I just got off watching Sharpe. I am aware that there are multiple ways of reading that sentence.

SHARPE btw

GOREN btw

it's been a while there

Up on the myspace page as of today: live classic and first in a series of one, it's William Blake: A Life. This song will educate you in dirty underhand ways about the history of one of our greatest poets - it's not a proper recording so much as an "I was bored and hadn't put anything on myspace for a while so I just whacked it up" moment, but hey, being a travelling musician is hard these days. Cut me some slack.

Speaking of travelling, there are two homely gigs in good old Birmingham next week - The Sunflower Lounge (nr. New Street Station) on the 12th and Ceol Castle (nr. Moseley Road Swimming Baths) on the 13th. Lizzie Parle, a famous singer-songwriter of Hectic origins, once went into the male toilets of Ceol, whilst another close friend of mine once threw up through her nose in the Sunflower Lounge, so you all have lots of reasons to come and see me play in both places! Plus Max Jones will be with me.

Radio 4 seems to be having a spate of "historical comedies" at the moment. Unfortunately they're nearly all bollocks. The best of them (that I've heard) is "Bleak Expectations" which had some genuinely funny moments despite sharing the same sense of over-indulged whimsy with which all R4 comedy seems to capitulate these days. It also had an awareness that it was a radio comedy, so there were speech-only jokes, good sound effects... the MEDIUM was taken advantage of.

"1966 and all that", a show whose title parodies that of a book of parody (putting it next to scary movie 3 on the satire food chain), doesn't do that. I love Craig Brown's column in Private Eye, so it's odd that just after reading one of his best ones yet (Germaine Greer - check it out if you haven't already) I should flick on the radio and find myself listening to this, his complete arse of a show. It's like a poorly-produced audiobook farted and then spent half an hour laughing about it. Baseline gags, criminally unfunny, miserably predictable puntastic nonsense, and - and this is worst - entirely lacking in the intelligence which is R4's hallmark. "Just A Minute", I need hardly remind you, is cleverer and funnier and improvised.

Caught between these two shows in quality is "The Castle". I'm afraid I couldn't make myself listen to the whole thing because I've just had enough of this subgenre for one week. But the part I heard resonated with those same misplaced ideas I'd heard in the other two; the idea that referencing current affairs in a show set in the past is funny de facto, the idea that changing slightly the name of a famous historical figure and then constructing an elaborate pun heirarchy based on the new spelling is a profitable use of your time - above all, the idea that any of these are new ideas at all. Well, they aren't.

Radio is easily the most underexploited genre of anything, ever. Of course great comedies have appeared on it, and there is a glimmer of hope to be had from the BBC's upcoming Dirk Gently effort. But I really hope they make the whole thing less fass and less patronising soon, because the current season is really grinding my gears.

One of the negative aspects of reading sites like Eurogamer, Rock Paper Shotgun and CVG daily is that you end up spending a hell of a lot more time anticipating video game releases than you do playing the titles you were anticipating for the years before their release.

This syndrome is worsened by 'console culture' (we're now having vast forum wars between games which no-one participating in them has played) and by the fact that I have increasingly little time in which to flit around the virtual worlds of wherever. But in the spirit of eagerly anticipating stuff I may or may not actually get round to playing, I'd like to keep you abreast of the three upcoming titles which have me the most bugged out. Here they come:

1) Phantom Fucking Hourglass (DS)

I'm only now assembling the mirror fragments in twilight princess and I'm already filled with anticipatories about the next installment of the legend of zelda. This kind of illustrates my point: I should be playing TP right now. I mean, my Wii is here. Switched on. With the save loaded. I could be fighting a dragon. Right this second. INSTEAD I'M LOOKING AT PREVIEWS FOR PH. Which is especially odd given the high regard which both games are 'clock' on the FaceOmeter ScoreOmeter at the moment. ANYWAY, it's out in october and after the import review EG gave it (see!) you'd be mad to miss it!

2) Crysis (PC)

Far Cry (all hail) has had a number of cocking awful "sequels", but it looks like this is going to be the "real" sequel. This time, however, you can, like, fuck with shit and stuff? Watch the video, then hang on your probably-not-good-enough monitor for the six month wait.

3) The Orange Box (PC)

Okay well this isn't really a game, it's seven - three of them are brand new and would be worth the total cost of £25 by themselves. Half-Life 2's legacy speaks for itself but it's Portal which has the potential to be the most exciting. Who knows if I'll ever know if it will live up to that potential? Who knows if I even know anything any more? Not me! 

What's sadder than a video games nerd? A video games nerd who doesn't actually get round to playing any video games...

"Thou shalt not attend an open mic and leave as soon as you've done your shitty little poem or song you self-righteous ******" - Scroobius Pip

Recently several different people have chosen to accuse me of breaking this rule, so in keeping with the second last tenet of that great song by a man who clearly knows what's going on, I think it worth amplifying MY POSITION HERE.

(which, broadly, is that you spell "phoenix" "phoenix")

...

YES! Mea culpa. I have left open mics before the end before! I have left directly after my set a couple of times! 

What I have never done is left whilst somone was playing. Open Mic is about the free exchange of positive performance vibes amongst artists of all levels. It's much more important to support the idea of an open mic and the community it generates as actively as possible than to simply commit yourself to sitting in a room for an entire evening when actually you're quite tired and work's at 9 tomorrow. The important thing is that everyone present is a good audience member as well as a good artist*. If someone isn't going to get into the spirit of things, you want them to leave as soon as they're done. And you want the people who stay to want to stay, to stay because they're loving the music and the company rather than because they feel an obligation.

It's liking making friends - in fact, it often is making friends. You achieve this through some recognised counterpoint of spirit, not by forcing everyone to sit in a room together until last orders.

At a good open mic, everyone listens, everyone chats between sets, joins in where appropriate, politely applauds everyone onstage regardless of their quality, and goes home whenever the hell they want. At a good open mic, people who might have a good reason to leave early aren't stigmatised for it, and people who are mercenary with the system will swiftly get found out in other ways, not least because they're probably not that good**.

Thou shalt not question Stephen Fry. That one I'll go with them on.

(a full and probably 50,000 word entry on how I feel about open mic has been due for at least two years, maybe one day I'll get round to it)

* what am I saying? they don't need to be a good artist at all.
** i've yet to see a single person who approaches open mic culture with arrogance prove themselves worthy onstage

I forgot to mention this, probably because I was too excited at the time.

YES YES YES!

Well, the latest Big Brother has a winner. Thank God! I was on the edge there for a second. Anyway, though it barely needs saying, the BBC have said it anyway:

After famously saying in the house he did not know who William Shakespeare was, [winner Brian Belo] told Davina he was a director who made Romeo and Juliet.

And saying so to some means nothing; others it leaves nothing to be said.