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The 2020 Great Dickens Christmas Fair has been cancelled.
Note: This page contains overall performer information. Recently updated information will all be found on Cat's Dickens Fair Participants Page, including recent Missives.
Hello Dickens Fair performers and aspiring performers!
The Dickens Christmas Fair is a bustling theatrical environment, combining the magic of the traditional holiday season with the writings of Charles Dickens and the rich tapestry of Victorian England. The Fair is a giant environmental theatre, one of the largest and most complex in the world, involving a combination of stage performances, environmental areas, and improvisational acting in the streets of our "London." One of the keys is that we always involve the audience and encourage them to feel part of the show. Even if you're just strolling off to get lunch, you are your Victorian character doing so, which is what makes our event such an involving one. This is the essence of the technique we call Theatrical Living History, an educational and performance experience created by the Living History Centre (LHC) beginning in the 1960s.
Every performer at the Fair is part of the LHC College of Performing arts (aka The Workshops) that take place for 3 weekends prior to each Fair season. The Fair itself is the recital as well as a continuous learning experience, whether you are in your first season or your 30th season with us.
If you'd like to become part of this grand ensemble cast, you need to complete the LHC Workshop requirements, then be cast in a stage show or accepted into a performing group. One may also work in a booth or a beverage stand. There is a separate page for how to get a job at the fair (Working at The Fair). This page focuses on what you need to do to become a performer. In addition to stage shows, you may be portraying characters you are given or that you invent. Most performers portray fictitious characters directly out of Dickens' novels, or real personages from the pages of history. Each becomes a person from the Victorian age, with the clothing, language, and personality of someone from that era. Since Queen Victoria reigned for over sixty years' of significant social and cultural changes, we have chosen the 1840s-1860s as our historical focus.
Stages & Performing Areas - Shows & Groups
Proposals for New Shows & Groups
Requirements for Performers - including Workshops & Costume Approval
Paperwork: What You Will Need to Get Your Pass
Entertainment Staff Information
Special Note for Caroling Groups & Other Single-Day "Special Performance" Groups
The entertainment at the Dickens Fair is divided into shows, environmental areas, and performing groups. Audition announcements will be posted in the email newsletters; see information about "Missives" below.
Seven Stages:
(Each of these stages has individual shows which are auditioned by the directors. Please see last year's stage schedules for the type of shows on each stage.)
Fezziwig's Warehouse (Ballroom Dancing & More)
Victoria & Albert Bijou Music Hall (Family & Musical Entertainment until 5:00; then "Dickens After Dark")
The Father Christmas Stage (Children's Entertainment and Father Christmas!)
The Pennygaff Stage (Variety Entertainment and Scenes from Dickens' Novels)
The Silk Road Stage (Music & Dance from Around the World)*
The Paddy West Stage (All Things Sea Faring & More)
Mad Sal's Dockside Ale House (Slightly Scandalous Lower-Class London)
*including Special Performance groups. These are often community groups who may only be joining for a single day.
Seven Environmental Areas:
The Green Man Public House
The Adventurer's Club
The Dickens Family Parlour
Fagin's Den
Flockmocker's Workshop
The Great Exhibition Stage (Crystal Palace)
Paddy West
Most Fictitious Characters are from the following Dickens Books*:
Pickwick Papers
*Characters from the works of other famous Victorian novelists may occasionally be considered based on their relevance to the event, for example Lewis Carroll. Portrayal of the novelists themselves is always welcome.
Street Performance Groups:
Christmas Keepers
Costermongers
Coventry Carolers
Jeremy's Escort Service
Miracle Sweeps of London
Miss Twinkleton's Academy for Young Ladies
The Peelers
The Prince's Posse
The Other Ranks
The Society of Criminal Underclasses at Mad Sal's (SCUM)
Temperance Union
Proposals for New 2021 Shows & Groups
Show & Group Proposals for the 2021 Dickens Fair are due to Entertainment Director, Cat Taylor by May 31, 2021. You can reach her at [email protected].
Please keep the following in mind if you are proposing a show:
No fire performances
No prerecorded music/audio, video/animation
Costumes, language, sets and props must be appropriate for mid-19th century London (not Renaissance)
No modern performance styles (no aerial silks, etc.) or obvious modern (vs. Victorian) technology
Able to fit on available stage sizes
Please consult all of the information on this performer's web page before proposing a show. Thank you.
Requirements for Performers – including LHC Workshops & Costume Approval:
#1 Sign up for the Missive List
Go to Cat's Dickens Fair Participants page at http://cattaylor.com/dickens-fair-participants/ to sign up for the Missive List. In the months preceding the beginning of workshops, you will receive an email missive approximately every one to two weeks, informing you about workshops, performing opportunities at the Fair, and other useful information. Just before we get to workshops and the Fair itself, the frequency will increase to once a week, sometimes more if there's a lot of news. We do not do physical mailings to our performers; the Missives are the only way to stay apprised of all the important information about performing at the Dickens Fair. Missives from last season along with current information can also be found at http://cattaylor.com/dickens-fair-participants/.
#2 Research!
If you spend much time commuting, listen to recordings of Dickens' books, to further your knowledge and fire your imagination. Patrick Stewart's Christmas Carol (the audio version) is fabulous and so is the Oliver Twist read by Dick Cavett (no kidding). All of the Dickens books are downloadable for various formats, there are fabulous websites with entire books (accessible from the missive website), and there are movies galore; especially notable is the 1951 Christmas Carol starring Alastair Sim. You are heartily encouraged to actually read the books, too...
#3 Audition
Think about what you would like to do (dance in Fezziwig's, sing with the Carolers, portray a Dickens character) and watch the missives for auditions for that group or character. If you would like to propose a show or know a part in a show you would like to audition for, email Entertainment Director Cat Taylor at [email protected] and tell her your idea, or ask to be connected to the director of the particular show. Auditions happen before, during and after Workshops, so you will have plenty of time to find a show or group. See #5 below.
#4 Costume Approval
Once you have an idea of what you'll be doing at the Fair, start putting your costume ideas together. There's lots of information on this website, so you can start looking around for appropriate garments. Remember, what you wear is determined by who your character is, so make sure you get the part you're auditioning for before you finalize your costume. Your costume will also have to be approved by the costume department for appropriate fit, style and materials before you will receive your gate pass. For information on costumes and costume approval, please read the 2017 Great Costume Missive at http://www.cattaylor.com/102517.html; there will be a 2019 version available soon. Feel free to contact Liz at [email protected] at any time throughout the year with your costume questions.
#5 Required Workshops and Rehearsals
The 2021 Workshops begin on October 30th at 10:00AM at Oceana High School in Pacifica. The Workshops are presented by the Living History Centre. The Living History Centre Education Director is none other than the illustrious Robert Young. More workshop information and exact schedule will be announced in forthcoming missives.
2021 LHC Workshops will be held at Oceana High School on October 30 and 31st, and November 6 and 7, and at the Cow Palace on November 13 from 10:00AM to 5:00PM.
Workshop Registration Forms, updated workshop schedules and descriptions, and an Oceana High School workshop map are up on the missive site at https://cattaylor.com/dickens-fair-participants/.
As always, there will be a meeting at 10:00AM on the first day of workshops. This meeting is always a lot of fun and a little crazy; announcements are made, staff, directors and workshop leaders are introduced, and there is general amusement had by all. Some of the directors will still be looking for people; they will announce whether they are. Read the missives and look for groups that interest you. You must be part of a group to work at the Fair, whether it's caroling, dancing at Fezziwig's or being a Dickens character. Don't be shy; ask questions of the directors and see if it's what you want to do and might be good at.
The third weekend of workshops and rehearsals (November 13 and 14) will be held at the Cow Palace, with a limited number of workshops taught on Saturday. No workshops will be taught on Sunday; that will be dress rehearsal day, which will also include a 10:00AM morning meeting.
Please plan on attending the two above meetings; they're our only chance to have all of our performers in one place, all at the same time.
GENERAL WORKSHOP REQUIREMENTS FOR 2021
All performers at the Great Dickens Christmas Fair are students of the Living History Centre College of Performing Arts (COPA). Based on the number of years you have participated, you will have different Workshop requirements.
Apprentices (1st Year) are required to take 7 workshops.
Journeymen (2 to 5 Years) are required to take 5 workshops.
Masters (6 Years or more) are required to take 3 workshops.
Apprentices (1st Year) are required to take the following seven classes:
Orientation I: A Beginner's Guide to Life And Times in Our London
Orientation II: All You Need to Know about Dickens Fair - A Survival Guide
Either Victorian or Cockney language (Irish or Scots may be substituted for those whose characters specifically require these)
Physical Characterization
The "How to Pass Costume Approval" class
An Improv/Acting class (will be marked with an "A" on the class schedule)
A Social History class (will be marked with an "S" on the class schedule)
Please note that Physical Characterization is a prerequisite for the Character Lab and other improv/acting labs. Please do not try to take the labs if you have not yet taken the Physical Characterization workshop.
Journeymen and Masters (Dickens Fair Veterans)
Journeymen please take these five workshops:
A language workshop
An in-depth character or acting/improv workshop (marked with an "A" on the schedule), AND
A social history workshop of your choice (Marked with an "S" on the schedule)
Masters please take three workshops*:
A social history workshop of your choice (marked with an "S" on the schedule).
*You are encouraged to take more workshops. Support and model for newer participants, and give us feedback on the workshop.
Class Size Limitations
Some classes can only accept a limited number of people at one time in order to functionally teach their class. Please arrive at that class early if that is the only time you can take it. If any of the teachers turn you away because their class is full, please do not argue, but come back at another time.
NOTE: We further encourage Journeymen and Masters to plan to take Workshops on Week 2 and not try to complete all their requirements on Week 1. The Week 1 classes need to have room for new folks too! Week 2 Workshops very often have plenty of room.
Take Lots of Workshops!
We encourage you to take as many workshops as possible; they are meant to be both fun and educational, and will help you make your way more credibly and enjoyably through the streets of our London.
It may seem like old hat to some of you, but to have a real ensemble cast, we all need to work together and remember that we really are creating our version of Victorian England and should be representing our characters *ALL THE TIME* when in front of the audience. Workshops are the best way to make that happen.
#1 A completed, printed, online registration form with:
#2 Your director's or booth owner's signature
#3 Costume Approval from the official costume department
#4 Sign-offs from the appropriate number of workshop teachers (see above requirements)
#5 (Optional) The Cow Palace offers run-of-fair Participant Parking Passes to REGISTERED Fair participants ONLY. These are provided at a discounted rate, and will be available at workshops or the Pass House. We expect the price to remain at $30 for 2019. We are allowed only the same limited number of these special passes from year to year, so please carpool as much as possible!
Age Specifications
0-17: Registration form, w/ all appropriate signatures and approvals, plus guardian information.
18-up: Registration form, with all appropriate signatures and approvals.
Online Participant Registration
Please see the Dickens Fair Participants page at http://cattaylor.com/dickens-fair-participants/ for details.
Your name must be on a cast list at the office, and your director must have signed your registration form before your pass will be issued. Directors will only sign registration forms after all appropriate workshop classes and costume approval have been completed.
Note on Parking at The Cow Palace
We recommend that ALL PARTICIPANTS who will be parking in the Cow Palace parking lot purchase a parking pass for $30.00 per car (exact amount subject to change by the Cow Palace). This is our cost, so do not lose it, as replacements will cost $30.00 IF STILL AVAILABLE (the Cow Palace provides only a limited number). If you do not have a parking pass, the Cow Palace parking staff will charge you $12.00 per day.
Cat Taylor: Entertainment Director:
Cat is the Entertainment Director for the Great Dickens Christmas Fair. As a show director, musician, and event producer, she understands performing from both sides of the equation and endeavors to create a supportive and exciting, creative environment. Cat also founded and administers the Missive List, keeping everyone informed about workshops, auditions, and various details of our version of Victorian London. If you are interested in creating or performing in a stage show or any group, please contact her at [email protected].
Robert Young: Living History Centre Education Director & Dickens Fair Street Theatre Director
In his capacity as Living History Centre Education Director, Robert oversees the pre-Fair LHC Workshop program. As Street Theater Director, he will wear two (top) hats, one where he will work with the LHC teachers and Red Barn directors to continue the training process in Theatrical Living History for all performers throughout the course of the Fair, the other where he will oversee the entire tapestry of how all of the performers interact when performing in the streets. He will also be coordinating the special performance groups who come in from dance troupes, schools, etc. for special one day performances. You can reach him at [email protected]
Do you have a costumed caroling group or other Victorian-appropriate performing group that would like to perform at the Dickens Fair for one very special day? Please contact Robert Young at [email protected] and be prepared to send in a picture, an audio or video recording, and a 19th century-appropriate repertoire list. Please have a first and second choice for the day you would like to attend.


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If you or a beloved senior in the Northern Colorado area would benefit from help with activities of daily living like those listed here, please contact Amada today for a Free Care Needs Consultation. We will help you and your family develop a plan of care tailored to meet your specific needs, and we will remain in regular contact to make sure we are supporting you in every way possible. Because once you're part of our Amada family, you'll never have to navigate senior care alone.
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Caring, kind and compassionate caregivers. Would recommend them to anyone needing care!
If you are an Amada customer, click here to recognize or leave anonymous feedback for one of our staff or caregivers. Click here for the Wambi employee portal.
At Amada Senior Care Northern Colorado, our mission is to help seniors maintain the highest quality of life. When home is no longer the ideal place for a senior to enjoy life, we help our clients and their families find a new environment that provides the support they need to thrive.
There are so many excellent nursing homes, assisted living communities, and other senior living options available to our clients in Northern Colorado that it can be difficult for families to know where to begin their search. We have learned through experience that guiding our clients to "make the next right decision" helps to make the process much more manageable and allows them to feel confident in their choices.
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To qualify for this program, a veteran must have served at least 90 days' active duty, with at least one of those days during a time of war.
Dishonorable discharge disqualifies veterans from this program.
Wartime veterans or their surviving spouses must currently require help from another person with activities of daily living.
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Mission: Meeting the needs and wants of consumers in the Qikiqtani region and being the retailer of choice with the most reasonable price point.
The company was formed in 1999 when QC purchased the Baffin Gas Bar and the Beach Gas Bar from the Kakivak Association. The Beach Gas Bar was closed a few years later. Since that time the company has expanded operations to include the Baffin Deli and Coffee Shop in the Igluvut Building.
The Gas Bar often is the first employer a young Inuit person has while still in school. It provides fuel, convenience products and cleaning supplies. Each year they facilitate a sealift program for customers to stock up on non-perishables. Conveniently located on the beach access road it is a popular stop for people heading out on the land or out to sea.
The Baffin Deli and Coffee Shop, opened five years ago, provides lunches, snacks and coffee daily to people in the downtown area. They also do some fabulous catering for meetings and events. Recently they started providing rotisserie chickens for take-out and some excellent gourmet cheeses.
In addition to this, as a service, they operate several ATM machines throughout the City and vending machines at select locations. Baffin Gas Limited is historically involved in bidding on tenders to supply government with goods as needed.
In late 2014 the company will once again see expansion as it opens another location in Iqaluit. The Plateau Convenience store is being promoted as the 'Cadillac' and will provide local residents with "premium" coffee, snacks and other must haves.


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Fact Check: Michelle Obama Did NOT Slam Country Music, Did NOT Say It's 'Music for Morons'
by: Eric Ferkenhoff
Did former First Lady Michelle Obama really slam the country music industry, saying the the the genre was "for morons?" No, this is not true. She never made such a statement, and the story was published by a liberal satire website that tries to mislead Trump supporters and Republicans into sharing made-up stories that are clearly marked as satire when you actually click them. Articles from the site are frequently copied by foreign-run fake news websites.
The people liking and sharing these stories are enriching foreign website operators or a liberal from Maine via the ad revenue generated with the content, which is probably not what they expected or wanted.
The claim appeared in an article (archived here) published by by America's Last Line Of Defense, or We Are ALLOD, on April 15, 2020, titled "Michelle Obama Slams Country Music, Says It's 'Music for Morons.'" The story read, in part:
Michelle Obama and her husband Barack are music fans. They love it. Except for country music, apparently drives them around the bend. They were recently interviewed and asked what concerts they would see after the crisis was over.
They both said the obvious. Jay-Z. Beyoncé. Maybe one of The Who's 427 farewell tours. When the interviewer, Joe Barron asked if they'd take in a few country shows, seeing as how Mr. Barron is a huge country music fan, Barack Obama said: "not really a fan."
Michelle Obama snorted and said, "not over my dead body."
When the shocked interviewer asked why, she went into a long diatribe of how much she disliked the true American form of music, much of it shrouded in patriotic themes and Americana.
Users on social media only saw this title, description and thumbnail:
Michelle Obama Slams Country Music, Says It's 'Music for Morons'
"There has never been a more intellectually devoid art form, ever."
This is, of course, all nonsense. In fact, in November 2011, the then-first lady hosted a country music celebration at the White House. Here is part of a story from the Huffington Post about the event:
After bravely trying her hand at NASCAR (with only partial success), Michelle Obama and her husband decided to go full-on country and throw a country music fest in the White House.
We know, we couldn't believe it either.
Unfortunately there were no ten-gallon hats involved, but the First Lady wore some brights to signal her partying mood (perhaps after she was booed in blue?).
For the daytime activities, which included a "History of Country Music: From Barn Dances to Pop Charts" workshop with Kris Kristofferson, Darius Rucker and Lyle Lovett, FLOTUS popped in a bright red and pink three quarter-sleeve dress as she addressed the group of kids.
"We've invited you here because I want to make sure that the White House lives up to the name 'The People's House,'" the first lady told the children, "That's what everybody calls it, what we call it. And I want to be sure that it's not just a place for senators and diplomats and CEOs who have a chance to come here, but it's a place for all Americans, especially young people."
"The People's House" -- that's a new one. But the Obamas proved it by having the kids sit right in the State Dining Room, with the fancy chairs and crystal chandeliers.
Of course for such accommodations, Michelle got a bit more dolled up later that night. For the evening's concert, Mrs. O swept her hair up and picked a pink silk pantsuit, watching the concert from the front row with the president.
The fake story was pushed by a site that comes with a clear satire disclaimer at the bottom of each article:
sat·ire ~ˈsaˌtī(ə)r
the use of humor, irony, exaggeration, OR ridicule to expose and criticize people's stupidity or vices, particularly in the context of contemporary politics and other topical issues.
If you disagree with the definition of satire or have decided it is synonymous with "comedy," you should really just move along.
The owner and main writer of the site is self-professed liberal troll Christopher Blair, a man from Maine who has made it his full-time job to troll gullible conservatives and Trump supporters into liking and sharing his articles. He runs several other websites, including wearethellod.com, bustatroll.org or bebest.website. Sometimes, he is also known under his nickname "Busta Troll". A second man working on the sites is John Prager as revealed in this earlier story that Lead Stories wrote.
Articles from Blair's sites frequently get copied by "real" fake news sites that often omit the satire disclaimer and any other hints the stories are fake. Blair has tried to get these sites shut down in the past, but new ones keep cropping up.
Blair and his operation were profiled by the Washington Post on November 17, 2018 by Eli Saslow:
'Nothing on this page is real': How lies become truth in online America
November 17 The only light in the house came from the glow of three computer monitors, and Christopher Blair, 46, sat down at a keyboard and started to type. His wife had left for work and his children were on their way to school, but waiting online was his other community, an unreality where nothing was exactly as it seemed.
If you are interested in learning more about Blair and the history of his sites, here is something to get you started:
The Ultimate Christopher Blair and America's Last Line of Defense Reading List | Lead Stories
STORY UPDATED: check for updates below. Yesterday Eli Saslow at the Washington Post wrote a fantastic article about Christopher Blair, a man from Maine who has been trolling conservatives and Trump supporters online for years and occasionally even made a living out of it.
If you see one of his stories on a site that does not contain a satire disclaimer, assume it is fake news. If you do see the satire disclaimer, it is, of course, also fake news.
NewsGuard, a company that uses trained journalists to rank the reliability of websites, describes wearethellod.com as:
One in a network of sites that publish false stories and hoaxes that are often mistaken for real news, run by hoax perpetrator Christopher Blair.
According to NewsGuard, the site does not maintain basic standards of accuracy and accountability. Read their full assessment here.
https://leadstories.com/hoax-alert/2020/05/fact-check-michelle-obama-did-not-slam-country-music-says-its-music-for-morons.html
https://leadstories.com/hoax-alert/2020/05/fact-check-michelle-obama-did-not-slam-country-music-says-its-music-for-morons.html Click this link to copy it to your clipboard
Eric Ferkenhoff has been a reporter, editor and professor for 27 years, working chiefly out of the Midwest and now the South. Focusing on the criminal and juvenile justice systems, education and politics, Ferkenhoff has won several journalistic and academic awards and helped start a fact-checking project at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where he continues to teach advanced reporting. Ferkenhoff also writes and edits for the juvenile justice site JJIE.org.
Read more about or contact Eric Ferkenhoff
Different viewpoints
Note: if reading this fact check makes you want to contact us to complain about bias, please check out our Red feed first.
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redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


NGC 6946, (also known as the Fireworks Galaxy and Arp 29), is an intermediate spiral galaxy about 22 million light-years away, on the border between the constellations Cepheus and Cygnus. It was discovered by William Herschel on September 9, 1798. NGC 6946 is highly obscured by interstellar matter of the Milky Way galaxy, as it is quite close to the galactic plane. Nine supernovae (SN 1917A, SN 1939C, SN 1948B, SN 1968D, SN 1969P, SN 1980K, SN 2002hh, SN 2004et, and SN 2008S) have been observed in NGC 6946.
CS3: Curves and Levels, GradientXterminator, selective Smart Sharp on galaxy core and arms, color enhancement using Gabanys method, noise reduction with Noiseware Professional.
I would have expected more details from the galaxy, which was quite difficult to process.


A classic wool coat with a long, fluted silhouette. Closed with a single button, with hand-warming welt pockets and a dropped blazer collar.
80% recycled wool, 20% viscose. 100% Bemberg lining.
6: 116cm | 8: 117cm | 10: 118cm | 12: 119cm | 14: 120cm | 16: 121cm.
6: 57.5cm | 8: 58.5cm | 10: 59.5cm | 12: 60.5cm | 14: 61.5cm | 16: 62.5cm.
Standard fit, true to size. Designed to accommodate layers.
80% recycled wool, 20% viscose, milled in China. Leftover wool and yarn are respun and dyed before being woven with the viscose.
100% Bemberg, milled in Japan. Bemberg is a high-quality fabric made from cotton husks and is a by-product of the cotton manufacturing industry. It is unique in that it is an organic material that is synthetically regenerated and spun. Anti-static, anti-cling, biodegradable and made from a renewable resource.


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Edinburgh Fringe BBC News crisis comedy – and without Jimmy Savile!
(A version of this piece was also published on the Indian news site WSN)
Sara Pascoe, Hal Cruttenden & Dan Starkey in Making News
At the Edinburgh Fringe in August, there will be a play titled Making News about a newly-installed female Head of News at the BBC who has to handle a breaking story about the corporation itself, a TV reporter frustrated about a story she can no longer sit on and the fallout from the decisions taken that "threatens to bring down the BBC".
For non-British readers of this blog:
In 2011, the BBC's flagship current affairs programme Newsnight conducted an investigation into DJ Jimmy Savile, a former Top Of The Pops and Jim'll Fix It presenter. The investigation was never screened by the BBC. When allegations of paedophilia were subsequently broadcast on ITV, the BBC was accused of a cover-up and another Newsnight report wrongly implicated Conservative politician Lord McAlpine in the widening child abuse scandal.
Making News has been written by Robert Khan and Tom Salinsky, who had a big success at last year's Edinburgh Fringe with their political play Coalition about a fictional British coalition government. Britain currently has a coalition government.
Robert Khan studied law at university and is now a Labour councillor in Islington. Tom Salinsky studied mathematics and now runs training company The Spontaneity Shop. He also co-wrote The Improv Handbook with Deborah Frances-White.
I had a chat with Robert and Tom at the King's Head Theatre in Islington last night.
Robert Khan (left) and Tom Salinsky last night in Islington
"Mathematics… playwriting… improvisation?" I asked Tom. "They don't go together."
"I've always liked problem solving," he replied, "and plotting a play involves quite a lot of problem solving."
"You talk about careful plotting," I said, "but you've written a book on improvisation and you run a training company called The Spontaneity Shop. So what's an improvising-type person like you doing writing scripted plays?"
"Improvising," explained Tom, "is like solving problems at 100mph. Improvisation's really about making a series of choices and the delightful thing for the audience is they get to see the moment of inspiration – that moment of creativity – actually happen in front of them.
"The sometimes discouraging thing for the improviser is l'esprit de l'escalier – not thinking of the right thing to do until you're on the bus on the way home. So, writing a scripted play, you don't get the rush of instantaneous creativity, but you're able to revise and improve."
"Making News has a cracking cast of comedians including Phill Jupitus," I said. "Do you let them improvise?"
"Aahhhhh….." said Tom and Robert in unison.
"We discourage it," said Tom. "In rehearsals, anything goes…"
"Yes," said Robert.
"… but once it's on stage, it's discouraged," continued Tom.
"Heavily discouraged," agreed Robert.
"Are you frustrated actors yourselves?"
"No," laughed Robert.
"I am," said Tom. "Incredibly frustrated as a writer backstage unable to influence events onstage."
"And you're both heavily into politics?" I asked.
"I think I'm politically aware," answered Tom, "whereas Robert is politically active."
"So why write two plays about politics?" I asked.
"I think it's interesting to begin with…" started Robert.
BBC crisis: Hal Cruttenden & Phill Jupitus with Sara Pascoe
"The new play isn't party political," Tom corrected me. "It's current affairs, but it isn't party political, whereas Coalition was."
"We were interested," explained Robert, "in how a large institution that has to report the news impartially reports bad news about itself."
"And the strange thing is the BBC does," I said.
"Oh yes," said Robert. "I imagine the debates internally are quite difficult."
"There's a sort of Catholic guilt about it," suggested Tom, "that they have to be particularly fearless when they have to report bad news about themselves."
"Have either of you worked for the Beeb?" I asked.
"No," said Robert.
"I've not been a salaried employee," said Tom, "but, in my capacity as corporate trainer I've worked for all sorts of bits of the BBC – picture research, BBC Worldwide, current affairs… They hired my company for training."
"Picture research?" I asked, surprised.
"One of their big problems," explained Tom, "was that the people making the programmes wouldn't co-operate with them. The conversation would go:
We want to take a picture of this big star
He's not available….
Then we'll have no pictures of him to give to the press…
Well tough.
…so our job was to go in and help them build stronger relationships."
"What was the logic," I asked, "behind saying We're not going to promote our own thing?"
"Well," explained Tom, "and it's something we explore in the play… the BBC don't see themselves as part of one big Corporation. They see themselves as a bunch of loosely-associated but basically independent units all looking out for themselves."
"It's true of all large organisations," said Robert. "You break down into smaller units. It's the only way human beings can operate… and you then become competitors."
"So what's your insight into BBC News?" I asked.
"Well," said Tom, "we've certainly spoken to a few people."
"But we can't talk about that," Robert told me.
"Some fairly senior people within News," Tom added.
"Have you talked to any of the people you're parodying?" I asked.
There was a long pause.
"As with Coalition," said Tom, "we're not parodying any particular individual. We're looking at the roles. The hero of Coalition wasn't based on Nick Clegg. It was an answer to the question What pressures would somebody IN THAT POSITION feel? Likewise, in Making News, we have a Director General, a Head of News, but they aren't specifically based on any present or past people."
"And we stress that very heavily," said Robert, carefully.
"We are looking," said Tom, "at What does being in that position do to you? When you come under these pressures, how might you react?
"I don't think we need to do a pastiche of real characters," said Robert.
"We create our own characters to inhabit those roles," agreed Tom.
"It could be a tragedy rather than a comedy," I said.
"Well, the difference is very small," said Tom. "There's a quote in the play that Labour governments resent what they see as the BBC's lofty patrician heritage and try to cut the Licence Fee and Conservative governments think the BBC is a seething bed of Leftie hotheads and try to cut the Licence Fee."
"If you have a state broadcaster that's independent," said Robert, "it's always going to sooner or later rub-up the elected government the wrong way. And long may that continue."
Phill Jupitus as the BBC's DG
"I felt sorry for the extraordinarily inept Director General George Entwhistle," I said, "because he got crucified for saying I didn't feel it was my position to ask any questions – but that's the DG's cleft stick at the BBC. If he interferes in producers' independence, he's wrong; if he doesn't interfere in producers' actions, he's wrong."
"It's a very, very difficult job," agreed Robert.
"When did you start writing Making News?" I asked.
"During the Edinburgh run of Coalition last August," said Tom.
"So before George Entwhistle became DG?" I said.
"Yes," said Robert. "Way before the Jimmy Savile scandal."
"Operation Yewtree," added Tom, "cast a slightly distasteful shadow over the idea. We don't go near any of that sex stuff in Making News. It would have been difficult to make that funny and it wasn't what we wanted to write about."
"The stakes are very high for the BBC," said Robert. "Three Director Generals in the last 20 years have had to resign – essentially been sacked – Alasdair Milne, Greg Dyke, George Entwhistle. That's quite a dramatic organisation to work for."
"For a long time," said Tom, "we were going to cast the Director General as the central figure. By this time, Entwhistle was DG. We thought we'd do A Year in The Life of a DG, ending in ignominy… and then he resigns after 54 days… We'd been trumped by reality! We had to more-or-less start again from scratch at that point."
"Do you envisage a TV version of Making News?" I asked.
"I don't think it would be on the BBC!" laughed Robert.
"Why not?" I asked. "They'd be dramatising themselves honestly and fairly."
"Self-flagellation can only go so far," Robert said. "Scotland on Sunday asked them about our play and the BBC issued a statement saying: This is not something we would comment on."
"In Edinburgh last year," said Tom, "we had both The Culture Show and Late Review come to see Coalition… It will be interesting to see if they turn up for Making News. They may feel completely happy to review it impartially or they may get the hump."
"In the end," said Robert, "this is more affectionate than Coalition was. We do hold the BBC in huge respect and affection."
And so do I.
Filed under Comedy, Politics, Television, Theatre
Tagged as bbc, coalition, comedy, edinburgh fringe, improv, Jimmy Savile, Making News, News, politics, Robert Khan, scandal, Tom Salinsky, uk
Dec 19, 2012 · 10:34 am
How BBC News got a bias against news
Slowly recovering from the damage
In yesterday's blog, I criticised the lack of world news on British TV channels, including the BBC News Channel. One reason, of course, is that people are not interested in news items which don't directly and immediately affect them.
They do want to know about hospitals, schools and roads in the UK. They generally do not want to know about war in the Congo or trade wars in Asia… Although North Korea's Kim Jong-un and London Mayor Boris Johnson may run neck-and-neck in the "and finally" humorous eccentricity stakes.
Bland Birt Corporate logo
Another problem with BBC TV News at the moment, though, is the deadly legacy which remains of former BBC Director General John Birt's grey grip on journalistic style.
Birt came up with this theory that his presumed intellectual inferiors – the 'ordinary' men and women of Britain – did not understand the background to the news they were told in news summaries. He came up with the theory that there was a "bias against understanding" in news reports… so he directed that the background to every news story had to be explained any time there was any news.
Before Birt Came – the old logo
The BBC used to divide factual reporting into two separated areas: News and Current Affairs.
News reports did just that. They reported news.
Current Affairs programmes (like Panorama) reported the background to the news.
Birt abolished the distinction, resulting in news reporting where you could not see the wood for the trees.
During his grey, foggy time at the BBC, I once heard a news item.
Some ordinary (ie not high profile) person had got shot in Northern Ireland.
I actually timed the report.
In the "news" report, there was just under three minutes of background on the 600-odd years of Irish Troubles which led up to the shooting and under 15 seconds reporting what had actually happened when this person had got shot.
Under Birt, news reporting had a "mission to explain" which actually became a mission which lessened not just the amount of news reported but the actual investigative reporting of reality.
In days of yore, BBC reporters would go out to uncover what was actually happening. Under Birt, the theory was that reporters should sit in their office, cool, calm and collected, look at all the sources they had, decide what was happening, then write their report.
They would then try to make this near-academic monologue more 'visual' by going out to interview people from whom soundbites could be extracted illuminating the pre-determined angle of the report. If interviewees inconveniently gave a different view, the reporter, it was suggested, should try to get the 'correct' angle out of them. If they continued to spout the 'wrong' view, then they would not be included in the report.
Because 'ordinary people' were deemed intellectually inferior, the message of any report had to be reinforced by relevant vivid visuals. This still lives on.
Two days ago, BBC News had a serious political story that LibDem leader Nick Clegg had likened the creation of coalition government policy to the making of sausages. The report was filmed not with the reporter standing in the Palace of Westminster or in Whitehall or talking to a Liberal Democrat but – you guessed it – standing beside a sausage machine inside a sausage factory.
I once saw a BBC political correspondent describe in a serious political report what was happening in the 'Westminster circus' by standing in a circus ring while acrobats flew overhead on a trapeze.
The BBC has mostly recovered from Birt's pseudo-stylistic insanities.
But not totally.
The more analysis and background of news you have in news reports, the less time there is for actual news items.
Birt's "bias against understanding" has resulted in a bias against actual news reporting.
There is also the risk, of course, that a "mission to explain" means explanation and editorialising outweigh reporting… and 'explanation' and 'editorialising' can easily overlap into opinion.
BBC News should report the news.
It should not have an opinion.
Filed under Television
Tagged as bbc, bias, john birt, News, report, television, TV
Why do BBC, ITV and Sky News not report what is happening in the world?
(This piece also appeared in the Huffington Post and on Indian news site WSN)
BBC, ITV and Sky TV's target audience in their news reports
America is often criticised for being insular.
It was said that, in the build-up to the Gulf War, some people in the southern states – genuinely – were nervous because they believed the war would be happening in the Gulf of Mexico.
The blame for Americans' insularity is usually put on US TV News which, it is said, reports almost entirely internal US stories.
But the words pot, kettle and black leap to mind.
Two people from Ireland were staying with me last week.
They complained that, on Irish television, the RTÉ news reports were almost entirely inward-looking reports about things happening in Ireland. One or two news items from the UK might be tacked-on briefly at the end.
But it is the same in the UK.
Blinkered, insular news reporting. We hear very little about what is happening in the outside world. One school shooting in the US is not wide world reporting.
I worked for 25 years or so in television, mostly in Entertainment but, early on, I was a Researcher on the BBC's start-up teletext service CEEFAX, part of BBC TV News. This meant, in effect, being a cheap Sub Editor and, during the real Sub Editor meal breaks, being the person who, unsupervised, decided what went out.
We had Reuters and Press Association teleprinters spewing news in to us all the time and I remember one day stories coming in about massed tank battles involving (it was said) Soviet troops in Ethiopia or, I suppose, it was probably Eritrea. I did not report these on CEEFAX because the major full-scale war had been going on for months and had never been in the headlines.
In the same way, much later, the war in Liberia was almost never reported on British TV news because it went on for so long, because there were no TV reporters out there and because it overlapped with the First Gulf War.
I was thinking about this last night when I was watching vivid Al Jazeera reports on the civil war in Syria.
On the BBC TV News programmes last night – zilch, nothing, nada. Syria crops up occasionally but not regularly.
You would have thought that, with rolling 24-hour news channels, we would be getting more news, but we simply get the same news repeated every 15 minutes.
In a mainstream half hour BBC1 or ITV1 or Sky news broadcast we get, perhaps five news stories reported. Almost all are domestic UK stories.
Africa and Asia go virtually unreported.
'Extended' news coverage means Europe and the US.
To get regular news on Africa, Asia and Australasia, you have to watch Al Jazeera.
There is no reason why the BBC or ITN or Sky could not have a 15 minute slot every hour in which they report genuine World News. Quantity, in this case, is more important than in-depth reports.
Of course, the demand for what is happening in South America or South East Asia is not as high – unless there is a visually exciting tsunami.
I remember talking to a reporter on Granada TV's World in Action programme years ago. He had risked his life in Nicaragua and Venezuela with bullets whizzing over his head and death threats from the government. But, he said, he knew that when his reports were networked on World in Action, they would get relatively low viewing figures… Whereas a relatively easy-to-make programme on the NHS or UK schools would get much, much higher viewing figures because those subjects touched people's lives.
That is no reason, though, for not reporting what happens in the world.
Tagged as Al Jazeera, bbc, Ceefax, ITN, ITV, News, reportage, Sky, television, TV, World in Action
Apr 10, 2012 · 1:47 pm
Beijing – Waltzing in the headlights of a fast-coming future in the new Tokyo
The future is bright and dazzling in Beijing - the new Tokyo.
I am sitting in my hotel room on the 13th (top) floor of a 4-star hotel in Beijing.
I was in Beijing in 1984, 1985 and 1986.
My memory of Beijing in 1984 is of almost everyone wearing green or blue Mao suits – a uniformity of dull colours. The next year, some lighter pastel colours were creeping in and I stumbled on a fashion shoot by the lake in Beihai Park where the glamorous model was wearing a mini skirt.
Back then, I remember a rather dusty, occasionally misty city with Dickensian factory chimneys, streets swamped with tsunamis of bicycles and building sites each with hundreds of workers instead of machines. This was not – and is not – a country with a labour shortage.
Today, on the 45-60 minute drive to the city centre from the giant fuck-off-and-die airport (built for the 2008 Olympics), we passed through a new city with giant, often very well-designed buildings and loads of cars on busy four and five lane carriageways.
Then we hit Tiananmen Square with its new monument to distract and disguise where the demonstrators were in 1989. It now also has an apparently permanent visible police presence plus parked police cars and vans.
Once past Tiananmen Square, we hit the more crowded, narrow streets with jumbled shops and narrow, greyish, busy alleyways I remembered.
The TV in my hotel seems to cater mostly for Chinese, not English-speaking, businessmen – a not insignificant point. And the BBC World news channel is reporting that Sony has announced a whacking $6 billion loss.
The Japanese are on their way out.
The Chinese are on their way up.
More surprisingly, the BBC still has a TV reporter inside North Korea. Why has this man not been thrown out of the country? He is still telling and showing the truth about what life is like there. He was invited in to show the glorious start to the celebrations of the 100th birthday of the Great Leader Kim Il-sung – and to report on the 'fact' that the North Koreans' upcoming rocket launch is to put a satellite into space, not to test an ICBM capable of carrying a nuclear warhead.
Fat chance. He is making it clear North Korea is a fantasy land of literally incredible facades.
The North Koreans have said their rocket will be launched "by 16th April". As the late Kim Il-sung's 100th birthday is on the 15th April, guessing which day it will actually be launched does not seem like, err, rocket science.
Back on the TV in Beijing, BBC World is reporting that someone called (as far as I can figure phonetically) Nee-lu-yang, disabled and on crutches after being beaten up by the police, has been sentenced to three years imprisonment – and her husband to two years – for "provoking trouble" by campaigning against the eviction of people from their homes to make way for new building developments by the Chinese authorities.
In China, rapid modernisation comes at a price which would be unacceptably high in the UK.
I took a walk out tonight and, over the course of an hour, I passed nine people walking their pet dogs. In the mid 1980s, a friend of mine went into Canton free market a meat-eater and came out a vegetarian: "It was the live dogs and cats and owls that did it," she told me. "All in small cages, ready for eating. It was the owls that really got to me, with their big eyes staring out at me."
Now dogs are kept by some as pets. The sign of an increasingly moneyed society and probably the sign of an increasingly something else society which I can't put my finger on.
People were still doing that deep, throaty Chinese spitting in the street back in 1984.
Things have advanced at an amazing rate.
And yet… And yet…
There is still that protester disabled and on crutches after being beaten up by the police, sentenced to three years imprisonment for "provoking trouble".
Some might argue that 2012 in China is more like Nineteen Eighty-Four than it was in 1984. But with a glittering veneer.
On my walk tonight, in a darkened open space about 20 feet from one of Beijing's busy ring roads, I heard the faint sound of traditional Chinese music and saw about thirty people of various ages dancing in slow motion. Some were waltzing; some appeared to be practising slow-motion line-dancing.
Perhaps this is a new 2012 version of tai-chi.
In 1968, Country Joe and The Fish recorded a song called Waltzing in the Moonlight. In Beijing, they are waltzing in the headlights of a fast-coming future.
China is the new Japan… with Japan, like Atlantis, cut down to size by the Gods with a national catastrophe.
It only took water to overwhelm Atlantis.
Japan, a more advanced civilisation, had visited on it by the Gods the triple disaster of earthquake, tsunami and nuclear disaster. Japan has stumbled if not yet been humbled..
The road signs in Beijing – and many local shop signs – are in both Chinese and English. The government is preparing for and has already entered an international future.
The girl in this 4-star hotel's Business Centre not only does not speak English, she does not know how to print off text from the computer she supervises onto the printer sitting beside it.
And the BBC World channel reports that the wife of prominent Chinese politician Bo Xilai has been arrested on suspicion of killing a British businessman last year. No motive is given; the businessman seems to have been a friend of the anti-corruption Mr Bo and his wife; and the Chinese leadership is changing this year.
Now, presumably, Mr Bo has been knocked out of the running.
Don't mess with the Chinese.
Here is the sound of Country Joe and The Fish Waltzing in the Moonlight…
Filed under China, Japan, North Korea, Politics
Tagged as 1984, bbc, Beijing, Canton, China, Country Joe and The Fish, demonstration, free market, freedom, ICBM, im Il-sung, Japan, Mao suits, massacre, modernisation, moonlight, News, North Korea, Sony, Tiananmen, Tienanmen Square, Tokyo, waltzing
Mar 24, 2012 · 8:10 am
Before "Star Wars" men, I dream of comic Stewart Lee in a tight-fitting suit
Slow traffic yesterday was not as fast as comic Stewart Lee.
I drove up to Edinburgh from London yesterday. It took an hour longer than normal because, between Birmingham and Preston – a distance of 95 miles – the M6 motorway was clogged and we were stopping as often and as unpredictably as the humour in a BBC3 comedy show.
The good news, though, was it took so long that even my non-technical brain realised I could plug my new iPhone into the car's cigarette lighter socket and, by putting the iPhone in the papier mâché mounting moulded by a friend for my SatNav (after some bastard thieves nicked the original in Greenwich) I could use T-Mobile's unlimited data plan to listen to the BBC TV News channel while driving up the motorway. To be safe – of course, officer – I only watched the screen when stuck in traffic jams.
I felt as if I had, somehow, dipped a belated toe into what would have seemed a wildly futuristic world to Jules Verne or H.G.Wells.
Which is appropriate, because I am up in Edinburgh to attend a two day event organised by the Guardian newspaper at which both Gary Kurtz, producer of Star Wars and The Empire Strikes Back, and 20th Century Fox's former vice president Sandy Lieberson explain "how Star Wars, a film rejected by most of the major studios, was put into production by 20th Century Fox and went on to become one of the most iconic films in the history of cinema".
By coincidence last night, just before I went to bed, I was phoned by the late comedian Malcolm Hardee's sister Clare. She had mis-dialled. When I told her I was in Edinburgh, she asked:
"Oh, are you up there scouting something for the Fringe?"
When I told her why I was up in Edinburgh, she said:
"Oh, me and Steve (her husband) went to Tunisia last month and saw the Star Wars sets there out in the desert… We went out into the Sahara Desert… and it rained!… Isn't that typical?… It was lovely, though."
I then went to bed.
For unknown reasons, I woke up several times during the night, which means I remember a dream I had. It involved Malcolm Hardee Award winning, sophisticated and intelligent comedian Stewart Lee (whose TV show was yesterday re-commissioned by BBC2 for another two series).
He was performing at the Hackney Empire in London wearing a suit several times too small for him. (Two days ago, a friend of mine complained that my trousers were too short because she could see my socks.) On stage, he looked like sexually-disgraced American comic Pee-wee Herman.
Stewart's act involved stuffing rapidly into his mouth several ham sandwiches on brown bread then trying to speak, which simply meant he was spitting and spewing out lots of little pieces of half-eaten brown bread and ham while he told for-him unusually rapid-fire jokes.
I have seen this 'act' before but cannot remember who did it.
The ham sandwiches were similar to ones I had eaten on the long drive up to Edinburgh.
This goes some way to explaining the content of the dream, but possibly not far enough for comfort.
Filed under Dreams, Movies, Science fiction, Surreal, Technology, Telecoms
Tagged as 20th Century, 21st century, BBC TV, channel, Desert, dream, edinburgh, Empire Strikes Back, fox, Fringe, Gary Kurtz, Guardian, iPhone, Malcolm hardee, News, Pee Wee Herman, production, Sahara, Sandy Lieberson, satnav, sets, Star Wars, Stewart Lee, T-Mobile, technology, traffic, Tunisia
Sep 24, 2011 · 9:27 am
Duck! The dangers of Chinese subtitles, kidnap and Rupert Murdoch's flying bus
Yesterday, I went to see a movie The Beginning of the Great Revival (aka The Founding of a Party), which was screening in London as part of the China Image Film Festival. It seemed to be very good film. A sumptuously made movie. Of course, if you work for the state film company, have a virtually limitless budget and you are making a movie about the founding of the Chinese Communist Party, this could help. But I thought I espied a director who had been influenced by Sergio Leone's historical epics.
I say The Beginning of the Great Revival "seemed" to be a very good film because, alas, despite opening and closing titles with English translations, the actual two-hour long historical epic turned out to be in Chinese with Chinese subtitles.
This reminded me of the time I sat through Sholay at the National Film Theatre when they had accidentally rented a print of the epic Indian language movie with French sub-titles.
I speak neither French nor Hindi but you cannot fail to enjoy an all-stops-pulled-out Bollywood film where (as always) people randomly burst into song and the hero has both his arms cut off yet continues to fight in true action man style. (Both Sholay and Monty Python and the Holy Grail were released in 1975 so I doubt if either ripped off the idea of an armless hero; it must have been the spirit of the times.)
I also do not speak Mandarin nor read Chinese script and my knowledge of Chinese history 1910-1921 is a tad hazy, but The Beginning of the Great Revival was never less than interesting. You can see why in the (subtitled) trailer on YouTube:
I was brought back to some form of reality when I came out of the cinema and read Rupert Murdoch's iPad-only newspaper The Daily. The front page story was:
DUCK! – Anyone's guess where 13,000-pound satellite will hit
sub-headed as:
READY TO TUMBLE! Satellite hurtles toward Earth – and scientists can't say when or where it will hit
This was a story I had never heard of before – and I had seen the lunchtime news on BBC TV yesterday.
"NASA scientists," The Daily said, "are shrugging their shoulders with little or no idea when – or where – a satellite the size of a bus will fall to Earth. The latest projections last night were that the defunct NASA satellite would tumble to Earth from space sometime this afternoon, but because the satellite is free-falling, the space agency and the U.S. Air Force cannot make a precise prediction about when and where it will hit."
According to the article, NASA claimed the chances of someone being hit by a piece of falling debris was 1 in 3,200 and the debris would fall along a 500-mile path.
Those odds of 1 in 3,200 seemed surprisingly low to me.
"The only confirmed case of a person being hit by space junk," The Daily told me, "was in 1997 when Lottie Williams of Tulsa, Oklahoma, was grazed on the shoulder by a small piece of a Delta rocket."
NASA has apparently warned people against touching any part of the satellite they might find lying around on the ground.
"While it contains no hazardous chemicals," The Daily reported, "the space agency said people could potentially be hurt by sharp edges."
Apparently what NASA calls "medium-sized junk" falls back to earth about once a week. Debris the size of a bus falls about once a year. When bits of the Skylab space station (the size of a house) fell onto parts of Western Australia in July 1979, local authorities fined NASA $400 for littering.
I thought I should perhaps check if anything the size of a bus had fallen on London while I was in the cinema watching the glorious founding of the Chinese Communist Party in The Beginning of the Great Revival so I got a London Evening Standard (which is now owned, like the Independent newspaper, by an ex-KGB man).
Its front page news was a story about a boy who had been encouraged to read by the Duchess of Cornwall. I could not find any story anywhere about anyone being killed by a bus from outer space falling on their head so, when I got home, I checked the BBC News channel (no unusual deaths; no mention of death from above) and then checked my e-mails to find one from mad inventor John Ward – designer and fabricator of the highly-prestigious Malcolm Hardee Awards for comedy.
He told me he had been booked by the University of Lincoln to appear on 12th October at something entitled An Eccentric Symposium – Tomato Tomäto.
Among other billed events and speakers at this academic symposium are 'Project Pigeon' ("an art and education project that works with pigeons as a vehicle to bring people together"), the World Egg Throwing Championships and a talk on Gender, Exercise and Art by Anthony Schrag, an artist now living in Scotland whose work, according to the University of Lincoln, "focuses on blowing things up, climbing on things and occasionally kidnapping people".
I could take no more.
When I woke up this morning, the BBC News channel was reporting that the NASA spacecraft could not be found, but it had passed over the UK twice during the night and was now "the size of a refrigerator".
They also reported Prime Minister David Cameron's warning to the world that we live in dangerous economic times.
Fuck the economy. Where is the fridge?
Filed under China, Eccentrics, Movies, Newspapers, Science
Tagged as Anthony Schrag, award, "Founding of a Party", bbc, Bollywood, China, Chinese, cinema, Communist, Cornwall, David Cameron, Duchess, eccentric, egg throwing, epic, Evening Standard, film, Holy Grail, Image Film Festival, Indian, inventor, iPad, John Ward, junk, KGB, kidnap, Lincoln, london, Lottie Williams, Malcolm hardee, Mandarin, Monty Python, movie, NASA, News, newspaper, Project Pigeon, Rupert Murdoch, satellite, Sergio Leone, Sholay, Space, subtitle, The Beginning of the Great Revival, The Daily, university, Western Australia, world
Sep 15, 2011 · 2:08 pm
The tsunami of anarchy which will be released by the death of newspapers
Last night, I went to the Fulbright Lecture at the British Library, given by the Financial Times' editor Lionel Barber.
The subject was "Adapt or Die: The Future of News and Newspapers in the Digital Revolution".
In 2009, more than one hundred US newspapers closed down and, in 2007-2009, newspaper advertising revenue fell by 10% in Germany, 21% in the UK and 30% in the US. Circulations for printed newspapers are falling like lemmings as readers and advertisers move online.
One saving thought seems to be that people may be prepared to pay for comment and analysis, though probably not for general news. The Financial Times is in the fortunate position of being a niche newspaper. It mostly reports on a specific subject area where people are prepared to pay for analysis, comment and specialised reports.
But newspapers in general have not been delivering news for the last 50 years.
I am ancient enough to have been at college doing Communication Studies (radio, TV, journalism, advertising) when the first issue of Rupert Murdoch's Sun was published.
The guy who supervised the journalism part of our course was the Production Editor of Rupert Murdoch's News of the World. On the morning the first edition of the new Sun was published, he went through it page-by-page with us, pointing out that all the main stories were not News as such: they had all been reported in the previous evening's TV news or were, in some way re-heated old news.
After that, I paid closer attention to what was actually printed in newspapers and developed my taste for the Daily Telegraph. If you look at most newspapers, you can actually visually see that they are magazines. The Guardian is a prime example. Look at its news pages and you see big rectangular blocks of text which analyse and/or give insight into news stories. But they are almost never reporting new News.
The Daily Telegraph has lots of columns with different little inches of different stories, most of which have not been included in the always superficial TV and radio news. I blogged a couple of months ago about how I once met a Daily Telegraph sub-editor at a party who hated working at the paper for exactly the same reason I loved reading it. People would yell across the room at him: "Give me a three-inch story!" not caring what the actual story was.
And, except at election times, the Daily Telegraph tends to keep the old-fashioned division between news and comment (which most US newspapers also maintain).
Newspaper and TV News editors used to be – and still are – gatekeepers to what is considered news. But, with the internet, power has in theory moved from publisher to reader.
In fact, forget gatekeepers. Forget gates. Think dams. One gigantic dam behind which is all the water in the world.
In the past, newspaper and TV News editors were in charge of dams which kept most of the water behind their dams and let a few selected trickles through. Now the mother of all dams is opening and uncontrolled, uncontrollable amounts of information are going to be unleashed not just day-by-day but second-by-second.
In my erstwhile youth, if you wanted to find out facts, you had to go to a library. Librarians and the publishers of encyclopaedias were the damkeepers of knowledge. Now Wikipedia, Project Gutenberg and their ilk are opening the dams which should result in almost all (and, in theory all) current and past knowledge being available instantly anywhere in the world.
If you are sitting on a camel in the middle of the Australian desert outside Alice Springs then, on a 3G device, you are now able to instantly find out which films are being screened at all the cinemas in Glasgow tonight or which dates the Emperor Caligula ruled Rome – and you can download and read a copy of Charles Dickens' David Copperfield or Homer's Iliad.
In future, it seems, all news will be available to everyone pretty-much instantly via Twitter, Facebook and every other social network known and as yet unknown to man and woman. The first news of the US attack on Osama bin Laden's compound in May came on Twitter.
What will be needed is what, last night, Lionel Barber was understandably most scathing about – so-called news aggregators like The Huffington Post (which sometimes carries my blogs), The Drudge Report, The Daily Beast and even Gawker, whose slogan is "Today's gossip is tomorrow's news". At the moment, these (depending on your viewpoint) could be said to pirate other news sources and regurgitate the selected news.
The Financial Times currently employs 130 foreign correspondents to collect and interpret news abroad. What will be needed in future, I presume, is some way of analysing, interpreting and compacting news from several hundred million correspondents including the blogosphere.
Newspapers may become aggregators.
No, I have no idea how or if that will happen.
And I have no idea what will happen.
But traditional newspapers were dead 50 years ago; they just did not know it.
Filed under Internet, Newspapers, Politics, Television
Tagged as Al Jazeera, bbc, British Library, Ceefax, Communication Studies, Daily Beast, Daily Telegraph, death, digital, Embakasi, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Financial Times, Fulbright, gatekeeper, Huffington Post, ITN, Kate Copstick, Kenya, lecture, lewis schaffer, Lionel Barber, Mama Biashara, Nairobi, News, News of the World, newspapers, Project Gutenberg, Reuters, revolution, Rupert Murdoch, Sun, teletext, TV, Wikipedia
Jul 8, 2011 · 1:47 pm
News of the World. Forget the hacks. It's The Bill you always have to pay.
I have worked as a researcher and sub-editor for BBC TV News (via their old Ceefax teletext service) and, briefly, in the newsrooms at Anglia TV, Granada TV and ITN. I have known a lot of journalists. But even I was shocked by the News of the World and other tabloids' amorality.
I don't mean the telephone hacking scandal which has now seen Rupert Murdoch close down Britain's biggest-selling newspaper.
I mean the cheap Killer Bitch movie and Katie Price's ex-husband Alex Reid being caught on camera with his trousers down.
Police corruption comes later in this blog.
In what must have been a moment of madness I financed Killer Bitch without reading the script (look, it was cheap) and I was away at the Edinburgh Fringe for weeks when shooting started.
While I was away, a sex scene was shot between Alex Reid and the lead actress, the director's girlfriend/partner.
Alex Reid's chum/manager asked the director if it was OK to have a photographer on set that day – not to take photos of the sex scene itself but just of Alex arriving, being on-set, being glamorous. The director said Yes.
And, of course, when the sex scene happened, click-click-click and off in a corner Alex's photographer goes to e-mail out his photos.
What the director didn't know was that the manager guy had, all week, been playing-off the News of the World against The People to get a higher price for the sex scene pictures. The People ran their photos on the cover and in an "exclusive" double-page spread that Sunday.
But the News of the World, unknown to anyone else, had secretly set up a hidden camera in the grotto where filming took place. They took their own photos and ran a single-page 'spoiler' about "sickening footage" in the "vile and degrading hardcore porn film" in which Alex had been involved in a "disgusting rape".
In fact, it wasn't a rape scene at all. Never was. Never scripted as rape (I read that bit later); wasn't shot as rape; wasn't edited as rape. I saw the uncut footage when I came back from Edinburgh and it simply wasn't rape.
But, bizarrely, journalists often believe what they read in tabloid newspapers, so this story about the vile rape scene in a hardcore porn movie (which is wasn't) quickly spread across the world, sometimes using the same words the original News of the World had used.
The movie, which had only just started shooting and which was months away from being edited, was reviled as "violent porn" by The Times of India, a "vile and degrading movie" on Australia's Perth Now website and "violent, aggressive… icky stuff" by TheHollyoodGossip.com. Back home, totally unseen, the Daily Mirror slammed it as "a sick movie" with "vile scenes…stomach churning"
Fair enough. Good publicity for a small film, though sadly much too early to profit from.
Two weeks later, The People ran a new cover story and two-page spread about how Alex Reid had "returned" to the Killer Bitch set "to shoot more torrid outdoor sex shots". This had never happened. It was a complete fiction. But The People had detailed descriptions, actual photos from this supposed second sex scene (they were re-cycled from the original scene) and they even had a direct quote from the director saying, "I can confirm that Alex filmed these scenes within the last seven days".
The director told me not only that The People had never talked to him about this alleged re-shoot but, at that point in time, he had never actually talked to anyone at the newspaper about the film ever.
Obviously, you expect to be mis-quoted and have your words twisted by newspapers. Now, it seems, it's common to simply make up entirely fictional stories.
The New York Daily News correctly reported that "the film's producers don't seem bothered by the publicity."
Fair enough. Publicity is publicity.
But just as the Stephen Lawrence affair, to my mind, was not about racism but about police corruption – an investigating policeman was paid-off by the father of one of the accused – the current News of the World scandal is not about phone hacking but about endemic police corruption.
Two days ago, I saw a Sky News double interview with, on the one hand, Brian Paddick, former Deputy Assistant Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police, and on the other ex News of the World journalist Paul McMullan.
McMullan could be seen almost literally biting his tongue off after he said that, if you were investigating police corruption, the only way to find out the facts was to talk to other policemen. As they might lose their jobs by dishing the dirt on fellow officers, they could not be expected to do this for free or for a few pounds and it was not unreasonable to pay them £20,000 or £30,000.
This figure was picked up by the interviewer.
Brian Paddick, who was basically defending the Met, said this was terrible but "clearly everyone has their price".
This is an interesting thing to say because it is an acceptance by a former senior Met officer that, if the price is high enough, any Metropolitan policeman can be bought.
Yesterday's London Evening Standard led on a story that "Corrupt Met police received more than £100,000 in unlawful payments from senior journalists and executives at the News of the World."
It also claimed that two senior Scotland Yard detectives investigating the phone hacking scandal held back: "Assistant Commissioners Andy Hayman and John Yates were both scared the News of the World would expose them for allegedly cheating on their wives if they asked difficult questions of the Sunday tabloid."
Today's Guardian says: "Some police sources suggested there was no evidence yet that officers had actually received the payments and what would also be investigated was whether the journalists involved had kept the money themselves."
Obviously some Met officer here, limbering up for a career as a stand-up comic.
Police in the UK taking bribes? Shock! horror! – And the Pope is a Catholic?
The system-wide corruption within the Metropolitan Police in the 1960s was supposedly partially cleaned-up.
On 4th December 1997, former Metropolitan Police Commissioner Sir Paul Condon gave evidence to the House of Commons Home Affairs Committee and said there were around 100-250 corrupt officers in the Met. By "corrupt" he meant seriously corrupt – they dealt drugs, helped arrange armed robberies etc.
Condon is also the man who coined the phrase "noble cause corruption" – the idea that some police justifiably 'bend the rules' to get a conviction when officers 'know' the accused is guilty but do not have enough proof to convict. So it could be seen by some as "noble" to plant evidence, lie under oath and generally 'fit up' any 'known villains' when there is no actual evidence which would prove their guilt.
In Stoke Newington the police did, indeed, 'fit up' guilty drug dealers who would not otherwise have been imprisoned. But their motive was not to 'clean up' the area but to clear away the opposition as police officers were themselves dealing hard drugs. Whether this comes within Sir Paul Condon's definition of "noble cause corruption" I am not sure.
In 1998, the Telegraph got hold of (and one wonders how) a confidential document containing the minutes of a meeting organised by the National Criminal Intelligence Service (NCIS). It quoted this police document as saying: "corrupt officers exist throughout the UK police service… Corruption may have reached 'Level 2', the situation which occurs in some third world countries."
I once asked someone who had managed a 'massage parlour' – in other words, a brothel – how he had avoided getting raided by the police. He looked at me as if I was mad:
"Cos we fucking paid the Old Bill and gave them free services," he said.
In Britain today, it remains a fact of life – as it always has been throughout my life – that you always have to pay The Bill.
Last night's TV news shows reported that today the police would arrest former News of the World editor Andy Coulson. Now where would they have got that story from? Only the police would know. And today he was arrested.
Was the tip-off paid-for or was it just a nudge-nudge case of You do me a favour; I'll do you a favour?
Filed under Crime, Legal system, Movies, Newspapers
Tagged as adultery, Alex Reid, Andy Coulson, Andy Hayman, Anglia TV, assistant, Australia, BBC TV, biggest selling, Brian Paddick, bribe, Britain, british, brothel, Ceefax, Commissioner, corruption, country, Daily Mirror, deal, degrading, deputy, director, drug, edinburgh fringe, editor, enquiry, Evening Standard, film, fit up, frame, gossip, Granada TV, hackers, hacking, hacks, hard core, hard drugs, heroin, Hollywood, Home Affairs Committee, House of Commons, inquiry, investigation, ITN, John Yates, journalist, Katie Price, Killer Bitch, london, marketing, massage parlour, Met, Metropolitan Police, movie, National Criminal Intelligence Service, NCIS, New York Daily News, News, News of the World, Newsroom, noble cause, officer, Paul Condon, pay the bill, People, Perth Now, plant evidence, police, porn, PR, publicity, racism, rape, researcher, Rupert Murdoch, scandal, Scotland Yard, sex scene, Sky News, spoiler, Stephen Lawrence, sting, Stoke Newington, sub editor, Sunday, systemic, tabloid, Telegraph, telephone, teletext, The Bill, The Old Bill, Third World, Times of India, uk, United Kingdom, vile, villain
Is comedy more or less important than sewage management?
Years ago, I was on a BBC shorthand writing course and one of the other guys on the course was a BBC News Trainee and Cambridge University graduate called Peter Bazalgette; there was something interesting about his eyes – a creative inquisitiveness – that made me think he had immense talent.
But he never got anywhere in BBC News.
He ended up as a researcher on Esther Rantzen's That's Life! and, from there, he became producer on one of the most unimaginatively-titled BBC TV shows ever: Food and Drink.
He made a big success of that and in doing so, it is often said, he created the new concept of celebrity chefs. He then started his own company, making Changing Rooms, Ground Force and Ready, Steady Cook amongst others.
His company ended up as part of Endemol and it is Bazalgette who is credited with making the Dutch TV format Big Brother such a big success in the UK and worldwide. By 2007, he was on Endemol's global board with a salary of £4.6 million.
Last year, I saw another Cambridge University graduate perform at the Edinburgh Fringe – Dec Munro – and he had a creative inquisitiveness in his eyes similar to Peter Bazalgette's.
Dec currently runs the monthly Test Tube Comedy show at the Canal Cafe Theatre in London's Little Venice. I saw the show for the first time last night and he is an exceptionally good compere.
I always think it is more difficult to be a good compere than a good comedian and, very often, I have seen good comedians make bad comperes.
Ivor Dembina and Janey Godley – both, perhaps not coincidentally, storytellers rather than pure gag-based comics – are that rare thing: good comedians AND good comperes.
The late Malcolm Hardee – with the best will in the world – was not a particularly good comedian in a normal stand-up spot on a comedy bill – he really did survive for about 25 years on around six gags – but he was a brilliant, vastly underestimated compere as well as a club owner and spotter of raw talent and, as was often said, his greatest comedy act was actually his life off-stage.
Dec Munro has strong on-stage charisma and, judging by last night's show, a good eye for putting together a bill, combining the more adventurous parts of the circuit – George Ryegold and Doctor Brown last night – with new acts who are very likely to have a big future – the very impressive musical act Rachel Parris
Of course, if they read this, I could have just destroyed Dec Munro's and Rachel Parris' careers. There is nothing worse than reading good mentions of your performance and believing them.
And I don't know where either will end up.
In three years, Rachel Parris has the ability to be a major TV comedy performer. And Dec Munro should be a TV producer. But broadcast television is yesterday's medium even with Simon Cowell's successful mega shows. And no-one knows what the replacement is.
Perhaps Dec Munro and Rachel Parris will ride the crest of an upcoming wave; perhaps they will fade away. Showbiz is a dangerously random business. But, then, so is everything in life.
Peter Bazalgette is the great-great-grandson of sewer pioneer Sir Joseph Bazalgette who created central London's sewer network which was instrumental in stopping the city's cholera epidemics.
Sometimes handling shit in a better way can be more important than being a successful showbiz performer or producer.
You can create your own punchline to that.
Filed under Comedy, Television
Tagged as Bazal, bbc, Big Brother, business, Cambridge University, Canal Cafe, celebrity chef, Changing Rooms, charisma, cholera, comedian, comedy, compere, Dec Munro, Doctor Brown, drains, Dutch, edinburgh fringe, Endemol, Esther Rantzen, Food and Drink, format, George Ryegold, Ground Force, humor, humour, Ivor Dembina, janey godley, Joseph Bazalgette, Little Venice, london, Malcolm hardee, MC, network, News, Peter Bazalgette, Rachel Parris, Ready Steady Cook, reality show, reality TV, sewage, sewers, shit, shorthand, showbiz, Simon Cowell, stand up, storyteller, television, Test Tube Comedy, That's Life!, theatre, trainee, TV


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text:
Kvitova focuses on the positive after French semi-final loss
By Julien Pretot
PARIS (Reuters) - Petra Kvitova leaned more towards celebrating her return to the French Open last four after eight years than ruing her missed chances against Sofia Kenin in a 6-4 7-5 loss on Thursday.
Oct 8, 2020; Paris, France; Petra Kvitova (CZE) in action during her match against Sofia Kenin (USA) on day 12 at Stade Roland Garros. Mandatory Credit: Susan Mullane-USA TODAY Sports
Kvitova, who suffered a career-threatening hand injury in 2016 following a knife attack during a burglary at her Czech home, returned to tennis at the 2017 French Open and felt like taking heart from this year's run at Roland Garros.
"I mean, being in a semi-final here, it was great achievement for me definitely. I'm very happy and glad and grateful for that, for sure," the seventh seed told a news conference.
"I could be at home watching and not even play tennis anymore. So for me, just to be in the semi-final here in the Grand Slam, it's something real special.
"Even if a loss is painful, which is normal and should be like this, I'm very happy how everything went."
Since her comeback, Kvitova had not made it past the quarter-final stage at a Grand Slam until last year's U.S. Open, and her last-four appearance here confirmed the 30-year-old is back for good, with the help of coach Jiri Vanek.
"I'm very pleased for everything I've been through in the last three years, four years," she said.
"With Jiri, we've been together for four years. I think our work, it's on the good way, I would say.
"I think he helped me a lot with consistency, the mental strength, with the kind of believing in myself with the confidence, which I was a little bit struggling (with) maybe before.
"I think that even now sometimes I do have the Plan B, too, on the court when I'm not really playing the best and everything. I'm able to find a way to win it."
Kvitova, however, has to deal with the rise of a new generation of players - starting with Kenin, 21, and the fourth-seeded American's opponent in Saturday's final, 19-year-old Iga Swiatek of Poland.
It does not scare the experienced Czech though.
"I'm ready to challenge them. I don't want to give them a free spot, for sure. I mean, none of us (do)," Kvitova said with a smile. "For sure I'm not ending my career yet, so that's how it is."
Reporting by Julien Pretot; Editing by Ken Ferris


text:
Review: Ah, Wilderness!/Eclipse Theatre Company
July 30, 2012 at 6:37 pm by Lisa Buscani
by Lisa Buscani
July 30, 2012 August 3, 2012 Filed under:
Alex Weisman, Margaret Grace, Jerry Bloom
In his only "comedy," Eugene O'Neill charts a family's moral struggle in 1906 Connecticut. As it's an O'Neill play, there's a hefty helping of lost love and dreams deferred served along with the laughs—dramedy before dramedy was cool.
Richard (a petulant Alex Weisman) courts Muriel (an equally petulant Fiona Roberts) with poetic mash notes, much to the chagrin of his newspaperman father (Brian Parry). Simultaneously, family friend and professional lush Sid (Kevin Scott) courts old maid Lily (Rebecca Prescott) who loves him but can't see past his drinking.
O'Neill's quaint morality creaks; it's difficult for a modern-day audience to see the cost of the characters' indiscretions. Weisman's romantic teen wrings the giggles out of the script but the humor struggles against the melodrama. Scott's good-time Sid doesn't integrate the sadness of his addictions into the light-hearted hijinks around him. It's an uneven look at a vanished time. (Lisa Buscani)
Eclipse Theatre Company at the Athenaeum Theatre, 2936 North Southport, (773)935-6875. Through September 2. (Half-Priced Tickets)
Stuck On Desire: A Review of Natural Affection at Eclipse Theatre Company This wrenching, rarely-performed drama from William Inge gets a stirring revival at Eclipse Theatre Company.
Lost and Found: A Review of Bus Stop at Eclipse Theatre Company Eclipse Theatre Company's William Inge season continues with this 1955 play about getting lost in order to get found.
Leaking Light: A Review of The Dark at the Top of the Stairs at Eclipse Theatre Company Closing out their William Inge season, this production from Eclipse Theatre Company walks the line between realism and melodrama with ease.
At the Intersection of Race and Duty: A Review of Force Continuum at Eclipse Theatre Company Following last season's exploration of the works of Stephen Adly Guirgis, the opener of Eclipse Theatre Company's Kia Corthron season, "Force Continuum," shares a similar vision of race relations in America. Corthron's unsentimental police procedural has a great deal to say about its subjects, sometimes to the detriment of those very ideas. The main focus of "Force Continuum" is Dece…
Finding The Heart in a Heartless System: A Review of Megastasis at Eclipse Theatre Company RECOMMENDED There is a certain heart in Kia Corthron's work. A heart that, even in the midst of its imperfections, still urgently beats with the hope that somewhere, somehow, her message will pierce the consciousness of those who see it and bring about social change. "Megastasis," a world premiere presented by Eclipse Theatre Company and directed by Aaron Todd Douglas,…
Sweet Fleeting Youth: A Review of "Ah, Wilderness!" at Goodman Theatre RECOMMENDED Two curtains rise at the start of Goodman's "Ah, Wilderness!," Eugene O'Neill's nostalgic comedy. The first is opaque, opening upon Todd Rosenthal's lavish, painterly set. The second is translucent, a gossamer scrim that gives a brief, dreamlike glow to the proceedings, hinting at the fantasy world we are about to enter. It's one of many deft touches by director…
Alex Weisman
Brian Parry
Eclipse Theatre
Eugene O'Neill
Fiona Robert
Kevin Scott
Rebecca Prescott
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For Jake Silver, this is no ordinary Super Bowl.
The teenager from Ashland, Massachusetts, who was diagnosed with osteosarcoma nearly three years ago, is on his way to Atlanta, where he'll root for the New England Patriots and cross another big item off a bucket list that has taken on a new urgency in recent days. Silver, dealing with fluid on his lungs that keeps him from flying, boarded a train in Boston Thursday morning with his mother, Melissa Duca. His father, Rob, sister, Halle, and stepdad, Tony, will join them in Atlanta for what, win or lose, should be a weekend filled with precious family moments.
After debilitating bouts of chemo, multiple surgeries, radiation and a drug trial, Silver has chosen "to beat cancer by living his life to the fullest," his mom wrote on the Team Jake Facebook page after his latest doctor visit.
"They said, 'We can't do the surgery. You have, like, 20 plus tumors on your lung,'" Silver said in mid-January, describing a hospital visit to Boston's NBC affiliate. "They said I have three to six months left."
Although Silver roots for the Pats and Brady, he has become friends with Cowboys running back Ezekiel Elliott, who has worn an orange SilverStrong bracelet during games, through his sister and his grandfather, who, like Elliott, played at Ohio State.
Anonymous donors have made it their mission to help with Jake's bucket list, and the SilverStrong effort has extended through their Ashland community, where residents tied orange-and-silver bows to their doors and mailboxes.
"I honestly don't know how everybody got everything going," his mother said of their visit to the Patriots' playoff game. "There were so many chefs in the kitchen, so to say, that I don't even know whose call or who knew who got it done except I know [the Patriots] were just bombarded with phone calls to the point where I'm sure they were just thinking, "Let's just get this kid in so people stop calling us.' "
After Sunday's game, Jake and his mother plan to drive to the Four Corners area in the American Southwest, with his stepdad and Halle meeting them for the drive to Salt Lake City and Yellowstone. He'd love to see the giant redwoods, but the northern California national park is too far, so he'll focus on getting to Yellowstone.
"He's always wanted to go to Yellowstone and see the animals," his mother said. "He's always wanted to see the sequoias, so my dad bought him an Oculus and he loves it, so I'm hoping maybe we can get the sequoia trees on that and feel what it would be like to be near them."
Silver's birthday is on Feb. 24, a day after his family will go to Syracuse for the Orangemen's game against Duke, capping a whirlwind tour of memory-making for the teenager and his family - and so many others.