And now another new blog feature. Get your fish out and put them by the side of your monitor: it's time to worship at the shrine of Stewart Lee.
This one's going to be looking at the highlights of his career - some of his most important work, in fact - so naturally, what else would I call it except “Lee Majors”?
I happen to quite like Jeremy Clarkson. No matter that he's a bit right-wing or that some of his newspaper articles seem to have been cobbled together in a couple of minutes, probably by a ghost writer*.
In person and on tele, he's entertaining, interesting and his views are slightly tempered by humour.
All that being equal, some people still don't like him. So my question today is: Does knowing that his Mum created the original Paddington Bear toy for him make him more likeable?
"Originally made one Christmas as a present for Shirley's and her husband Eddie's children Jeremy and Joanna, the bear remains a classic of its kind - one which still gives me pleasure whenever I see it - and it served as a kind of yardstick when judging other products. Some things, like Concorde and the Jaguar XK120, look right from the word go. It was created with love and it was born with that indefinable something known as star quality. You either have it or you don't." Michael Bond, author of the Paddington Bear stories
* Although, for the sake of libel writ prevention, let's say not.
Way back at the end of the 70s and the early 80s, there were two interesting trends. One was the arrival of the micro-computer. And with the arrival of the micro-computer came games. Screw work, hey?
Most important of all the new computer games, given the graphics of the time, were adventure games. These were commonly text-based: you got a load of text chucked at you – "You are in a small room. In the room is a chest of drawers" – to which you typed in a load of two word commands – "OPEN CHEST" – in order to solve all sorts of puzzles that had been set for you.
At the same time, role-playing games were taking off. In these, you had someone read out the words – "You are in a small room. In the room is a chest of drawers" – to which you responded as some kind of made up medieval character/spaceman/whatever "Doest the chest containeth anything usefuleth?"
Some people got a bit tired by that and decided they'd do it for real – imagine Michael Douglas in The Game or Steven Dillane in The One Game, except with someone rolling dice as you wandered round a deserted lunatic asylum dressed as a wood elf.
And then someone had a cracking idea. "Why," asked TV producer Patrick Dowling, "don't we do something like that on tele for kids?" And thus, The Crystal Maze was born.
Hang on. That's not right.
No, wind back a decade or so and switch channel. Because back on the BBC, someone had the idea of something more cerebral and a touch more sci-fi, in which celebrities and brainy members of the public would travel to a far off planet (the BBC studios), interact with shape-changing dragons, and try to solve puzzles that would allow them to go home.
It was The Adventure Game, it lasted for four series. It's never been repeated or released on DVD. It's a Lost Gem. Which is ironic because the pesky dragons kept nicking the gems every week.
Time to launch another new blog god-related feature. This one will show off some of the lesser known work of satirist Chris Morris, who's best known for The Day Today, Brass Eye and Jam.
Naturally enough, I'm calling it Morris Minors.
Anyway, the first entry is a bit of stunt work by the man himself, in which he turned up in the audience of daytime debate show The Time The Place and pretended to be an expert on sex and Roman history. He starts of sensible, he ends up silly, just to see at what point he'll be rumbled.
As I noted a couple of weeks ago, the Welsh didn't get much of a look-in on British TV until quite recently. For the most part, they were often the butt of comedy or segregated into cartoons, where they didn't fare much better. Rarely even did the part of the Welsh character go to a Welsh actor: invariably it went to someone English who couldn't do a proper Welsh accent.
To see what I mean, here are a few classic cartoons featuring the Welsh:
1) The Willo The Wisp episode The Dragon
2) The Ivor the Engine episode The Egg
3) And the Chorlton and the Wheelies episode Happiness is Hatched
You'll notice that:
There are no Welsh people doing the voices, only English actors doing bad Welsh accents
In two of the episodes they're over-excitable and evil. In the other, they have no respect for the natural world
There's a dragon in each one (although one's not Welsh)
Just thought I'd mention it. Honestly, though, it's really only an excuse for some old kids shows, seeing as it's shaping up into nostalgia week, this week.
The Zygons are one of those Doctor Who monsters that are a firm fan favourite yet only ever appeared on-screen once.
Stars of the Tom Baker story The Terror of the Zygons, they scared, mainly thanks to the superb direction of blog god Douglas Camfield but also because of their shape-changing abilities, biological technology and weird lifestyle – they need to feed off the milk of the Loch Ness monster to survive.
They also amused, mainly because it was really hard to do convincing blue-screen work back in 1975. Still, who knows? Maybe the Loch Ness monster really does look like it's made of rubber and has a very stiff jaw.
Since then, they've popped up in all manner of unofficial and official tie-ins: Tenth Doctor novels, comic strips, New Adventures and videos.
So it seems appropriate that Big Finish have brought them back for an Eighth Doctor and Lucie adventure that is both silly and creepy.
I've pleaded. I've put my foot down. I've said I won't have it in the house. I've told her it's appalling and one of the worst TV shows in recent memory.
But she won't listen. She misses him.
Is there any way I can stop my wife getting her John Barrowman fix through buying the first series of Torchwood on DVD? I wouldn't have minded if it was the second series…
Tue 18 Nov: Does it count in the CSI: Miami drinking game if David Caruso and Emily Procter are apparently in the same scene together, but they never speak to each other and you never see both their faces at the same time?
Sat 15 Nov: The Ascent of Money "sponsored by Cayman Islands". Huh. What's going on there then?
Sun 02 Nov: Do you think it's deliberate that Sam's mom in the US version of Life on Mars is called Rose Tyler?
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