Just one more cup of tea, then I'll start

Sometimes it's just really hard to get going, so far I've made several cups of  tea, had a bath, watched the news, eaten two bowls of corn flakes and googled online eps of The Nanny.   In fairness I am recovering from the month of August during which both my wife and I hardly had a break from making home made noodles for local Muslims during Ramadan. It takes a lot  of time and energy to make 4 or 5 kilos overnight, leaving you knackered and craving your bed till at least noon or 2 in the afternoon. Multiply this 15 to 20 times over 30 days and you begin to realize just how drained the batteries are.

The last time I felt sufficiently moved to rise out of the noodle induced stupor, I wrote a scathing indictment of all that is wrong with Miracle Day, the latest and possibly worst, longest and most pointless Torchwood offering. Since then I've come close to commenting on Libyan affairs twice, reviewing Doctor Who, wondering aloud if Sci Fi as we knew it even 10 years ago has changed beyond all recognition.  I even had considered writing about the current series of The Great British Bake off.

But I never got any closer than several pots of tea, cleaning my desk twice, preparing several epic meals, going for walks and throwing dirty laundry into baskets. At one point I had even tidied the rubbish bins and reorganized the pantry.  So why the block I wondered, what was keeping me from writing again. Well I could discount the tired to some extent, as in fact I had at least since the last week of August, gone back to watching quality and sometimes less edifying telly. We had a Shameless marathon that took us from the first time Frank Gallagher graced our screens to the rise of the Maguires as the defenders of Chatsworth. Estate. As I said before, I even watched Miracle Day for a bit till it made me want to poke my eyes out of boredom and frustration. In between all of that, were great films on BBC and C4, Outnumbered came back and of course The Rob Brydon Show till just this week brought a gleam of hope to the usually dreary world of chat shows. And if that wasn't enough, we haven't missed a Doctor Who, Top Gear or the footie, such as it was.

"8-2 Brute?" Julius Caesar

I say such as it was, but Man U spanking Arsenal comprehensively 8-2 is the sort of  match you don't soon forget, regardless who you support. To quote a mate of mine ( Keith Telly Topping ok). He'd rather see Northern scum beat Southern scum if it comes down to choosing. but I still had to feel just a bit sorry for the Gunners. The worst result in 116 years, having the rot so plainly show, I suspect even Alex Ferguson thought that there had to be a point where honour was satisfied and the ref could have blown the whistle. I reckon somewhere 10 minutes after the restart would have been the point when the coup de grace would have been appreciated by the North London daycare side that Wenger fielded. Even now I'm looking forward to the England Wales qualifier later today, having missed the disgusting behaviour during the Bulgaria match. In case you're wondering  how I could have passed up such an interesting fixture? I could tell you it sounded boring and that I had better things to do, but the truth is I fell asleep on the setee and missed the entire day.

So I hear some of you wondering out loud how it is I wasn't able to rise even once since my Torchie review despite being thrown a bone when forced to watch 5 minutes of the latest candidate for worst UK game show ever ( Thanks again  Mr Topping) ... EPIC WIN. This exercise in annoying made Don't scare the hare, ....ermmm look less shit than it actually is. I watched a butcher identify meat with his feet. Seems all games and game shows at the BBC now need to rhyme. Surely this would of been just the thing that the doctor ordered to break the writing duck, but no, I wasn't moved, not even after seeing the host call on the pop up co-compare in a white suit make insipid jokes and be so embarrassing that small children would think they were at a particularly bad panto.

I can only assume that my biggest stumbling block was the fear that once started, I'd have to dive back in to another season of Srictly reviews and pretend to care what happens to talentless charvs and hapless chef wana be's who's big talent is stacking chips in the shape of a log cabin. Is that really all there is??? I sincerely hope not. While I can always turn to Dave, Yesterday  or even ( GASP) ITV 4 for old Sweeneys, I despair of the state of British telly when the best on offer is Top Gear, Doctor Who, Sherlock and a few decent crime dramas and maybe the occasional comedy. This Summer was supposed to be full of great filler  to while away the long hot  mystery months when there is no football. Instead we got a few half hearted efforts from BBC4 that placated the more intellectual among us, but below the medulla oblongatta, where Ideal, The IT crowd or Big Brother for Posh people ( Apprentice), live, there was a gaping hole of repeats and uninspired "hilarious" programmes from the same minds that gave us the truly awful Big Top.

I will freely admit to being addicted to the Libyan revolution and the news stations that one has to watch to be up to date with it. Big winner here is Al Jazeera English. A  brilliant station that has kept me abreast of important things like cricket, football and  English looters while also and importantly, providing me with obsessively detailed reports on battles, diplomatic moves and now the reconstruction of the new Libya. I'm sure the BBC has had much the same thing, but Al Jazeera was all too often too hard to turn off long enough to find out. Kudos to Sky News for having the first live pictures out of the newly liberated Tripoli and Martyr Square. It takes a special kind of crazy to get that kind of job done.

Sign the petition NOW if you haven't yet

Or it could have been the sudden appearance on Face Book of the petition to stop the powers that be from dumbing down BBC 4 in a move explained as an "economy" motivated policy. Why would anybody want to dumb down BBC4? Since when is it a criticism to say a programme or a station is TOO smart? What prize idiot at the BBC or the Government considered for even a second the possibility of  cutting funding to the flagship station in the BBC crown? As bread winner, BBC 4 does more work on a quarter of the budget that the brain dead BBC 3 gets. BBC4 provides 80 % of all English language programming to educational stations across the globe. Then even more translate the shows and spend even more at the BBC. And if that wasn't enough , these servants of Jeremy *unt want to stop broadcasting quality  foreign language material like The Killing, Wallander and Spirale. .

What ever happened to Leon Trotsky?

Is it any wonder I hadn't had the spirit, the energy or the desire to dive back in? A few extra quid in the account from writing would help, but this too will come one day, till then, one must endeavour to continue to endeavour. OK, this it it, I'll write those reviews right after I've read the news paper, had another cup of tea and fed the cat.

As per usual, this and all other entries written under the influence of the most excellent Beat Surrender, still channelling The Stranglers, The Pistols The Pogues and Ian Drury on BBC Radio Newcastle. Catch Nick Roberts online by clicking on BBC Radio Newcastle  Saturday listen again section, look for Beat Surrender.

A slightly sadder, slightly better place

Last post I told you how very deeply unhappy I was at the new offerings even from my beloved BBC. A few days on and some cleansing of the palette with a few old Doctor Whos and the World seems a better, albeit sadder place. A long time ago when I was a boy, I first watched Doctor Who on one of those stations that play entire stories in one go. What a brilliant way to find out about this treasure trove of brilliant stories, so so  monsters, sexy companions and stonking great secondary characters. My favourite such character aside from the appropriately loud and overacting Brian Blessed, was The Brigadier. I first met him when in "Robot", the freshly regenerated Doctor is aided by the best army that never existed....U.N.I.T. commanded by the terribly British, always loyal and best mate you could ever have, Brigadier Alistair Lethbridge Stewart. Eary on the morning of the 23rd of February, the actor who played the role over 170 times, died at his home in London. Nicholas Courtney crafted a character that has become every Who fan's favourite character bar none, unless of course they haven't watched the original run so cruelly interrupted in 1989. The Brigadier was a combination great big teddybear and father figure to every Doctor, companion and as I have found out from so many posts in Galli Base,  fandom. Nick Courtney never shrank away from the role or pretended it hadn't happened like some actors might have. Countless stories I've read where he joined people at their table during conventions and never tired of telling Doctor Who anecdotes to anybody he thought wanted to hear about it. You'd have to ask somebody else where Nicholas Courtney left off and the Brigadier started, but I suspect there are huge doses of Courtney in The Brigadier and that is why we love him so. He leaves a huge hole in the heart of every Doctor Who fan, and those of us who never met him in person are sadder still. We will always have the show, the tapes and the stories to keep us going, but he will be missed immensely by fans who have had to see yet another great contributor to the Who legend pass on. Rest in peace Brigadier, your job here is done. I strongly recommend you read Tom Baker's farewell too.

Not satisfied with taking away a great actor from amongst us, life further distracted us with the slow and bloody dissolve of Libya. I know I promised I wouldn't get hooked on this too, but what with my father having been to Tobruk and El Alamein with Monty, it was something we were going to have a hard time ignoring.  The stories of bravery and battle against insurmountable odds and the cost in lives so far means this revolution must succeed, as the price of failure is not something we would want to even consider. I've resorted to working around Libya coverage and the Cricket World Cup. Sadly missed the hugely impressive show by Pakistan today, but highlights show they are a team to watch. One hopes England don't take any more sides for granted, it could get almost as embarrassing as Australia's poor performance against Zimbabwe. I hear you asking what this has anything to do with the new programmes on BBC this week? Well nothing except that in between the news and the cricket, I had the good fortune to listen to the Cultdown collective podcast live from Gallicon 2011. Apart from loads of excellent reports about panels and goings on in the lobby and the amazing Tiki Dalek, our hosts informed us at the end, that a new costume drama would be starting Sunday night.

South Riding, a BBC drama in three parts, tells the story of rural Yorkshire in the deep dark days of the depression in the 1930's, as opposed to the one going on right now. Because they only have three hours to tell the whole story there's a whole lot action going on. The Lord's granddaughter and her da who's at least as messed up as her mam, the head mistress who is alone and hates all representations of the tory warmongers but is actually pinning for her husband who's life was wasted in the trenches of WW1. Then there's the town council composed of visionaries, a randy old preacher and the developer with a heart of gold. Can Sarah Burton clean up the school, can the walking basket case Midge Carne rise above the unwanted insanity from her genetics, will Lydia Holly climb her way out "the shacks"  to become the next great poet of the working classes? Never having read the novel I haven't a clue, but I can tell you this, I'm hooked. Part gothic novel part reformist propaganda serial, South Riding puts a human face on the unjust and unequal life of ordinary folk just prior to the end of the depression. With just enough drama, blackmail and social injustice to keep your inner historian and your dramatic serial craving in check. As in a previous review, yet again I choose to praise a young actress who is asked to play the deranged and deeply disturbed Midge, Katherine McGolpin manages to play a convincing disturbed girl where she could have overplayed it and been an overly dramatic Shakespearean caricature. While the Midge character is not the centre of the story, she is sufficiently interesting to compete with the far more normal Lydia whose only real ambition is to get out of the grinding poverty her family lives in. If any one group of people seems to be invisible, it's the farmer's daughters who compose most of the student population despite being the mainstream, they are played more as window dressing, albeit really good window dressing. Not complaining by any stretch of the imagination, Kiplington High is the driving force for the whole narrative and ties the various people in it up in the ultimate fate of the school and the community and needs to stand out as more than bricks and mortar. If that means making light of the student body, so be it.

Besides I can't blame the writer Andrew Davies for being so torn when he had to choose which parts of the story to highlight. Between the all star cast of character actors and actresses and the established names like Peter Firth, Penelope Wilton and John Henshaw, it's little wonder the classroom full of girls was treated as more of an amorphous blob than a cast with potential. If the next two instalments are as action packed and move along as quickly without loosing too much of the sense of the story, South Riding will be a joy to watch and surely far less empty and confusing than ITV's Wethuring Heights was. If you're looking for fun costume drama with lots of ooohs and ahhs, South Riding is what you need to fill the void left over after Lark Rise to Candlford  ended it's run after four series. My only question to BBC drama is, why only three eps?

Raymond Blanc returned on Monday night for a second series of his "Kitchen secrets". In a half hour of what could only be defined as cookery crack cocaine, Chef Blanc shows us 3 minutes moules marinières to die for. The rest of the shellfish dishes are all as intoxicating, and if you have basic cooking skills, not anywhere near as daunting as you would think. Unlike a certain cookery programme that started last week, inspired by Raymond Blanc, I am checking the state of the treasury and planning a seafood extravaganza for as soon as I can clear an evening for the time it'll take to eat and wallow in this delectable bounty of the sea. Kitchen secrets series two is a gift in 8 parts, the next one being Cakes and Pastries. Take the time to record these master classes in fine cooking so you too can impress. You may not dress a plate like a Michelin chef, but if you follow the instructions, there is no reason you can't be eating like one.

On the subject of "that other cookery show", Master Chef plebs version , ran episode three in which we were told "Today's culling is going to be ferocious!". And Greg Wallace was right, what he didn't reckon on was the culling was in his stomach should he eat all that was on offer. We had raw spuds, cling film in poached egg, flat Yorkshire pudding and seriously underdone fish.  Vegetarian Jackie impressed me with her Thai dish that included shrimps, I certainly hope she continues like this if she hopes to win Masterchef. The new kitchen stadium wasn't at all as bad as I thought it would be and the notion of frying up an omelette was quickly dismissed. John, Gregg, have you been reading my notes???? Yes the secret ingredient was in fact egg, but they had to use the egg in innovative and original ways. In other words.... cook normally.  You had the usual pastas, batters and mayo as well as a lovely pudding of custard and meringue made from egg whites and egg yolks. Clearly not the dumbed down US version some of us had feared. And yet it wasn't entirely removed from the x factor histrionics. We found out one contestant wanted to do this for her father by cooking his favourite....roast beef. One hopes it wasn't the roast beef that killed him or else John and Gregg are in deep trouble. (Search for my standard apology if you think I have just been insensitive and cruel).

WI snoot Amy Willcock

The normal standards of Masterchef seem to have survived, They selected 5 hopefuls to cook Sunday dinner roast and judged them with the help of WI snoot Amy Willcock. At least we know the indigestion and poisonings will have been limited to the first three eps.  However it must be noted that WI Amy displayed a more than slightly condescending tone when cute young oriental cook Elizabeth subbed out spuds for taro. Amy came as close to being apoplectic with discomfort as I'd ever seen her and in the process caused me to question her integrity and palette. Apart from that, the tears and the emotion over some pretty basic cooking was sometimes so overwrought you had no choice but to laugh. How some of the school boy errors could be blamed on nerves is beyond me, but if I must get my jollies from dropped pans and unfortunate combinations of bland food, why not have fun with it. It's not like I'm going to learn anything from THIS lot. The final 12 seem on the surface to have at least some cooking instincts that should produce a few laughs and won't kill our hosts. I do however have one complaint, the promised culling did not include Daleks, guillotines or firing squads, nor was there any attempt to get at least three of them to promise they would never ever again cook. So it's not Raymond Blanc, but it's not as bad I thought it would be. Tomorrow the 12 cook for ALL the Masterchef winners ever. Here's hoping the guests won't regret coming out to eat.

And on that bombshell I leave you to your cricket and Nicholas Courtney memorial reading.