Unlucky 13

I am beyond excited at Peter Capaldi's casting as the Doctor. All 11 Doctor Who actors so far, have become my favourite actor after being in Doctor Who and I watched their other stuff, Peter Capaldi is the first actor to already be one of my favourite actors before getting the part in Doctor Who and that's even after being forced to watch Local Hero every week for a year in A Level Film Studies. No offence to Peter but if you show a class of 16 year olds that film and ask them to compare it to Trainspotting for a year, sorry, it wont do well. As a result our class are far more likely to do heroin than drill for oil, so it's not all bad.

Everything we've read so far about Peter's Doctor - ok, maybe I should say everything we've officially read, not counting scripts that have leaked and episodes you can watch online, wonder if they'll send the DVDs out before the big twist again this time, or put the finale on 23rd August....

Everything we've read about Peter's Doctor suggests he will be dangerous, strange and quite possibly dark which is all exciting. He's also not too old. It turns out around 38 is the appropriate age to play the Doctor. Tennant and Smith were 'too young' to play the Doctor (of course they were, neither of them looked 900), while Capaldi is apparently 'too old' and young people wont connect with him. (Erm...not like there was a kids spin-off with a 60 year old woman in the lead on CBBC or that it was their most watched program, and Dumbledore was no spring chicken, nor was the Wizard of Oz or Grandad from Bernard's Watch). Even worse is the people who think he's not too old, they say things like "It'll be good to see a Doctor who doesn't flirt with his companions." Actually it'd be pretty cool to see an older Doctor who still fancies his young companion when they are no longer a good fit - you can have that idea Moffat, just wait for all the yewtree stuff to blow over though. Some people say it will be better to see him no longer kissing River Song all the time. Because apparently 50 year old Alex Kingston kissing 30 year old Matt Smith is normal but a 56 year old Capaldi kissing 51 year old Kingston isn't. Gross. Old people kissing. My parents are old. I don't want to think about them kissing.

Fortunately a lot of the cynicism is dying away now as the new series draws close and the intriguing trailers must help that, it looks epic. Unconvincing dinosaurs in central London? It really is a return to the Jon Pertwee era!

My only concern with Peter Capaldi is he is such a talented and in demand actor we may not get too many years of him as the Doctor. When a new Doctor Who is announced on Sunday, the papers usually start asking when they will leave on the Monday, but he is a big star already. It's a worry.

So I would like to throw my fez into the ring to be considered for the role of the 13th Doctor.

The rest of this blog is more for Steven Moffat to read than you but thank you for sticking with it.

You see, here's my theory...

This is Peter Capaldi before he was the Doctor. 

Peter Capaldi in Prime Suspect

And this is Matt Smith before he was the Doctor


Matt Smith in That Face

And this is David Tennant before he was the Doctor



David Tennant in Rab C Nesbitt

And this is Christopher Eccleston before he was the Doctor

Christopher Eccleston in Shallow Grave

Ok, so the pattern collapses a bit then. But anyway, here's me before I played The Doctor.

Dan Vine in Leicester Square (don't ask)

 And this is Jon Pertwee actually playing the Doctor.

Jon Petwee in Doctor Who: The Green Death

If Peter Capaldi is an older Doctor, then you should contrast that with a younger one next, and while Peter Capaldi may be getting his bus pass by the time he regenerates, I am currently renewing my 16-25 years Railcard for another 3 years (and hoping nobody notices that takes me up to 27).
Another fan theory is because Capaldi looks like an older moodier Doctor, when the Timelords renewed his life cycle they reset him back to being like the first Doctor. In which case next you need a Troughton, a scruffy cosmic hobo of a Doctor. Like this?

He was also a genius...Just sayin'

 

There was also this Facebook game doing the rounds a while ago:

I'm The Book-Keeper. I have a sonic Thesaurus and my catchphrase is "It's like changing history and there being no My Family after Nick left *happy sigh*."

So clearly I was already thinking about time travel, although the amount of spam I get, it's surprising the Book-Keeper doesn't have an awesome catchphrase of shouting "STOP" powerfully at aliens and EE.

The Book-Keeper may not sound like the most exciting name but a wise man once said:

"You want weapons. We're in a library. Books. The most powerful weapons in the universe." - The Doctor 

I understand there may be some difference between Book-Keeping and literally keeping books, but you try taking an interest if both your parents are book-keepers. And keeping books isn't a million miles away from Curator is it?

Just a shame about that sonic thesaurus, coz by my right hand at the time was this:

That's my TV remote. I'm a nerd beyond help.

A good Doctor needs to have a hat. Ideally a fez.



Madness fans make excellent Doctors
That's Sugg's new slogan

And I have the scarf already:



 

Or perhaps they'd rather go down the Colin Baker route again:

 

Some bow ties are not cool!



It's a hat that says 'cool'. I wear a hat that says 'cool' now. Hats that say 'cool' are ironic

 

The Doctor needs a companion who he can rely on and explain the plot to:



Or a team of companions that he can pose dramatically with:



Note the blue suit with converse look.
Turns out modelling your fashion sense on a 900 year old at uni, does not get you laid.
Who knew?


If you need your own transport here's me arriving at the BBC and a pub in Hertford.



 Sometimes it's essential that the Doctor blends into the background of important historical events:

Like the Kennedy assassination

Or the filming of a Madness music video

Thank you for considering my application Mr Moffat. References available on request. My notice period is three of your Earth cycles.

EU PLOTTING AGAINST US

I was looking to see if anyone in the press had found a picture of the royal baby, George, the other day. It appears that the Daily Express may have published a photo of the baby once. So I went to have a look for it and what I found makes me sick.

 

Fucking EU! Trying to make us have horrible foreign number plates instead of proper British ones! We invented the number plate (maybe. It's plausible at least) on all our British manufactured cars! An Audi with a European number plate, the idea would make Henry Ford turn in his grave!

This means when you see a C on a number plate, for example, it wont be an English C but a French C. And the worst thing is, because there is absolutely NO SODDING DIFFERENCE, you wont even know its happening. Come on EU! Isn't it hard enough to remember 7 random characters anyway without having to remember that it starts with la or un, or whether it's male or female. Bloody French. Who won the fucking war!!

And what about the Italian ones?! "Did you get his number plate?" "Yes it was Y...VIII IX III IVXCC"

It's political correctness and health and safety gone mad.

It's A Kind of Magic, I suppose

We have Magic FM on at work at the moment. We need something that can fade into the background and everyone can agree on so Magic FM, like most of commercial radio to be fair, fits the bill. You can be certain what you hear wont be too controversial because it's the same songs that were on at that time yesterday only with slightly different topical DJs comments in between. Today he said "its' the wettest January since 1870, if you can believe that." *looks out the window, remembers all the news has been banging on about since the Queen's, Pope's and Archbishop's Christmas messages* yeah I actually can believe that.

It's good background stuff though, the most modern and controversial they get is the soundtrack to Despicable Me 2. Now that is a good song. Gotta love Pharrell. Was anyone else slightly disappointed that Peter Capaldi's costume didn't include that hat?

There are traffic and travel updates every 20 minutes as well, which is nice because you know the customers got home from the pub safe when you don't hear anything on the news.

The actual news is also a good in the pub because it gets an animated conversation started around the bar, usually one about paedophiles or flooding at the moment. Does anybody else wonder, if God sent the floods because of gay marriage what the heck's gonna happen when he finds out what Ken Barlow got up to? I'm building an ark from the blueprints they discovered, according to the news, just in case.

Yesterday they told us that: if you want to get a catchy song out of your head you should hum another song "like 'Can't Get You Out Of My Head' or the national anthem" and that will get the first song out of your head.That was on the news. The actual news for the 31st January 2014 was that. The actual fucking news. I could have told them that. We were told "scientists have found that" as if that immediately makes it news! It wasn't some experiment, they just happened to notice it in the course of their day! They could equally have reported that "chef's have discovered that," of "antiques dealers have discovered" or "convicted housebreakers have discovered" we've all bloody discovered! Scientists are slow on this one. And even if we didn't know it already: STILL NOT NEWS! How greatly is the world being improved by that? The reason I've never had a great novel published isn't solely coz I've got an awful song stuck in my head and if it was replacing it with 'The Final Countdown' would not fix that!

We need to find something to replace the adverts too. In one ad break on Magic FM we went through adverts reminding you to write your will, an advert offering services to help you through a divorce (legal services, not a hooker) and an incredibly dodgey advert from the NSPCC called 'The Underwear Rule' which advises you on how to warn your kids about paedophiles. I'm sure when I was a kid, I was told "don't talk to strangers" and "don't accept sweets", although I ignored both rules, how do you make friends if you don't talk to strangers? And more importantly, sweets! If you say no to sweets, you're a fool! Worry about your weight when you're older. This new advert though has a mother asking her child what the underwear rule is and a kid tells his mother it's that "the parts of my body that are in my underwear are private" someone should have told prince Harry, "and if anyone tries to touch me there, I should tell you."
"Very good," says the mother.
"Can I have a prize for remembering? I want a giraffe," says the child.
If I got given a pet tiger whenever I got touched up, I'd be walking down the street shouting paedophile at everyone who passed. You can't offer a prize for having your junk handled by the bloke from Corrie in the park, kids will be asking people to fondle them.

There's also an RSPCA advert now advising parents not to give giraffes as a present in any circumstances.

Back to the music. They do these sections of '40 minutes of uninterrupted hits.' Apparently 'uninterrupted' by anything apart from adverts and DJs talking, but you never read the small print do you?

I say 'hits,' the other day they played another one of Rick Astley's songs. Yeah, you heard right, there's another Rick Astley song! It's called 'Givin' Up On Love,' does that mean in your famous song you were lying to us Rick? Suddenly the world seemed like a harsher, colder, less cheesy place.

One of my favourite often repeated songs on Magic FM is Bruno Mars's latest unnoticeable snore generator 'When I Was Your Man.' In which he whines that "I should have bought you flowers and held your hand." Yeah? Well you should have thought of that before you went and did a silly thing like catch a grenade just to impress her you twit! She just wanted to hold your hand but you went and blew it up to impress a girl. Who catches a grenade Bruno? Who does that? Bat it back in the direction of the thrower! And also, if you're going out with a woman someone is chucking grenades at you've got to ask if she's really ideal girlfriend material.
So I guess you can't simultaneously hold her hand and buy her flowers, but you can still do one at a time can't you? Oh no, coz some idiot went and threw his other hand on a blade for her. You ever consider using a blade to cook for her? You are such a show off Bruno. Get the knife, chop some onions, make her a nice meal, she's yours. Don't go "hey, look what I can do. Owwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww! Aren't I tough? Marry me."
Well at least you're still able to go on long romantic walks with her, well if you hadn't jumped in front of a train for her that time. It's not like in cartoons Bruno, you wont just fall off the front of the train at Kings Cross, you're gonna get fucked up and delay everyone's journey. It's one thing to do it out of depression, doing it to impress a girl who wants flowers and hand holding is frankly, selfish, stupid and not as effective as getting on a train and taking her for a day out.
Will you ever learn? Not now you've taken that bullet through the brain for her you wont. And again, who is shooting at your girlfriend Bruno? I think if assassins are after you that's really the kind of thing that you should bring up early on in a relationship. Given how callous she seems to be about using her dates as a human shield in these situations, I don't think you need to worry about whether holding her hand and buying her flowers would have saved the relationship, she sounds like a bitch.

"Coz my heart breaks a little when I hear your name, it all just sounds like uh, uh, uh."
"uh, uh, uh"? Have you forgotten her name Bruno? Not gonna lie, this is a terrible relationship you are both far better off out of it.

For balance, in case I've been too mean to Bruno Mars and coz we should end on a positive note, his video with Mr Spock is very very good. Goodbye internet.

 

 

If that's stuck in your head now, just think of 'The Final Countdown.' 

 



 

 

Blog Written On A Phone

Hello the internet.

Sorry I've been away a while, this is due to devoting more of my time to work and thinking of a better excuse not to blog.

I have, however, checked in on how you were getting on, internet, while I have been away.

I've been watching a lot of your videos, around 86% of which would totally change your opinion of me, and cause the public Wi-Fi hotspot you're using to block my blog. However pornography and animals that think they're peoples aside (those are two separate types of video before you go and make a thing) there have been some actually thought provoking videos (no that Russell Brand Newsnight interview doesn't count but we'll discuss that some other time).

In the last couple of days I've seen the following video posted on Facebook several times by my friends. The title of the blog linked to on Facebook is "After I saw this, I put my phone down and didn't pick it up for the rest of the day..." I was intrigued. Could I really be persuaded to put my phone down for a day? Let's see.

Well, first of all, I did put my phone down after watching it. If the title is a statement about the shoddy battery life on a Nokia Lumia 800, this is a pretty good video that highlights the inability to watch 2 minutes of YouTube while signed into Facebook chat.

My next thought is, bit preachy. I mean if a preacher were to get up and preach to a class about the correct way of preaching that would be a little less preachy than this video. What it's trying to say of course is that mobile phones are terrible. The fact that I watched this on my phone and, I suspect, some of my friends did and then we used our phones to spread the message is an ironic side effect charstarleneTV was probably hoping nobody would notice. I only hope for her sake this wasn't filmed on a phone too.

I find myself constantly being told that people use their phones too much or that my more mature friends are quitting Facebook because it’s boring. It's not boring. No way is it boring. It’s an interconnected database of millions of people sharing their lives, loves, opinions, sorrows, faux sorrows that seem important when you're in sixth form, campaigns for the least appropriate people to be prime minister, photos, friendships, jobs, relationships, jokes about the natural disaster or celebrity who has just died, music and films if all that seems boring to you then you probably have boring friends. Look, I think there should be rules to this. Remember if you're on Facebook, you're talking to the world (or at least the very small percentage of it you were talking to at a house party six years ago) and try to make it interesting. The cliché that we don’t need to know what Stephen Fry had for breakfast is true but if he’d rearranged his Alphabetti Spaghetti into the sentence “hold the newsreader’s nose squarely waiter or friendly milk will countermand my trousers” with a sausage and fried egg as an exclamation mark then that might be worth sharing with the world.

There are some things Facebook isn’t great for. “Oh no, they’ve broken up. They were such a lovely couple. Oh that must be horrible for them, nobody likes to see a relationship collapse. Oh spoke to soon, 37 people like it apparently. An odd number? Is that more of her friends or his? Better like it or she might win.” And as for your thoughts on Sherlock series 3 internet, I need to have a word with you about that sometime. But broadly speaking it’s a lot of fun with friends who I barely get to see and links to the most amusing news, views and mews (you guys are obsessed with cats!).

I’m worried that the woman in this video may be one of the boring friends that Facebook just doesn’t work for. This next bit is mostly intended for her:

In one scene in your video you go bowling and are disappointed to see all of your friends on their phones. You knocked down three pins, bitch I'm not standing up for anything less than a spare! At the start you're in bed with your boyfriend and he's checking his phone, apparently having a well-read boyfriend who catches up with the news first thing is a turn off, that's fine, but it’s not exactly like you're doing anything to hold this guy’s interest. A simple good morning kiss might get him off the phone, lying there like you're dead he probably thinks you're asleep. If you're the kind of person who gets annoyed by phone use, don't go do your dramatic sunrise watching next to a fella shouting down his phone. He was there first. At dinner with your friends, they weren't all on their phones before you started your anecdote. Sorry, you're boring.

As part of the first generation that grew up with mobile phones I was always told that phones were ruining children's minds in the same way that previous generations were told the wireless set was ruining the children's minds or dancing was ruining children's minds or dying in factories during the industrial revolution was ruining children's minds and the reason everyone gave: "oh that text messaging is ruining communication skills." We were the generation that had the newest, quickest, best communication machines since (well since the fax machine but that's a bit undramatic) since ever! And we even invented our own brand new language 2 speak on it and we were told it was ruining communication. Wtf? Lol.

I'm sure there are people who said that combine harvesters were ruining people's farming ability, the wheel bred a generation of people who were less good at walking, the first generation with coins were less good at decision making. Prior to the invention of phones children's pet snakes hardly ever found their food before eating their own tails. Phones make the world better.

 

Look there are times and places where you should ignore your phone. Ignore is the wrong word. Don’t be that dick whose phone goes off at a play and tries to pretend it’s not them. You're the only person in the theatre who thinks people won't know it’s you if you ignore it. Everyone else knows already. We can’t hate you anymore for turning it off. Same goes for at a funeral, though then I would appreciate it if you answered the phone and shouted "stop!! Open the coffin!!"

Tweeting along to Question Time opens debate up and encourages political engagement, furthering Question Time's goal of holding politicians to account. If you do it wrong anyway, if you do it right its retweeting everyone's clever ways of pointing out how backwards David Starkey is, appreciating Bio-Dimbleby's tie and making fun of the glasses of the man who asked the serious climate change question. We need to tweet during #xfactor to make it bearable. I've had so many brief and meaningless chats with strangers as a result of mocking a talented youngster for the death of her granddad, if that makes the world a worse place...probably not a good example.

I draw the line at tweeting drama though. If I have to explain the plot of Sherlock to you coz you missed a bit, I'd better not then flick through your twitter and find you were loving Cumberbatch's hair this week and wanted the world to know. And can we please not tweet to BBC3? The finale of Being Human was amazeballs but nothing ruins a teary moment a writer spent ages worrying about like @SexyVampFan93 saying so over the end credits.

The whole filming a concert/comedy show is a bit of a difficult one. People always say that you should enjoy the moment rather than watching it down a screen. My tablet is HD though, so I wanna see the show as clearly as I can.

I find it kills the mood a bit when everyone has their phones out. It can never capture the mood or the atmosphere of the show and for comedians it can ruin the jokes if everyone can find them online first without the context. How am I supposed to steal jokes of acts that aren't famous yet if some twat is posting them on YouTube?

I don’t think you should post it on YouTube by the way. You look like you have Parkinson's disease and your friend singing along will sound 10 times louder than the band and not half as good - unless its Justin Bieber, downside of phones is post that on Twitter and I'll get badly written deaf freats.

I'm not a fan of filming shows myself. I get too caught up in the moment, and at comedy gigs it must put off the acts, but I get people's desire to have a permanent reminder or a great concert. I've enjoyed a lot of unique performances, seen a lot of impro and things that went wrong, it's kinda sad that I won’t be able to see that again. But me losing my shit when Suggs joined The Horne Section was better for not having to pick up bits of my broken phone off the floor when my body had stopped working properly and just started shaking and screaming like a 12-year-old girl who got McBusted tickets for Christmas. A few days later, during The Horne Section's Edinburgh show there was a fire alarm and everyone from all the shows in the Pleasance had to be evacuated and this happened. So someone captured a unique gig that would never happen again, unless there was an arsonist who hated Alex Horne.

Recently I did a very cool thing. I went to the Shard in London. After admiring the view a bit and making some jokes which spoilt the majestic atmosphere (it’s what I do), I got out my phone and tweeted a picture of Tower Bridge. Ok, phones may have destroyed the business of the official photographer, but maybe it’s because of Snapchat and the limited life of photos these days that they can try and charge me £25 quid for a photo of myself in the gift shop, on the grounds it will last forever. Also, in the video woman’s defence, half an hour before and 310 metres lower, me and Leigh were both staring at maps on our phone discussing which way the tallest building in London was as everyone passing saw it tower above our heads. So I will concede that phones are not as good as eyes. But then eyes have been around for years and the bugs have been ironed out. Remember when we were living in the sea and we couldn’t see more than 3 megapixels?

 

Tower Bridge from The Shard. Tower. Ha. It has no idea what a tower is.

I think phones are great and I'm tired of being told otherwise. They're not worth losing your real life over, and they’re not as great as eyes, but they can complement real life nicely. They're good for sharing experiences. I have a camera on me at all times now. And if you can't appreciate the sunrise because someone is tweeting #sunriseisgay near you then that's your problem. If someone filming a concert means they're not living in the moment and letting go and having a crazy time, well judging them isn't exactly the wildest way to go either. Ignore them and dance like you don’t care if you do end up a YouTube sensation and practice on the Wii before you go bowling next.

 

Please note: all opinions in this blog are true (or funnier than the truth) at time of writing. They are all subject to change next time I hear that Samsung message tone that's like someone whistling. Seriously that freaked me out for months before I realised it was a phone, still I like my baggy clothes and thicker curtains now.

 

 

Sent from my Windows Phone