Blog Archive: July 2024

Public Intellectualisation
I have recently begun a MULTI-PRONGED attempt to become a PUBLIC INTELLECTUAL! Spoilers: so far it is going all right!

I use the term "public intellectual" because the mighty Dr S Cross used it last week when I had a MEETING with him. I thought he had plucked it out of his mighty BRANE, but it turns out it's an Actual Thing, meaning someone who tries to engage The Public with Academic-Type Stuff in an ENGAGING way.

I met up with Steve last week for a chat and my vague and nebulous big idea is to find ways to talk to people about MY research in an interesting - and if at all possible AMUSING - way, so "public intellectual" seems to fit. I was specifically talking to him about it because he is a TRAINER for people who do this sort of thing - INDEED he was originally going to be a MENTOR for my rejected Arts Council application but he had rather wonderfully agreed to talk to me FOR FREE anyway, which was very nice INDEED of him. THUS we met in my Suprisingly Nice Local for a conversation in which he divulged MUCH wisdom.

It was GRATE - he explained all sorts about the world of Science Comedy and other similar areas, but perhaps most REVALATORILY he pointed out that I already have a NETWORK for this general topic. It turns out that quite a few of the people I have GIGGED with over the years have gone on to DO Public Intellectualism (clearly I do a very classy type of gig), but I hadn't even THORT of asking them for ADVICE as well.

It was really nice of him to tell me all of this stuff, and I almost immediately LEAPT into action (it's not a good idea to IMMEDIATELY leap into action after a couple of hours in a Surprisingly Nice Local) and started PLANNING. I got it all nicely worked out over the following Saturday and on Sunday was ready to start working through it all... and then the situation changed somewhat with The Robert Downey Jr news!

As previously discussed I FLEW into action (which is one step up from LEAPING into it) and began contacting various people in THE MEDIA to say "Hello, I am a - if not THE - Doctor Doom expert and can comment WISELY upon this subject". I am DELIGHTED to say that this has already achieved results because - and I cannot believe this has actually happened - I got asked to write an article in the Radio Times!!!

The Radio flipping Times!! It was AMAZED, not least because it all happened so quickly - the editor of the Sci-Fi section replied with a lovely email suggesting a) a title and b) that I not be afeared of being "Too niche". I took that advice very much to heart, wrote a SOMEWHAT NICHE article and sent it off later in the day. She replied with a couple of changes (i.e. some better jokes!) and that was it. DONE!

I am fairly sure that the rest of this Journey To Public Intellectualism won't be QUITE this quick and easy, but I am very happy to have had SUCH a good start! Now I've just got to send out a few more emails and then it's time to - YIKES - see if I can get some GIGS about it! As ever, if anyone is aware of any places where I could bang on about Doctor Doom AND HAVE PEOPLE LIKE IT, of indeed RUNS such a place, please do get in touch!

posted 31/7/2024 by MJ Hibbett
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Degas and Miss La La
It's the end of our Leave Year at work, so like approx 99.9% of my colleagues I have had several days off over the past couple of weeks to try and get it all used up. HENCE on Friday afternoon last week I had the day to myself and so decided to set off into London Town to see an exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery, just for KICKS.

Unfortunately KICKS were not to be had there as the National Portrait Gallery was FULL. There was a big queue all down the road heading to it with some people in hi-vis with walkie talkies at sporadic points saying "At capacity" to each other. Happily there is an entirely other National Gallery - in fact, THE National Gallery - just round the corner so I went in there instead.

The Actual National Gallery is always worth popping into as it's FULL of dead famous pictures, but this time my eye was caught by an EXHIBITION called Discover Degas & Miss La La. It combined two of my favourite types of exhibition, in that it was FREE and also SMALL, so I went and had a wander round and it was GRATE. It was all about the painting Miss La La at the Cirque Fernando which is the one of someone dangling from a rope in the roof of a building - you will know it when you see it, go and have a look!

It is very much WORTH having a look because a) it is fab and b) it made the whole exhibition make sense. If I have one criticism of this exhibition - and I do - it was that they did NOT show a clear image of the painting right away, so the pre-amble about Miss La La herself and the circus etc didn't really make any sense until I went further in and saw The Actual Painting and said "OH! Right! THAT one!"

The Actual Painting was in the centre of the main exhibition, which was done in a circular arrangement a bit like a circus, with other paintings and sketches around the edges. This collected together the working versions what Degas had made, which was VERY interesting and exciting and dead good to have all in the same place. It also made me think "the pencil sketches look just like comics" which I ALWAYS think when I see such things but remains true.

There was lots of background on Miss La La herself, which was a brilliant idea as it made HER part of the story and not just all about Degas. Slightly annoyingly though all that stuff was at the start of the painting, so it did feel weirdly like she was still being excluded from The Actual Art - it was good stuff but I think it would have been better to put it in with everything else so it was on an equal footing.

Apart from that it was FAB, and I especially enjoyed spotting the same DOGS in the multiple pictures and posters of circus DOGS. There was also a full painting by another artist and photographs of the circus itself and this Having It All In One Place made you feel like you KNEW it and had been there.

I liked it a LOT, and it only took about 15 minutes to take in, even when walking round slowly with your hands behind your back trying to look CLEVER. It's on for another few weeks, so I'd highly recommend going and having a look - whether on purpose or because next door's busy!

posted 30/7/2024 by MJ Hibbett
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A Day Of Doom
I awoke on Sunday to discover that suddenly, out of nowhere, Marvel had changed the habits of at least a decade and FINALLY decided to put Doctor Doom in the MCU. Amazingly, they had not only gone and announced that he's the new main baddie for the next Avengers movies, but also that he's going to be played by Robert Flipping Downey Jr!

Crikey, who saw THAT coming? Very much NOT ME, and so I spent a large chunk of the rest of the day trying to ALERT the World's Media that I EXIST and am very much a Doctor of Doctor Doom. I even went and wrote a PRESS RELEASE about it, what you can read for yourself here:

Doctor of Doctor Doom makes his predictions for Doomsday

Robert Downey Junior is returning to the MCU to play Doctor Doom in Avengers: Doomsday, and the world's leading (and only) academic expert on Doctor Doom has a few theories about which story it might be based on.

"Doomsday is a great story title for a character called Doctor Doom and so it gets used a lot", says Doctor Mark Hibbett, author of Data and Doctor Doom (Palgrave Macmillan, 2024) and the only person in the world to hold a PhD in Doctor Doom.

"The best known story called 'Doomsday' is probably the one from 1967's Fantastic Four #59, when Doctor Doom stole The Power Cosmic from The Silver Surfer". Doom used this mighty power to beat up his enemies and zoom around the planet causing mayhem, before crashing into a space barrier and falling to his apparent death. Spoilers: he did not really die.

"Julia Garner has already been cast as the MCU's Silver Surfer", says the Doctor of Doctor Doom, "so this one does seem likely, but there are plenty of other options."

One example is Doom's Day At The UN from 1976's Spidey Super Stories #9, in which Doom built an army of robot spider-men to trick the United Nations into making him King Of The World. Another is the Simon & Schuster novel Doomsday, in which he tried to use the power of Stonehenge to travel to the after-life and defeat a people's revolution in his native Latveria before apparently dying himself. Spoilers: he did not really die.

"These are all well and good, but my favourite is the very first time this title was used, in a 1966 episode of the Marvel Superheroes cartoon series," says Hibbett. In this story Doom shot the headquarters of The X-Men into the sun, fought Namor The Submariner in space, and was then hit by a meteor and apparently killed. Spoilers: he did not die.

Whichever of these stories gets adapted, Hibbett is excited to see Doctor Doom finally enter the MCU. "He's always been the greatest villain in Marvel Comics", he says, "so I'm thrilled to see how they bring him into the continuity of the movies. Whatever happens, I hope it ends with him apparently being killed and then - spoilers - not dying after all!"

I also did a shorter version of this as a BLOG over on The Marvel Age Doom blog with LINKS to yet more blogs about each of the stories mentioned above. The general idea I think is to get my name linked with terms like "Doctor Doom", "expert", "academic" and so on in case MEDIA TYPES do a google search for such terms. If that is the case, and any such people are reading this now - I am VERY much up for talking about Doctor Doom!

I've spent the past eight years or so TRYING to talk about Doctor Doom but nobody has been hugely interested because he wasn't in any of the films, so I hope that this situation is about to change! If nothing else, it will save me time going "No, he's a baddie in The Fantastic Four. No, not the Famous Five, no, that's Doctor Strange." It would have made my stand-up set a couple of weeks ago a bit quicker for a start!

posted 29/7/2024 by MJ Hibbett
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Arthur C Clarke Completed
As mentioned a couple of weeks ago, this year I have once again been on a mighty QUEST to plough through the whole of the Arthur C Clarke award shortlist. I am pleased to report that I have now COMPLETED my magical journey and would very much like to share my THORTS with an eagerly waiting world on a) what I thought of the final three that I read and b) which one I think will WIN.

The next book to read on my Virtual Pile was The Mountain In The Sea by Ray Nayler, which was probably the MOST Arthur C Clarke-y of the LOT as it had several different IDEAS in it which it dutifully worked through. It wasn't quite as much FUN as Arthur C Clarke, verging on ponderous at times, but it was all right - the problem was that I've previously read Adrian Tchaikovsky's "Children Of Time" series which also features (SPOILERS) Very Clever Octopuses but this time a) IN SPACE and b) much more excitingly, so it came off feeling not quite as good.

I then read Corey Fah Does Social Mobility by Isabel Waidner which I REALLY wanted to like but just could NOT get on with. It was at least TRYING to be amusing (which most of the other books on this list definitely weren't!) but there wasn't anything hugely engaging about it and behind all of that the characters were a bit boring. "Is this my fault?" I thought, "Can I not connect with The Young People?" (which is ridiculous because I have read and enjoyed several of the Mr Gum books and so am very much down with THE KIDZ) Happily, when the story finally got started about 25% of the way in I realised that it was a literary novel about a literary author who had won a literary award, written BY a literary author who had won a literary award. It was basically TWENTY FIRST CENTURY MARTIN AMIS, and so I felt no guilt in packing it in!

The final book on the list was Chain-Gang All-Stars by Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah, which is advertised as "The Hunger Games meets The Handmaid's Tale" and GOLLY GOSH but that is certainly what it felt like... to start with, anyway. It took flipping AGES to get going as I had to read through page after page of RULES being explained and TERMINOLOGY, like it was a D&D manual or something, and for a long while it felt like a pretty basic attempt to DO ANOTHER HUNGER GAMES. However! HOWEVER! As it rolled on it gradually became clear that there was something ELSE going on, as footnotes got Increasingly Political and also the CHARACTERS became actual characters, rather than cyphers for EITHER The Rules OR The Message. By the time I got to the end I was sad that it had finished, and hoped for another volume. Yes, that's right, call me crazy but I think a SEQUEL to an existing science fiction book set in the same storyworld JUST MIGHT WORK!

So, with all that in mind I am sure you are thinking "But Doctor Hibbett," (thanks) "Which one did YOU think was the best and, if possible, which do you think will WIN?" These are two excellent and clearly very separate questions, so let's answer firstly with which ones I enjoyed the most, in order of preference THUS:

1. Some Desperate Glory
2. Chain-Gang All-Stars
3. The Ten-Percent Thief
4. The Mountain In The Sea
5. Corey Fah Does Social Mobility
6. In Ascension

Basically, I really enjoyed the first two, thought the next two were all right, and then gave up on the final pair for reasons of Not Getting Along With. As for the ACTUAL winner, I don't think my favourite book on the shortlist has EVER won the main prize, and this is refelected in my prediction of which is most likely to win, put in order of preference again as follows:

1. Corey Fah Does Social Mobility
2. In Ascension
3. Chain-Gang All-Stars
4. The Ten-Percent Thief
5. The Mountain In The Sea
6. Some Desperate Glory

Book awards committees always seem to want to SHOW OFF about how current and modern they are, rather than how much fun they had reading the actual book, so that's my guess of how it would go, but we shall see TOMORROW when the winner is announced. Whatever happens it's been FUN to read through them all (or at least start them all anyway!), but I hope next year there's a bit less PONDEROUSNESS and a bit more FUN actually IN them as well!

posted 23/7/2024 by MJ Hibbett
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To The Theatre. TWICE.
Myself and The Actors In My Cast List have been to the threate not once but TWICE over the past week and a bit, as we are DEAD SOPHISTICATED like that. Both shows were properly DIY and also GRATE!

The first outing saw us heading for distant PETERBOROUGH and its majestic LIDO, where Peterboroough Mask Theatre were doing their production of "Twelfth Night". To be clear, this was happening in an area NEXT to the swimming pool, not IN the swimming pool - this was perhaps the only improvement I could suggest in an otherwise EXCELLENT show.

For full disclosure, we had gone because it involved The Mylands, with Mr P Myland working on the production side and Mrs C Myland STARRING (because it IS starring) as Malvolio. I was thus all prepared for a night being proud of my PALS and not expecting much else but COR was I ever only half right. For LO! Catherine was AMAZING (weirdly despite knowing of her Thespian Tendencies for DECADES this was the first time actually seeing her in something) and the production was ACE, but then the whole rest of the play was GRATE. I was especially impressed with the LINE READING - I think that's the right term anyway, I mean the way that people spoke the Shakespearian LINES so that you could completely understand but without losing any of the POETRY. I have seen a LOT of Shakespeare plays over the years, including high-priced professional productions, where this has been very much NOT the case, so I was well impressed with that!

It also FELT great - it was lovely being outside watching the play take place between two mighty old trees with birds singing around, but more than that was the feeling of LOVE what had gone into it. As The Notes In My Programme pointed out on the way home, you could tell how much CARE had been poured into it by everyone, who were all doing it for the LOVE of it. It felt special to be there to watch it, and also wonderful that what they had come up with was so GRATE. The only downside was that we had to leave halfway through the second half to go and get our train, but on the other hand that did mean that everything was going JUST FINE for Catherine's character at that point, so we left with a happy ending for Malvolio!

The other show we saw was very similar in terms of LOVE, as it was a revival of "Verbal Diary", a play first co-written and performed by John Otway and Paul Bradley FORTY YEARS AGO. If you've ever read Otway's book Cor Baby That's Really Me you may remember, in amongst all the other adventures, the story of him taking a show to the Fringe featuring a massive book prop that somehow doubled as the scenery. I'd struggled to imagine how that would work, so was RUDDY DELIGHTED to see a new version in real life - a huge actual book where the actors turned the pages (and turned things INSIDE the pages) to create whole scenes in a fantastically creative and exciting way.

It was also great to hear a whole bunch of Otway songs that I'd never heard before, but which, as The Hits In My Hit Parade pointed out, were still distinctly Otway-ish even when performed by other people. The cast were GRATE, and Tom Johnson in the lead was especially ace, often CHANNELLING Otway, which must have felt odd because Otway HIMSELF was there as PROMOTER for the evening. We'd seen him arrive before the show and noted that two members of The Big Band were with him, which was VERY moving to see, and this feeling was increased at the end when it turned out that not only was the co-author Paul Bradley there but also the ENTIRE original cast and various members of the production team too! It says something about Otway that even forty years on he's still in touch with, and PALS with, the people he worked with all that time ago. There was quite a lot of Otway Love in the building (which was The Little Angel Theatre, an ACE venue I'd never been to before), especially at the end when Tom Johnson spoke about how Otway had inspired him. "Don't wait around for an opportunity, go and make your own" he said, and I must admit I shed a MANLY TEAR at this point because that is EXACTLY what Otway inspired in ME all those many years ago too, when I first read his book. It's all his fault!

It was a lovely end to the second of TWO lovely evenings, both full of people doing GRATE things just because they wanted to. Inspirational all round - HOORAH for The Theatre!

posted 22/7/2024 by MJ Hibbett
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Survey Completed
Thanks very much indeed to everyone who filled in my Judge Dredd survey, which has just closed to submissions. I was hoping for about 50 responses but, what with one thing and another and some very helpful Internet Publicising by various delightful people, it ended up having just over 200! This is GRATE for Engagement and Information Gathering, though it does mean it's going to take me a while to do the DATA CLEANING, although this is not a bad problem to have!

When I first tried this out, gathering data about Doctor Doom a couple of years ago, one issue that cropped up at this stage was that people REALLY wanted to demonstrate how much they knew. On the one hand this is EXCELLENT because it means they're willing to fill in a form, but on the other it made life much more difficult for me because it meant I had loads of very long NARRATIVE answers to code e.g. instead of saying that Doom's appearance was "hood, mask, belt" or similar it would be more like "as far as I'm aware he has a sort of cloak or cowl, which is usually green, but that's not always the case. The first time I ever saw himn was..." and so on.

It's lovely that people want to share this sort of thing, but I was very conscious that it wasn't hugely useful to the data, and so they were spending time on it they didn't need to. Also, I didn't have time to read and/or ENGAGE with all of this on a personal level, so it felt slightly RUDE that I was just ignoring it. THUS this time around I moved the order around a bit, so people had a chance to demonstrate their awareness of Judge Dredd right at the start, and then gave examples of how they could answer the main questions that, I hoped, were clearer about the sort of thing I was after.

It didn't work at all! Looking through the answers there's a LOT of stuff there about what Judge Dredd means to them, people's opinions about various versions, and personal reminiscences - all good stuff, but again it makes me feel like the guy from Wendy's in the "Sir This Is A Wendy's" MEME. Actually, I've just looked this up to see if I've used the MEME correctly, and the SECOND example out of thousands is pretty much exactly what's going on!

All of which is to say THANKS again to everyone who took the time to fill in all of these responses, and APOLOGIES to all of those who wrote lengthy, well-considered, very interesting answers that I don't really have the time or ability to fully ENGAGE with. It's all going to be EXTREMELY helpful for the final work - I've just got to get on with it now and start CLEAING!!

posted 19/7/2024 by MJ Hibbett
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The UK Science Comedy Festival
On Sunday, while the rest of the nation was building up to The Nice Young Men Doing Jolly Well Actually in The Football, I was gearing up for a day of SCIENCE COMEDY, for LO! I was booked to appear at The UK Science Comedy Festival!

This was an all-day event which was booked long enough ago for there to be little in the way of thoughts of England getting to the finals of the Euros... including by me! Unlike other, lesser, more cowardly, events, this one was very much still going ahead, so in the afternoon I set off for distant EUSTON and The Camden People's Theatre to IMBIDE some of the other performers before doing my own set later.

The festival was run by Dr Steve Cross of Science Showoff. The GRATE thing about Steve (well, one of them) is that he is not like my usual view of a comedy promoter or comedian i.e. he is a bit more in the ROCK AND ROLL vein of doing daft things (like putting on an all day festival of science comedy in direct competition with the England football team) for the FUN of it. Crucially, he's also someone who HELPS other people (he was helping me by booking me, for example, even though I have not really DONE this stuff much before) and, even more crucially, is not a COLOSSAL WALLY. The world of comedy, in my experience, is filled with Colossal Wallies so finding a NON-WALLY is something to be thankful for.

Also also he was having a BEER when I arrived which only increased my respect - I well remember doing a Very Big Comedy Explaining Show some years ago and receiving looks of HORROR when I was spotted backstage having a beer before I'd even been on stage. People who say "Comedy is the new rock and roll" have never met comedians!

ANYWAY, I had arrived in good time to see a whole BUNCH of other people, intending to take copious MENTAL NOTES on what they were up to- as previously discussed, I am very much thinking of DOING some of This Sort Of Thing in future, so it seemed wise to spend some time looking at what people who are ALREADY at it are doing. It was a mixture of people all along the Science Comedy spectrum from Basically An Academic Presentation With A Couple Of Jokes (I was probably the furthest along on this axis!) to Basically A Normal Stand-Up By Someone With A PhD. My particular favourites were Emily Howling doing a song about SLUGS - it was a proper SONG with IDEAS and excellent words and a POINT - and Iszi Lawrence, who told me a LOT about historical animals while also being very funny indeed. It was also noticeable that most of the people there were quite young - young enough to have their PARENTS their to pick them up afterwards in several cases - although old enough to be doing or HAVE done a PhD, rather than Seasoned Academics. Maybe all the Professors were at home with the football!

My bit was in the very final section, which coincided with half-time, so the audience was very much down to a HARD CORE by this point. I've been working on my set for MONTHS and PRACTICING it for nearly as long so it all went pretty well - there was one joke I forgot to do, but then sticking it in at the end went better, but otherwise I think I did it all correctly. As you can see from Dr Cross's photographs, below, I had a nice time!



I was HUGELY aware of time constraints though, so didn't really get a chance to properly relax into it, and had to SPRINT through the big at the end where I explained The Unified Catalogue Of Transmedia Characters via the (excellent) audience suggestion of Doc Brown From Out Of Back To The Future. As is clear from the pictures it was a LOT of fun, but I did miss the freedom of my usual sets where I can have a proper bit of a chat with the audience - Steve, compereing this section, did an EXCELLENT job of exactly that sort of thing, and I must admit I was a bit jealous. That's the fun bit!

Despite DASHING through I did really really REALLY enjoy it, and it felt especially GRATE to be inflicting my RESEARCH on a brand new audience, even one who wouldn't NECESSARILY want to hear about it. Afterwards there were plenty of thoughts buzzing round my head about whether I'd want to do more of this (Executive Summary: yes I would) and where (Executive Summary: no idea as yet) but they all had to be pushed aside to place all my energy into SPEED WALKING through Quiet Streets of Even Quieter Curry Houses back to Saint Pancras to make sure I got home in time for at least a BIT of The Football. In this, I was successful!

It was, all in all, and apart from the END of said football, a GRATE day out, which more to think about it Moving Forward! Also: if we all promise to be well-behaved, could we have KLOPP next please?

posted 16/7/2024 by MJ Hibbett
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IGNCC 2024
I spent most of last week in distant NORWICH, there to attend the fifteenth annual International Graphic Novel and Comics Conference.

Well, I SAY I spent it in Norwich, actually I spent it on a weird concrete campus on the very outskirts of that fair city, as it was taking place at The University of East Anglia, or UEA as The Cool Kids call it. UEA is WEIRD (see above) as it is an entirely self-contained campus of JUST UNIVERSITY, and it was mostly built in the sixties in a brutalist style so is like an entire VILLAGE made up of lots of CAR PARKS. Also, it was EXTRA weird because it was out of term so there was hardly anyone around. ALSO also all the delegates were staying in the same student halls (which looked EXACTLY the same as the halls I stayed in in Edinburgh a couple of years ago) THUS you basically only saw the same fifty or so people everywhere you went - when I got home afterwards I felt like a medieval villager suddenly THRUST into the metropolis, surrounded by STRANGERS for the first time!

One consequence of our isolation was that almost all of our dietary needs were met at all points, as there wasn't really anywhere else to go. We had vouchers for breakfast in the cafe (which sat in a pretend street of other shops and cafes close closed for the summer), lunch brought out to us in the conference reception, and then our TEA was supplied at pre-arranged events. It was all very pleasant, but a bit STRANGE, like one long WEDDING RECEPTION.

The actual conference was dead good, and I saw several VAIR INTERESTING presentations, with my favourite - for purely intellectual reasons of course - being a WHISKY WORKSHOP that involved ACTUAL WHISKY. The downside of THIS was that on that day I was semi-sozzled by mid-afternoon and then went on to drink WINE at a conference dinner (in AVENGERS HQ!!) and then BEER in the pub afterwards which was ENTIRELY the wrong order. Luckily, my entire body was on hand to point this out to me the following morning.

To be honest the nicest thing was seeing everyone again. When I first started going to these conferences many moons ago it was TERRIFYING because, like all conferences that have been going for a while, it felt a bit like you were intruding on a reunion and that everybody else knew each other. Thankfully a) comics people are an extremely jolly bunch who make the effort to invite new people in and b) I have been there long enough now to BECOME one of the people being gleefully reunited, but I did have to keep reminding myself that other people were in the same situation I used to be, and invited THEM in too.

Sadly this had some downsides, such as when I ended up bringing forward Early Career Researchers to be BEATEN at POOL by some of our Senior Academics, but my heart was in the right place. Also, I paid for it by being drawn in - AGAINST MY WILL - to a succession of late night drinking escapades by certain of the above which lead to some VERY bleary mornings. Honestly, do they not even THINK of their duty of pastoral care??

Another GRATE highlight was walking into the reception area on the first day to find that Dr D Huxley had brough a MASSIVE pile of old British comics with him to give away for FREE, as part of his Clearing Out His Collection operation. For reasons which will soon become clear I have spent the past couple of weeks searching eBay for Old British Comics and paying sums of CA$H for one or two, and then suddenly I was presented with LITERALLY HUNDREDS of them, all for FREE! This was all very exciting, not just for me but for everybody else there too, and so at every break you would see people gathered around, saying "Oh, just a couple more then" and snaffling piles of comics. It was amazing!

On the last day myself and professional pool shark Dr I Horton gave our presentation about our planned Donald Duck project which seemed to go down all right, including some PERTINENT questions about the issue of STYLE, and also the aforesaid Dr Horton being traumatised by me saying "A lot of arts research is just people saying things". I didn't mean it like that Ian!

It was a lovely, though SLIGHTLY WEIRD, week amongst a whole bunch of lovely, and SLIGHTLY WEIRD, people, as it always is. The next one's going to be in BRUSSELS and I for one cannot wait, although my liver is already getting nervous!

posted 16/7/2024 by MJ Hibbett
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Insufficient Tap Dancing
A week and a bit ago, back in the days when The Tories ran the country (remember them?) myself and The Seat Number On My Ticket went to the THEATRE!

We went to The Barbican to see Kiss Me Kate and it was JOLLY GOOD. I am a BIG FAN of the original movie version, having watched it about 17,000 times on BBC2 during school holidays and then many more since, so was EXCITED to hear the songs live but also mildly cautious because I knew it would not be exactly the same. This was WISE because it was NOT the same, although I must admit I did continue to struggle with this throughout.

Part of this was due to a complete lack of HOWARD KEEL who is UTTERLY GRATE in the original, but I eventually managed to get past this. As many will know I have TROD THE BOARDS myself on various occasions in the past and know full well that a different actor will bring a different INTERPRETATION to a piece darling, and Adrian Dunbar very much did that. NOBODY could do a Howard Keel (apart from Actual Howard Keel obvs) and he went nowhere near it, so all was well.

The problem, however, was one that is common to many aspects of life, both cultural and otherwise, and that was a lack of TAP DANCING. There are huge great LUMPS of "Kiss Me Kate" that call for tap dancing and weirdly that hardly happened. I could have BORNE this manfully if the production had not kept VEERING towards tap dancing and then giving up at the last moment. For instance, there were multiple occasions where SOME people started doing a bit of tap dancing but then the main characters DID NOT, instead just jiggling about a bit. The weirdest version of this was during "Brush Up Your Shakespeare" when the gangsters (who were BRILLIANT) gradually got more and more into doing a proper routine, with hats and canes and everything, building up and up to what was clearly going to be a big tap dance routine... and then didn't do it. It was WEIRD!

Lots of the rest was dead good though, and we had a LOVELY time. This was helped by the theatre itself, which had big comfy seats with plenty of legroom and a wide selection of bars. It DID have a ludicrously long walk to the TOILETS because a) there was some refurbs going on and b) someone had booked a private party in the middle of the building so you had to GO OUTSIDE to walk round it to get to the toilets, but in a funny way this gave everyone in the audience something in common to grumble mildly about. Also, we saw someone who LOOKED and DRESSED exactly like Larry David, which was a constant source of JOY!

It was, in summary, DEAD GOOD, although clearly I need to do some more work on Not Expecting Howard Keel if I ever go and see CALAMITY JANE!

posted 11/7/2024 by MJ Hibbett
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The End Of Eggpod
On Saturday lunchtime I headed off to distant WEST LONDON to Holland Park, there to attend the recording of the last ever edition of I Am The Eggpod. For those who don't know this is a GRATE podcast series in which Mr C Shaw talks to people about their favourite Beatles album or sometimes just The Beatles generally. It is not a COMPLEX idea for a podcast but it has been a LOVELY one as Chris himself is a BRILLIANT interviewer and the whole thing gets carried along on an immense wave of ENTHUSIASM. When it comes to The Beatles, that is precisely the sort of attitude I prefer!

On my travels I got as far as Actual Holland Park park itself but then got a bit lost, and so was DELIGHTED to see, hoving out of the distance, a coterie of INDIE TYPES led by Mr S Love heading my way. I followed them round and through a GARDEN to the Holland Park Opera place, which turned out to be a vast TENT with luxurious seating. It really was very nice in there, you could actually stretch your legs out a bit and get by easily when you needed to go to the loo. I guess Opera Types demand this sort of thing!

The spacing turned out to be extremely handy because the audience was - HOW SHALL I PUT THIS - the sort of audience who would get a bit excited, have a beer beforehand, and then desperately need a WEE halfway through. FOR LO! as expected the vast majority of Podcasts About The Beatles enthusiasists turned out to be middle-aged men of a slightly INDIE bent. It has struck me before, and it struck me again here, that The Beatles is very much my generation's answer to what The Second World War was for the baby boomers - something that happened JUST before they were born that is endlessly fascinating and spawns hundreds of documentaries and especially BOOKS to be read on holiday.

I like this idea a LOT and was all ready to give of it if asked - when Mr R Manuel (for it was he) got the event started he asked everyone to prepare a BEATLES THEORY as he was going to come round and ASK people for them during the break, but alas I spent much of that time in the queue for the aforesaid LOO, looking around and thinking "Oh look, that's ..." as all sorts of people drifted by who I recognised from various aspects of TV, ROCK and comedy. It was a bit like Indietracks, but not as drunk!

The event itself was GRATE. In the first half Chris talked to Stuart Maconie, David Quantick and Laurence Rickard Out Of Ghosts, and it very quickly turned into a live action version of what I always imagined meetings of SELECT magazine would be like. At first I thought "I bet I'm the only person who'd think that" and then looked around and thought "No, no I'm not". The second half started with Samira Ahmed and Mark Lewisohn (who everybody had kept looking at throughout and saying "Have I got that right?") and then David Janson, who'd played the small boy in "Hard Day's Night". He was there because, in theory, everyone was meant to be talking about THAT, but as usual with Eggpod that was just the starting point for everyone to go "Aren't The Beatles GRATE eh?" which, as previously noted, is something I fully support.

At the end Chris thanked everyone and pointed out that the nicest thing about Eggpod was that it had made all of us Beatle-types realise that we weren't alone and that there was a whole WORLD of fans like us out there, and then it all got a bit EMOTIONAL as we all stood for a standing ovation and EYES became DEWY all around. It was all rather wonderful, and a fitting end (if it MUST have an end) to my favourite ever podcast! Thanks Chris!

posted 10/7/2024 by MJ Hibbett
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Thank You Santa Democracy
When Election Day dawned last Thursday I was VERY excited. I love an election at any time, but this one had the very special possibility that the CORRECT people might win, and so I had spent the six weeks leading up to it getting myself in a bit of a tizzy listening to every podcast and reading every analysis that I could get my hands on. I'd especially been reading the Electoral Calculus poll which kept saying AMAZING things like the Liberal Democrats becoming the official opposition. This had to led to me doing some enforced CALMING DOWN, and I had to keep reminding myself that as long as the Tories LOST then it was good. "Yes, but what if they only get 30 seats?" said the excited Election Toddler inside me.

ACTUAL VOTING at the actual polling station was, as ever, a great THRILL, even though the impostion of ID felt a bit rude. For the first time ever in my life I voted LABOUR in a general election (I generally vote Lib Dem or sometimes Green, though usually Labour for Mayor etc) because I really like the idea of SENSIBLE NON-MANIACS being in charge of things, and when a political party presents me with someone who likes The Wedding Present as a potential prime-minister it seems CHURLISH not to give them a go.

With that done we went home and settled in for the Exit Poll and I became GRIPPED with an unearthly TERROR. What if this had all been a RUSE and, as in 1992, the bloody Tories ended up winning? I must have got myself QUITE wound up because when the Exit Poll apppeared and it was clear that it was All Going To Be Fine I actually CRIED with relief. My NEURODIVERSITY JOURNEY of the past couple of years has led me to realise that sometimes I feel BIG EMOTIONS without really being aware, and it turns out that I'd been a lot more TENSE and AFEARED of the outcome than I'd consciously realised!

The next bit of the evening was a bit ANNOYING for the first hour or two as everyone kept banging on about how well Reform had done, almost as if they were trying to make out that there hadn't been a MASSIVE LANDSLIDE for somebody else. Still, once the results started coming in I took GRATE delight in watching arsehole after arsehole getting kicked out. I was in contact with various PALS throughout the night, including Mr T Pattison with whom I had shared The Portillo Moment back in 1997, and I gradually became aware that I wasn't feeling QUITE the same sense of EXCITED AMAZEMENT this time around. I guess that's partly because this result had been heralded by all of those podcasts etc, and possibly also because I am now almost exactly TWICE AS OLD as I was then and so less prone to leaping around!

I valiantly stayed up until about 6.15am, seeing THE NEW DAWN while I waited to see what would happen with Liz Truss, but that took so long that I gave up and went to bed. The lovely thing was that this meant I had a SPECIAL EXTRA PRESENT to unwrap the next day as The Worst Prime-minister EVER was as graceless in her exit as she had been incompetent in her premiership i.e. ENTIRELY.

Since then there has been a LIGHTNESS to the universe as WEIRD and WONDERFUL things occur. Not least amongst these has been the appointment of NON-MANIACS to the cabinet. I've got so used to THE WORST POSSIBLE PERSON being appointed to every job, with the clear intent to do THE WORST POSSIBLE THINGS, that seeing Vaguely Sensible People skipping into Downing Street feels like a new age of joy and wonder. I know Certain People will already be saying "Bah! They are all the same" or "Hmm! They are just Tories in different clothing" or something equally dreary and dull, but for now this feels like a change for the BETTER, and it has been an AWFULLY long time since we've had that!

posted 8/7/2024 by MJ Hibbett
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Stratford Express
For the past few weeks round our way there has been a new FAD amongst The Young People. It isn't LOOKING AT PHONES or BEING GRUMPY or TAKING DRUGS but rather something rather delightful and wholesome: ROLLER SKATING!

Everywhere you go round The Olympic Park (which is where I live, have I mentioned that before?) you see TEENAGERS zooming around with various levels of skill on ROLLER SKATES. It first started happening a few months ago when the area around the new UCL East campus opened. The buildings themselves are all well and good, but the main thing is that they are in the middle of a vast expanse of EXTREMELY SMOOTH pedestrian surface, which is PERFECT for zooming around on roller skates. Every time you go for a walk in the park there are YOUTHS everywhere, all WHIZZING past in the general direction of UCL so they can mill around on wheels.

It is LOVELY, especially when you see a couple of kids who have CLEARLY just got new skates and are a) REALLY EXCITED and b) clinging onto each other for dear life to stop falling over. However, I do have to keep reminding myself that it IS lovely as it is VERY EASY to slip into Miserable Old Git mode and think "HARUMPH! They're going to bump into somebody, they should show more consideration" etc etc etc. I mean, sometimes it IS a bit scary when there's loads of them, especially when they do the Skating Backwards thing which SURELY is dangerouns and ... and as you can see, Grumpiness is a constant battle! THUS I try to look at it and think "This is something that could have happened 50 or more years ago and is filled with the same joy of JOINING IN and GOING OUTSIDE". Indeed, when I was growing up there was a pair of old roller skates in THE SHED that had belonged to my MUM when her school had had the exact same FAD.

Actually, previous East London FADS that I have been aware of have ALSO been pretty WHOLESOME. For the past couple of years you haven't been able to MOVE for smmall groups of teeangers doing synchronised Tik Tok dances, and before that we had the sudden wave of kids on HIRE BIKES whizzing around looking for ADVENTURE during COVID, so maybe The Kids really ARE All Right. Come on everybody, let's get some wheels of our own and go join them, I am sure they will be DELIGHTED!

posted 1/7/2024 by MJ Hibbett
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