. It's a sad but natural state of affairs given any meeting is so horribly imbalanced; the quiet discomfort of the admirer and the admirer to find any common ground.

So in the end, my admiration - until now - has been relatively silent. I wouldn't mind if it didn't make me feel so dirty. Like some creepy invisible lovesick teen-puppy gushing from the sidelines.

Watching Stewart Lee on his new show was a reminder of all these little partially connected musings. It reminded me of how so much of his material resonates with me - and how thankful the same can not be said about the Al Murray's Pub Landlord. Which raises an interesting point: given I do not know Lee, could such affinity not be with the man but his comedy persona? Just like if I resonated with the Pub Landlord's xenophobia I wouldn't necessarily be connecting with man behind the mask. In my case, I don't think it matters. The product that Lee produces touches me, regardless of what the man behind it truly thinks. There is restrained, frustrated intellectual eye to Lee's "product" that I fell in love with in the early 90s that perhaps spoke for me with more humour, insight and - well - facts than I ever could possess. Perhaps that's what's so great about a comedian whose social comedy "speaks for you", be it Stewart Lee, Al Murray or - god forbid - Roy Chubby Brown - social comedy gives you the illusion of ideological validity: the comedian gives a sheen to your own personal beliefs - they say what you believe in a cooler, more amusing and often more enlightening way than you probably could.

And Stewart Lee's comedy output has done that for me for well over a decade - he's basically helped me define me better than I could do myself. A lot of 'Me' there. A big Me blip on the Me-dar.

Which perhaps leads me to refine my original statement: Why I love the comedic product of Stewart Lee, and why I hate myself for not being able to match it. Not quite as catchy. Yes, his comedy persona would have been what I would consider the perfect James McLean. But then, James McLean would have been lost to admire himself, Stewart Lee. So perhaps this is the best way. Let Stewart Lee do what he does best and I'll happily let his produce express what I'd like to say better than I'd ever need to say it - because I have Stewart Lee to say it for me.

So next time you want to know what I think, save me the time at having to read up, learn facts and find a suitable mode of self-expression by going and seeing Stewart Lee says on stage. I'm sure it will be close.

Now go watch his new stuff on IPlayer. It is very good.

Interview with Lance Henriksen: Part Three

Been a night of rushing out some plugs, and the final stop is my own blog. Imagine that: selfishly using my own domesticated word space to promote something I've done. Disgusting.

This is another Millennium/BacktoFrankBlack.com which for those who have just stopped by (fingers proving a little less than nibble in regards to clicking the correct google link, eh?) BacktoFrankBlack is a campaign to return Millennium and its hero Frank Black to our screens.

I did an long phone interview with the lead actor, Lance Henriksen - famous for Bishop in the Alien franchise, and this is the final part in which he discusses politics, art, films and fans! Great guy and a fundamental success to the Millennium show's long lasting reputation.

Read it HERE
Read part one: HERE
Read part two: HERE

Deal or No Deal - the loser? My name is Skeletor.

Having finished watching this edition of Deal Or No Deal, I have been forced to concede the horrible truth that I am Skeletor. That I am Megatron. That I am that oddball witch in Chorton and the Wheelies. I am Grotbags. I am wicked and must be punished.

My viewing of this once popular quiz show was inadvertent, and thereby so was my realisation to my true identity. I was merrily sitting on the sofa grinding my teeth against some milky chocolate eggs with little care in my small insular world with the remote too far from reach. Deal or No Deal started with the choosen contestent being a young girl whose name I really had no interest in remembering. She said she was a risk-taker, a student - or if reduce these characteristics to their base denominator: really quite annoying.

I must say I have a great dislike for students on quiz shows. I've met a few, been one myself and from first hand experience they aren't very interesting, because on the whole, they think they are. Just as I did. Often in debt from as much partying as text books (and again, I speak from experience rather than a skim-read of a Daily Mail editorial), and in any case, surely the point of being a student is to prepare one's best for the difficulties in life, rather than to go on quiz shows to see if you can skip a few steps and win a bundle of cash. All this doesn't warm me to students on quiz shows. She might have been a wonderful lady in real life, but as with all television, our bonds are superficial - we sit as lazy judge and juries. That's life, that's our relationship with the box-oh-so-square.

On she played. The board was shaping up nicely statistically. Quite a few "blue" numbers disappeared leaving a nice load of "reds". This can leave the player a little too optimistic, so I was interested to see whether she would fall for the trap of complacency and take a gamble one step too far. After all, she was a risk-taker apparently.

Well, middle of the game the risk-taker dealt on a decent figure. £17,000, when the board really was in a swing state. Naturally the game went on as if she was in play. This was my moment - knowing that there was a chance all the lovely numbers may stay and this andrenlin junkie student - might discover that she had dealt far too early.

And I was proved right. The "blues" fell away leaving her with "reds" - the top one, £250,000, remained firmly in play. For this moment, TV couldn't get any better. You see, in real life, I'm a nice gentleman. I certainly would never go out to harm anyone, or look to hurt anyone's feelings. I'm only writing this blog because I think it's rather unlikely it will be read by this lady in question - otherwise I wouldn't dare, simply because I wouldn't want to hurt her feelings. But the wonderful voyeuristic nature of television, that one way spectacle, allows our true nature to blossom, far from the fear of being exposed for the cackling, squirming, spiteful bastard I - I mean, we - are. I watched this poor girl watch the "reds" remain and the "blues" stay until I was positively rolling off my chair with pleasure. Again, it wasn't particularly personal. I don't know this girl, or anything about her really. She was no more than an archetype; an outlet for my most base assumptions intertwined around some of my personal pet-hates - in this case, students. But I was enjoying it. Very much.

Being not much of a people person, I have to say there are rarely moments of pleasure found in television. But this seemed to be a one of a kind as this girl watched the numbers vanish from the board.. all accept the 1p and £250,000 (meaning a high offer would be made by the banker that sat somewhere in between). I watched her stage grow smaller as the £17,000 she'd won seemed more and more worthless in her eyes. I watched her mouth tighten as she realised she'd dealt far too early - and that "risk taking" spirit really hadn't been proven. It was magic. To see the confidence stripped away, over a simple nature of greed. A gambler losing face. It felt dirty to be enjoy, but isn't greed a sin? Should I feel pleasure at her expense when her pain comes from not being happy with the £17,000 she'd won but the £100,000 she'd lost? Well whatever, I was lovin' it.

And there she was, at the end, with the prospect going round and round her head of having dealt too early. The banker is ready to tell her, the audience and squirming gits like myself how much she could have won...

... and then he does something he's never done before. He offered her to swap her £17,000 for the chance to choose between the last two boxes. One had £250,000, the other 1 penny. Was this to help boost the show's ratings? Only one person had one £250,000 in its near daily run - and that was back in 2007. They did need another. Was it because she was a young lady and he felt pity - I don't know, and just like Skeletor, I didn't care. I leapt from my seat, just as Skeletor would from his throne, my "win" suddenly teetering over the edge of Fail.

Sure she could win 1p if she took the gamble, but she shouldn't have that chance. She wasn't playing fair. THEY weren't playing fair! I was having my sick pleasure - they had no right to bend the rules and take it from me. The show was clearly stacking the pressure on her to take the gamble, and this would ruin it - even if she won the 1p, she'd go away knowing she'd didn't deal too early, that she proved she was a risk taker. It was lose, lose for me. Suddenly, I felt a brotherly kinship with Skeletor, as in the final act my victory was taken from me.

And she won. She won £250,000.

Now, I take solice in knowing others around the country will feel the same = particularly those who didn't get offered the opportunity who were on the show - but the fact is this always happens. It seems my win is always taken from me. Whenever I feel I get a television victory, something spoils it. Celebrity Big Brother was the last one to upset my pleasures. I watched Ulrika Johnson sulk, whine, spit and grumble all the way through 6 weeks while many of the other contestants worked hard to be fun and entertaining, and through one of those quirkly surprises, despite the odds and the situation, the ego-queen was glorified, and my victory snatched. I didn't see it coming - just as poor Skeletor never saw the turning of the tables just before victory.

TV doesn't like to offer me a win, and when it does, it likes to ensure that it ruins it just before the end. This doesn't happen to nice guys. It happens to bad guys. Evil guys. Skeletors. I never saw myself as evil. As I said, my issue with this lady was not personal beyond the fact that she was a student looking to make easy money. I'd far rather see someone who has worked hard for a few decades get the opportunity. To me, that creates a justified dislike - superficial maybe, but justified so far as the shallow bind between television and viewer goes. Same with Ulrika - if she'd proved to me she was truly up for a laugh, not bitchy and not self-focused, I'd have been happy for her to win. I've always seen myself as a nice person - okay, one who has a rather entrenched enjoyment of seeing people fail on live television, but as far as bad traits go, that isn't THAT bad is it? Well clearly not. I, like Skeletor and his minons are doomed to see our pleasures be snatched from our grasps. He probably thinks he's a nice person too - albeit a little over-focused on universal domination and the advocation of pure evil - he doesn't expect to lose at the last minute.

But we both do.

So good luck unnamed student. I hope you enjoy the money. My qualm isn't with your good fortune, but the wicked show that bent the rules - as He-Man bends his girders - and thwarting my victory.

Of course, there's always next time. There's always a next time.

Red Dwarf Synopsis details (spoilers-lite)

Red Dwarf update:

Now I'm not one for spoilers, and I've done my best to avoid the naughty ilk when it comes to shows I like, but I must admit, I was very eager to find out some of the back story to the new Red Dwarf episodes being shown on Dave in the UK at Easter. I suppose I can give myself a small stretch of leniency as I very much doubt these smaller back story details won't be a massive part of the tales as a whole. I'm guessing, just like Red Dwarf III, that cliffhanger from Red Dwarf VIII will be briskly glossed over. As I think it should be. Forget the waffle, move the show along. I can't say I felt Red Dwarf VIII was the show's finest hour in set-up or gags, so I'm quite happy with this.

So what is there to say? Well, this from SFX - and they have more spoilers if you follow the link to do with the actual episodes, or "synopsis" as they like to officially call them. For me, a synopisis of a show you've not seen, even just a partial synopsis, still tells you stuff you didn't know, ergo, it's a spoiler really - let's not beat around the mulberry bush my lads.

Anyway, here's what it says - courtesy of Doug Naylor via SFX. Read with one eye shut - or not at all if you have a stronger backbone than I.

“It starts nine years after the last show. Kochanski has died and Holly is down – Lister left a bath tap on for almost nine years and then one night the floor gives way and a million gallons of water fall through the ship, and Holly hasn’t been dried out. That’s where it starts.

“Lister’s not in good shape, and there’s a general air of neglect and malaise. Rimmer, as he’s always done, thinks purely about himself, and because of this everything’s gone down the tubes. He has aged, even though holograms shouldn’t – he hasn’t had holo-services because he didn’tknow about them."

Sounds good to me, boys and girls. Does it sound good to you?

In memory of the Spectrum!

I'm a big Speccy freak. For those who don't know what that is, and quite possibly disturbed by the possibilities such a term could possess, I can assure you I make no reference to any bizarre spectacle/glasses fetish. Nay, this isn't a plug for www.nakedspectaclewearersindubiousposes.com (and I pray such a site doesn't exist and that I've not just given them an unwelcome promotion), but the ZX Spectrum - or as it was affectionately know - the Speccy.

It was a simple 8-Bit 48K British computer that I grew up with. It had the memory capacity of a medium size Word document and some fantastic games - it was also responsible for some very dire ones as well. Very dire - but it was the beginning of the gaming age - mistakes would be made. I think you can forgive it for its more than occasional mishaps. And it did only have the memory capacity of a medium sized Word document.

The graphics were all in monochrome - if the game makers were sensible - as there was a tendency for coloured graphics to merge in passing creating what was affectionately known at the time as "colour clash". Some managed to bypass this ugly problem (Brainache on the left as a perfect example), but those that were smart, kept their colours static and distant.. or simply the same colour.

It was an innocent era, where coders fought against the limitations of the machine and players embraced the most simple successes (see successful escapes from the perils of colour clash).

For a comparative, I will point our contrasting Atlantic beach-huggers with the Commodore 64, the Spectrum's arch rival. With it's blighted 64k and smug escape from the colour clash calamity of the Spectrum, there was much spitting and hissing between fan groups. For younger fans, may I point you towards Nintendo/Sony as a comparison. For those of a generation in between, Amiga and Atari St 16 bit computers is another worthy comparison. While the Commodore 64 was technically a superior machine, I personally found its more colourful visuals blotchy and garish - and quite often, never quite as playable as the Spectrum.

I will dare to place one particular game on this aged 8-bit machine above its 16-bit rivals successor, the Amiga. Renegade, in my experience, has never been topped in its coin-op conversion (another term rarely used these days, I assure you it has little to do with any sexual fetish between currency and operations, but arcade machines) than on the Spectrum. The Speccy was an amazing machine.

In its golden era, the coders were managing to cram some amazing amounts of gameplay into this tiny bastard. The Sentinel was a block 3D environment (though admittedly you didn't "roam" in this game, but transferred across the board to different perspectives) with 1,000 levels. Remember: 48k. Incredible. Elite was out on the Spectrum, and we remember how big that was. And roaming block 3D DID manage to get a Spectrum publication with Driller being the ground breaker.

Amazing, amazing machine. I think I'll follow up with another entry on the Spectrum, but for now, may I tell you what prompted this article:

Sunday March 08, 2009
Cutting edge Biohell game for ZX Spectrum

Can you believe it? Read on.. SFX reports:

Author Andy Remic is publishing a computer game based on his latest novel Biohell… for the ZX Spectrum. Surely it's just an amusing promotional ploy, but speaking as Spectrum fans since youth, this thought fills us with a certain anachronistic excitement. We interviewed Remic about the book a few weeks ago, and he didn't mention his 8-bit ambitions, so what's the deal?

"When I finally finished the novel Biohell and it hit the shelves, I thought to myself: what do I do next?" says Remic. "There's of course the follow-up novel, Hardcore, to complete but I was eager to pursue an advanced gaming angle. I’d recently been approached by three large games developers who were interested in the idea of Biohell, but I decided against the glitz and glamour of worldwide gaming domination, and instead set out to develop a 48k Spectrum adventure myself."

He continues: "You always remember your first computing love affair, and mine was a sleek black little Spectrum number. It was October 1984, and I got my Speccy along with Ultimate’s Knight Lore for Christmas. It changed my life!"

We know where he's coming from, there's a lot of love and nostalgia for the Spectrum out there that we share.

The Biohell game will be a graphical text adventure in which you'll play Franco Haggis, utilising guns and bombs to progress across a nano-molecular zombie-infested city. It features "a full range of 8 (yes 8!) colours, advanced textual parser and many advanced Spectrum features".

The Biohell novel is set on a planet entirely covered with a city teeming with corruption, guns, sex, and designer drugs. "Humans are upgraded by the injection of microscopic nanobots, courtesy of a new technology," continues the official summary. "But when this heads onto the black market, millions of people inject themselves with pirated biomods - and transform into zombies. The Combat K squad are dropped into this warzone to uncover what's turned the planet into a wasteland of murder and mutations."

Incredible if true (and I'm sure it is).

May I finally point you towards the best Spectrum resources in the world.

www.worldofspectrum.org

The website contains a whole host of Spectrum emulators and ROMs (legal and endorsed) for you to try. May I recommend Renegade, Sentinel, Nether Earth, Batman: The Movie, Chaos, Mercenary, The Wild Bunch and The Hobbit as great wide-ranging examples of the wonderful Spectrum era!