Sunday 14 December 08 Cool Yule Volume 1/2 Chat

A new housing development in Dartford, Kent, the town where Mick Jagger and Keith Richards grew up, is to have streets named after Rolling Stones' hits.
"It's not just fun, it puts the place on the map and links to our heritage", Leader of Dartford Council, Jeremy Kite, said when the names were approved this week.
Royal Mail and the emergency services have also OK'd the names, including Little Red Walk, Dandelion Row, Lady Jane Walk, Cloud Close, Angie Mews, Stones Avenue, Sympathy Street, Babylon Close and Ruby Tuesday Drive.
"It's a very groovy development", said Councillor Kite.
It may not have been quite so groovy for future residents if certain alterations hadn't been made; Satisfaction Street has a much more contented ring than the original song title.

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It's an odd thing when someone you know from TV dies.
If they're a good actor you feel you know the person rather than the characters they played.
Otherwise, when an actor dies we recall the roles they inhabited and our relationship with those characters. They anchor us to our past.
Re-runs aside, I'm not sure we feel sorriest for them, for the roles we'll never see them acting again or for the years that telescope behind them, and us.
So it was with mixed feelings that I learned of the death of Kathy Staff who played battleaxe Nora Batty in BBC TV's Last of the Summer Wine.
Kathy Staff was 80 and it's difficult to remember a time when she hasn't been on our screens in one role or another, as cleaner Doris Luke among the wobbling sets of Crossroads, Emmerdale Farm, Coronation Street or with David Jason and Ronnie Barker in Open all Hours.
In Last of the Summer Wine alone she appeared in more than 240 episodes, and although I have fond memories of the famous wrinkled stockings and patterned pinnies, and Nora's antagonism for the ever hopeful Compo, I have no idea what the real Kathy Staff might have been like.
Her characters lived alongside me for years yet the person who gave them substance remained a complete stranger.
Whoever she was, through her characters Kathy Staff brought laughter, warmth and fun into our homes. For that we thank her.

Sunday 2 November 2008 Chat

The 22nd movie in the James Bond cannon, Quantum of Solace (the title of which doesn't sound nearly so bad now we're all used to it) has broken box office records on its UK opening day.
The movie took £4.9m on Friday, beating the previous record for a Friday opening, £4.025m, held by Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire. That's going some.
The success of the new Daniel Craig epic can be judged when compared with his earlier outing, Casino Royale, which took £2.9m on the first day of release just two years ago.
Casino Royale and Daniel Craig went on to win acclaim among both fans and critics and the film became the most popular of 2006, taking more than £50m that the British box office alone.
As James Christopher, writing in The Times said, "Really, nobody does it better than the new 007."

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Ex studio band for Stax-Volt Records in the 1960s, Booker T and the MGs have been inducted into the Musicians Hall of Fame in Nashville, Tennessee.
The band played on many hits including, Sitting on the dock of the bay, Hold on (I'm comin'), Try a little tenderness and Soul man before establishing a reputation in their own right with the instrumental, Green onions, in 1962.
Named after their young keyboard player and an MG car belonging to record producer Chips Moman, the band backed Otis Redding, Sam & Dave, Eddie Floyd, The Staple Singers, Wilson Pickett and many others.
While Booker T was away studying music at Indiana University, Isaac Hayes would sit in, although never an official member of the group.
In 1967 they had another hit with Hip hug-her, followed by Doin' our thing and Soul limbo, famously used for BBC Test Match Special.
In 1969 they had their second biggest hit with Time is tight.
Called the most influential stylists in modern American music, Booker T and the MGs were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1992, in 2004 Rolling Stone magazine ranked the group 93rd in their list of 100 greatest artists of all time, and in 2007 they were presented with a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award.
My personal favourite? - their version of Winter wonderland.

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Alas and alack, it has been announced that David Tennant is to stand down as Doctor Who.
This is a bitter blow for fans of one of the most popular Time Lords ever, even if his recent outings with the Royal Shakespeare Company did perhaps suggest the tardis may have lost something of its sparkle.
Tennant took control of the BBC police box and sonic screwdriver in 2005.
The 10th actor to play the Doctor, Tennant replaced Christopher Ecclestone, who reinvented the role after a broadcast gap of almost 20 years.
This week that role won Tennant the outstanding drama performance prize at the National Television Awards for the third time.
He'll appear in a Christmas special, The Next Doctor, before filming four more specials in January.
"They'll be the last four stories that I do," he said.
The question now has to be who will replace Tennant at the helm of the tardis, and whether, with executive producer Russell T Davies also leaving the show, another change of Doctor may be a regeneration too far.
This is the Doctor and time alone will tell.

Sunday 14 September 08 Chat

For fans of current Dr Who, David Tennant, news that tickets have sold out for his London performances as Hamlet for the Royal Shakespeare Company is a mixed blessing.
Of course we have no doubt of his ability, even if he has lately been somewhat taken up with interplanetary activity, and we're delighted by his success on the 'boards'.
On the other hand that success may not bode well for his continuing role in the tardis.
Could his death / transformation be nearer than we'd like to think?

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The wonderful album Seldom Seen Kid by guitar group, Elbow, has won the Nationwide Mercury Prize this week.
Against fierce competition the group won the most prestigious award, album of the year, from major players Radiohead, Adele, Estelle, The Last Shadow Puppets and Burial, among others.
The win recognises the consistency of a great performance band who have made the festivals circuit their own.
It will also undoubtedly and deservedly catapult the CD back into the charts.
If you don't already own the album check out the anthemic One day like this and I'll bet your credit card will be dragging you down to your local music shop in no time.

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The BBC drama department has excelled itself this year.
No sooner have we enjoyed the remarkable Curse of Comedy series (my favourite featuring the gorgeous Jason Isaacs as Harry H Corbett in the Curse of Steptoe) than we have three outstanding comedy monologues, starring Bob Hoskins, Rhys Ifans and Sheila Hancock, in a short season, The Last Word.
Bob Hoskins plays an assassin waiting in a public toilet for his next, and last, target; Sheila Hancock a terminally ill woman waiting to receive the drugs with which she will end her life; and Rhys Ifans, for me the glorious surprise of the trio, playing a farmer seeking to free himself from life with a domineering mother.
For these all too rare glimpses of pure dramatic genius we gladly pay our licence fee. See them on BBC iPlayer now.

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The most entertaining story of the week has to be that of the 12 barrels of lager that turned up unannounced at Windsor Castle, the Queen's Berkshire residence.
Seems they were meant for a pub of the same name in nearby Maidenhead.
But the wonderful image of Her Majesty with her feet up, quaffing pints in front of the TV and cheering on the England football team in their match against Croatia, caused much merriment across the nation.
We were most definitely amused.

Sunday 31 August 08 Chat

My album of September (yes, I'm early but I make no apologies) is the fantastic, the gob-smackingly brilliant, Sentimental Streak by Catherine Russell.
Who she? She's a long-time backing singer, previously a dancer, whose mum, Carline Ray, is a bassist and vocalist and dad was pianist and orchestra leader Luis Russell, a co-bandsman with Louis Armstrong and eventually a serious rival to Duke Ellington in the New York band era of the late 20s and early 30s.
Catherine's jazz heritage is very much in evidence throughout this wonderful CD, and the tones of Bessie Smith, Lena Horne, Nellie Lurcher, Alberta Hunter and the like come through loud and clear. But alongside the old voices and strengths is a thoroughly modern presentation delivered with class and joy; from the word go we're in no doubt that this is an artist who loves what she does.
I've seldom heard an album that thrilled me so much. Get it while it's in stock!

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The BBC series, Who do you think you are? has been pretty hit and miss of late but last week's show with Jerry Springer was a piece of drama to compete with the best on TV.
Clearly capable and much more intelligent than The Jerry Springer Show or America's got Talent would have us believe, this ex-mayor of Cincinnati proved what he was made of, figuratively and literally, in this heart-rending episode.
Born in London in 1944, his Jewish parents escaped from Nazi Germany three days before the outbreak of the Second World War. But Jerry's grandmothers failed to escape and were murdered in the Holocaust. With them died the knowledge of the Springer family's ancestry.
In an intensely disturbing programme, Jerry discovered his great-grandfather had been involved in the fight against anti-Semitism 50 years before the rise of the Reich, and followed his grandmothers' journeys to their shocking conclusion in Hitler's death camps.
Jerry's struggle to take in the extent of his family's suffering was made all the more poignant when he was introduced to a previously unknown cousin and we viewers felt with him the sense of relief that at last something decent and good had come from this frightful barbarism.
As the programme proved and as Jerry himself says, everyone in Nazi Germany was complicit in these brutalities against their fellow man, and it's all the harder to believe because the acts happened only 60 years ago and in the heartland of Europe.

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45 years ago, on 28 August 1963, Dr Martin Luther King Jr made his famous 'I have a dream' speech on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington DC.
The 'Dream' was a departure from the prepared text but urged on by Mahalia Jackson, "Tell them about the dream, Martin", Dr King delivered one of the most outstanding speeches of modern times.
The March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom became a defining moment for the American Civil Rights Movement and the march and Dr King's speech put pressure on the Kennedy administration to advance Civil Rights legislation.
In 1964 Dr King became the youngest recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize and the Civil Rights Act was passed and signed by President Lyndon B Johnson on 2 July following the assassination of John F Kennedy on 22 November 1963.
Dr King was murdered in Memphis on 4 April 1968. His 'I have a dream' speech causes him to be remembered not only for his Civil Rights achievements but also as one of the world's greatest orators;

• "I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: 'We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal.'
• "I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character.
• "I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners will be able to sit down together at a table of brotherhood.
• "Let freedom ring. And when this happens, and when we allow freedom to ring, when we let it ring from every village and every hamlet, from every state and every city, we will be able to speed up that day when all of God's children, black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual: "Free at last! Free at last! Thank God Almighty, we are free at last!"

See Dr King's 'I have a dream' speech here; read the full text here.

Sunday 24 August 08 Chat

Some good news this week - the Banana Splits are set to return!

Yes, Fleegle the dog, Bingo the gorilla, Drooper the lion and Snorky the elephant are to return to our screens via the US Cartoon Network following a 'modern makeover'.
Even if you don't remember the Splits themselves you're sure to recall the Tra La La Song which became a classic back in 1968 when Hanna-Barbera created the original Banana Splits Adventure Hour.
In the same zany mode but perhaps for slightly older and more ironically inclined audiences, the great comedian Peter Kay (think Phoenix Nights and Max & Paddy's Road to Nowhere) has produced a new TV comedy that takes the mickey out of TV talent shows.
Written by Kay and starring the man himself in the role of contestants, the show is called Britain's Got the Pop Factor & Possibly a New Celebrity Jesus Christ Soapstar Superstar Strictly on Ice.
If the title's anything to go by it should be a hoot! Look out for it on Channel 4 in October.

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We've got mice. Living in an old house surrounded by fields this is an occupational hazard. But it's a pain as I've only recently managed to clear their brethren out of the car.
Putting moth balls under the bonnet seems to have kept them at bay but when the engine's warm and the windows are closed the smell of moth balls is overwhelming.
So I took a few of the stinkers out of the car (which has made driving a good deal easier) and dropped them down the hole around the water stop tap where the mice are appearing.
The entire house now smells of moth balls and the mice are still in evidence.
So I broke out the traps and loaded them up with chocolate, because everyone in the country knows that mice have a sweet tooth. Except the little devils have grabbed the chocolate and made off with it; chocolate bars 2: mice 0 - the vermin are winning on points.
The food's been that good the mice have invited their friends and now there's mess and droppings all through the kitchen cupboards.
This is the point I realise there could be a nest and babies and the rodents cease being amusing and become disease-carrying pests.
So I've had to take drastic action and purchase anticoagulant grain. They're taking it so that should sort the problem.
Then I'm going to have to think of some way to deaden the smell of the moth balls.
Oh, the joys of county living.

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Usain Bolt, the lighting-fast Jamaican runner and winner of the men's 100m sprint in Beijing managed to go on and win not only the 200m but also a third gold medal and third new world record for his part on the winning men's 4 x 100m relay.
What a man! What an athlete! What a showman! What an amazing achievement for a 22-year-old with little previous world-stage experience.
See the BBC's excellent video summary of his achievement here.
And yes, I cried. Phenomenal. Just phenomenal.

Sunday 17 August 08 Chat

Being built for comfort not speed the Olympics aren't generally my choice of viewing. However the performances in Beijing over the past few days have been so inspiring that they have captured even my imagination.
First came the water hero that is Michael Phelps and that astonishing physique. Eight gold medals in these games and almost every conceivable record broken including that of Mark Spitz.
Phelps has now won more medals than many of the smaller countries competing and pretty soon his earnings too are likely to outstrip those of small nations.
But consistent and outstanding though Phelps' achievements are, they have surely been beaten in the popular imagination by Usain Bolt ('Lighting Bolt' for those not yet in the know) in his destruction, his complete and joyful demolition of the world record in the blue riband athletics event, the men's 100m sprint.

Contrasting with the palpable anxiety of his co-finalist countrymen, the lanky Jamaican clearly loves the competition, the environment and the pressure - a performer who responds so well to the big occasion that he does only enough to beat the opposition and then slows down.
Before he crosses the line.
In an Olympic final.
And coincidentally still breaks the world record.
What is this man capable of when he really tries? When he matures, has greater race experience and the wind is in his favour? What will he be capable of then? And just as excitingly, who will raise their game to equal his in coming years?
Ironically many US TV channels didn't show the race, blue riband or not. Perhaps written off the schedules because the American finalists looked unlikely to win, it's the BBC's race recording that has circled the world and BBC commentator and former Olympic champion Michael Johnson's stunned reaction to Bolt's win that has summarised the incredulous response to the achievement.
With a further demonstration of his remarkable abilities to come it's certain the whole world will be watching the 200m sprint final later in the week. And that Lighting Bolt, with his easy arrogance and undoubted charisma, soon out-earns even Michael Phelps.

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The great Isaac Hayes died this week of a stroke aged only 65.
An orphan from rural Tennessee, he was raised by his grandparents, taught himself piano, organ and saxophone and in 1964 moved to Memphis to become a session musician for the Stax label.
He took over from Booker T Jones to play keyboards on his first paid session recordings, for Otis Redding.
With songwriter David Porter he composed a range of classic hits for Sam and Dave, Carla Thomas, Johnnie Taylor and others, including Soul Man, Hold on I'm Coming, B-A-B-Y and When Something's Wrong with my Baby.
His 1969 album, Hot Buttered Soul, took soul music in a new direction, the musical impact matched by the visual impact of the album showing Hayes' signature bald head, bare chest and quantities of gold jewellery.

Two years later and not considered for the lead acting role, his Theme from Shaft won a Grammy and two Oscars, became an icon for the 70s and made Isaac Hayes a household name and the first African American to have a certified Platinum record.
After the Grammy-winning Black Moses album of 1972, he became a published author, appeared in some three dozen films, toured extensively and for several years provided the voice of Chef in the subversive animated series, South Park.
He was a great talent and musical change-maker who will be remembered fondly for his outrageous appearance and his educational legacy in rural Ghana where he was a crowned King.
His family has issued the following statement;
"We are overwhelmed with the outpouring of support and love from Isaac’s dear friends, colleagues and fans from every corner of the world, and we thank each and every one of them for their kind thoughts and prayers. While he was an iconic figure to many, to us he was husband, father and friend. We will ever miss his love, wisdom, humor and the familiar comfort of his voice."