Richard Baker, may his bed be free from tigers. Is he still alive? Being the generation I am, he's the only bloke I would trust to give me some news that was of world concern. Sadly Leonard Parkin, Sandy Gall and Kenneth Kendall are all no more. There was another feller with bags under his eyes that's gone and Alistair Burnett has long since retired.

At least newsreaders got their wages regularly, this is still a problem with comedians and although I'm not suffering too much from it at present, it's still an issue that won't go away unless I get a lucrative national advert (yes an advert Bill Hicks followers) or land a part of a silly man who lives next door in a sitcom and get chucked a load of instant money at me.

However doing it all the scenic way is quite exciting in it's own right. There will without doubt be a CD coming out at the beginning of December, I'm on to it. I'm looking forward to sharing the tracks with you all, I might chuck a vintage one in there for good measure, who knows.

Last night in the house I watched some comedy on TV. It was the Sky One effort 'Trollied'. Not that good I have to say. A stellar cast including a good mate Jo Enright. The cast saved it in my view. Jo was very funny and not on enough, Stephanie Beecham was superb, Jane Horrocks was very good, her attention to detail was almost a lesson in how to caricature act (is that spelt right?). That feller from The Full Monty had some great pieces of delivery and he can comedy act very well but unfortunately he wasn't blessed with great lines. The fat scouser from Bread, the only talented actor in that Carla Lane 80s M6 car crash of a sitcom had too few lines as well as the security man. Some of the peripheral characters had some pish situations and thus some awful script to deal with. Some of the sub plots were truly awful, bloody bloody aw-bloody-ful. 

Is it a shame? No, not a shame, that would be looking at it in a far too sympathetic light I would say it was a great waste of a slot that Sky had very kindly given over to contempary comedic writers. A load of money given to the budget and plenty of episodes with a second series to boot and it's spunked away on warm pittle. Don't get me wrong I think what Sky are doing is fantastic. They're hitting the BBC and yes ITV where it fuckin well hurts, they're beating them at the one game they would snootily look across at Sky at and say in a Michael Horden type voice 'We do make excellent drama'. Sky are proving with a bit of money spent that the old networks were pulling the wool over our eyes for years, just like they were for top class football that they were gettin for a song.

There's no voodoo magic in making 'good' drama. Something just needs to be well shot, well directed, cast quite well and be even just a tiny bit well written. Bloody hell production staff and camera crew have been managing to polish shite ie sixth form levels of story writing for nigh on 70 years now and in turn making it look half decent, god bless them or maybe not, maybe it's their fault. Mind you, you can look at the middle people, the developers, the people who feel that without their skills, balls all would get made. They tend to be the fuckers who meddle and fiddle and one to one they invariably have no sense of humour and no understanding of humour.

Anyway Trollied, not very good, period. The beer I was drinking was nice though, Hobgoblin and Bishop's Finger, I would recommend that to anyone.

Right I'm at Beamish tonight, I'll be there to visit some of the jokes on Mrs Brown's Boys (this joke only works if you're from the Northumbrian nation), speak tomorrow. See if you can find something funny about the supermarket and then blag a series out of it.

TODAY'S BLOG IS SPONSORED BY YELLOW TOYOTA CELICAS FROM THE 80s. 

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