Snow Destroys Christmas

Stay at home families bollocked by expected winterval

Domestic stay at home families were devestated yesterday by news that their Christmases would be put on hold by torrential snow conditions that would not relent in the south of England.

Following news that foreigners planning on travelling back home via flight or eurotunnel were preparing for festive disappointment, it now emerges that families without Christmas travel plans have been crippled and, as it were, 'Scrooged' by the unrelenting 'big freeze.'

To elaborate, families that have or had no intention of leaving home at Christmas have had their plans undercut by the dreaded 'White Christmas.' Snowfall infiltrating homes via ill-advised open windows, or exceptionally vented draught areas have rendered Christmas obsolete for those supposedly 'clued up' by staying in this festive season and planning on going safely downstairs in the morning.

Jack Gregson, 45, of Chatham, said 'This is bollocks. I was all geared up for heading downstairs on Xmas (he said Xmas we didn't abbreviate) but the godforsaken snow made that completely impossible.' Gregson went on to explain that snow on his stairs was too dangerous for him or his family to walk down, thus having to miss Christmas in the downstairs living room.

'We couldn't make it to our living room' Gregson continued. 'We had to spend Christmas day on the upstairs landing. All I could do for my kids is tell them what presents they had. They are heartbroken.'

'Scrooge, in Dickens' famous story, asked "what's today?" Now my kids don't know what the fuck day it is thanks very much to mr. Bing Crosby's beloved bloody snow.'

In light of Mr and Mrs Gregson's revelations, this column can reveal that an alarmingly large number of families had their Christmases ruined by attempting to stay at home. Ed Balls and Vince Cable (Cable and Balls) said that 'serious investigations' are being undertaken regarding unsafe, icy, domestic staircase conditions.

This is not in fact the first time that torrential snow has ruined Christmas, for the last several decades, Christmas has been reported as being ruined by the absence of snow. Because all the songs said there should be snow. Plans are currently being made to revise the atmospheric themes of new festive carols.

An impartial observer remarked, 'its like that bit in Angela's Ashes'. This reporter is exempt from accusations of plaigarism.

Panda Rally Riot

Animal Rights protestors storm 'Save the Panda' rally

Fervent animal rights group PETA stormed a peaceful 'save the Panda' event in America's Chicago Zoo, causing several injuries and expensive damage to property, horrified witnesses reported yesterday.

The group, led by Steven Fedora of Connecticut, infiltrated the peaceful event, organized to raise money to aid the endangered species, brandishing placards bearing messages such as 'PETA loves PANDA' and 'Who the f-k are you to tell Panda what to do?'

Fedora, in a statement released prior to the gatecrashing, said 'Pandas are an endangered species, and evolutionary evidence has clearly shown that that's just the way they like it. Pandas don't have sex and thus clearly want their species to die out. Who are we, as human beings, to deny that right to them? To urge people to "save the Panda" is to keep them alive against their will, which is bordering on fascism.'

Daniel Curran, deputy manager of the Chicago Zoo Endangered Species Programme, speaking after the carnage, said 'I thought PETA liked animals. Oh well.'

Fedora responded, 'PETA love animals. We are an animal rights group, we feel that no animal should be denied any right that they are entitled to. We smile when a Panda dies just as we smile when a tortured bull mauls a matador to death. Animals shouldn't be subdued by mankind. I've eaten Panda, its alright.'

PETA stormed the zoo, yelling 'let them have the right to die' as well as numerous profanities, physically attacking zoo keepers, visitors and at least one child. The Panda enclosure suffered severe damage and is now closed until further notice. No Pandas were harmed though.

Fedora said 'we feel the event may have taken a somewhat violent turn but we also feel that our voices were heard and our message was understood.'

PETA stage protests and events on regular occasions. An inquest is to be held with regards to the vandalism and injuries caused.

"It's Only a Sentence"

So at the moment you don't have to go too far to find some debate or discussion about the Gordon Brown gaffe. Not without merit, of course, and its good to see the notion of British herd mentality somewhat dispelled by the variety of opposing reactions. However, there is one particular reaction that demonstrates the most detestable, absent-minded pseudo-intellectual way of thinking. "It's only a sentence", "people are over reacting" and variations thereupon. This is a stock response that crops up at every major news story. Jordan and Peter divorce; so what? There are more important things happening. This is true, but the problem with this response is that it has become automated at the cost of actual thought. Is what Brown said "only a sentence?" Well of course, at face value. "Arbeit Macht Frei" is only a sentence, yet it evokes half a decade of genocide. "I have a dream" is only (part of) a sentence, yet it fuelled the biggest breakthough for human rights in history. "The force will be with you, always" is only a sentence, yet it gave demi-God status to a man who made three slightly cheesy sci-fi movies. What these airheaded backlashers have apparently completely failed to grasp that it is 'only' a sentence providing you take a totally superficial approach to words, not allowing for any word to resonate beyond its aesthetic impact.
"Bigoted woman" sounds horrible, especially when said about a pensioner who is only bigoted in the eyes of someone who believes expressing a slight concern about immigration is a bigoted view. In any other context, say for example a pub conversation turned heated and one participant branded the other a bigot, which I've seen happen plenty of times, a mass reaction would be an over reaction. But in this context, the key to the outrage being justified is the context of who the words were said by, and what they evoke. With 'only a sentence', Brown has made public what anyone with fully-functioning neural passages has always suspected, that the public face of a politician is not worth the steam off their piss. With 'only a sentence' Gordon Brown has more-or-less confirmed that he thinks anybody with differing opinions to his are bigoted, even his own supporters. In short, that minute or so of dialogue from inside the car has revealed that the current Prime Minster (and it would be arguably naive not to assume this also applies to the potential two) is a complete fraud, who has nothing in common with his public persona and has no faith in the intelligence of his supporters, the people who stuck by a man that nobody voted for and spent his years in power trying to get other people to tidy up the financial mess he helped make before he was in charge. As such, the reaction is more than justified, and not 'another example of the British dwelling on triviality' as somebody put it. If this is what a politician thinks of supporters with a slightly divergent regard for some of his values, what the hell does he think of the people who outright disagree with him? "Dogshit nazis conceived to fuel the coal-heap" is one option. Feel free to suggest others. Its only a sentence, and a sentence is all it takes to turn the world on its head.

The Con Man

Something has just hit me and it has made the world, particularly the political climate, make a little more sense for the time being.

I've been frustrated by the niggling annoyance that Conservative Party leader David Cameron reminds me of someone and I've finally worked it out, its BNP leader Nick Griffin. He has that same flat-toned, grating public school accent and tone of voice, similar eyes and his Hitlerian side-parting wobbles in the same way when he gets enthusiastic about something, bikes or whatever. But he ISN'T a quivering, obese blob.
Then it occured to me, and I can't quite believe it has taken this long, David Cameron IS Nick Griffin, albeit an alternate-reality Nick Griffin, albeit an alternate-reality Nick Griffin where said alternate-reality hasn't quite panned out as desired.
Mr. Griffin, several years in the near-future, has finally resigned himself to the fact that his "purge all the blacks, deny the holocaust, England for the racist" attitude hasn't quite won over as many Britons as he had hoped. So, taking into account that this is a future in which faster-than-light travel has been developed and time travel is a reality, decides to take a trip into the past to change the course of his actions and ensure global domination. Mr. Griffin arrives at Cambridge University in the Eighties, where he gives his young, past self some important advice. His young, past self of course immediately accepts that he is talking to himself from the future, because he isn't exactly prone to believing sensible concepts and himself is the only person he will ever properly relate to who isn't in several pieces in a Russian filing cabinet.
Future Mr. Griffin tells past Mr. Griffin first to change his name, because 'Nick Griffin' just sounds evil. David is a nice name and its befitting a world leader. He then ensures the newly-christened David that it might be a good idea not to let on, in his future political career, that he's a gay-hating racist. Also, if you want people to like you, you should probably stay in shape. No more scrounging the bins round the back of abortion clinics or vet's surgeries. Get yourself to the gym.
Unfortunately, something goes terribly wrong. Authorities find and seize Mr. Griffin's time-travel device, considering it hostile, alien technology and leaving Mr. Griffin stranded in his own past. But making the most out of a bad situation, Mr. Griffin devises a plan. Throughout the ensuing years, and leading gracefully into what we perceive as the present day, Mr. Griffin acts as both a secret advisor to his new, David Cameron shaped self and an unbelievably OTT extremist with absurdly racist views that have no grounding in any functionable democracy, in order to make Cameron look a lot more desirable by comparison. He tells Cameron that the best course of action will be to act like a liberal; this way he may sway some lefties disillusioned by the tory-like running of Blairite New Labour and the horrendous descent of national pride driven by the sad face of policy-less Gordon Brown, while also maintaining the vote of confused Tories who will say "well, he, er, talks a bit like a lefty but he wears a blue tie, so he must still be all for over-taxing the working classes and discouraging immigration, right?". Cameron then gradually potters about TV channels, convincing people he's one of the kids because he sometimes rides a bike and listens to the Killers, and for some unknown reason he wants to hug people that wear hoodies (Despite his quote taken from the Daily Mail: "I wouldn't wear one, fuck that."), gathering support from impressionable non-voters and, in the privacy of his own home, rubbing his hands together with glee as he and his future self see the the sexy advance of world-domination upon the horizon.
Meanwhile, future Nick Griffin hatches a plan to go on Question Time, sit among a panel of very intelligent people, and reiterate to the nation that he is most definitely an idiot, slightly overcompensating said idiocy by implying that he hangs around with KKK members and making fun of another panelist's dead dad. Seeing this, Cameron looks like The Second Coming in comparison.
The 2010 general election looms. Griffin tells Cameron to smear the word 'Change' all over his campaign promotional material, "cos it worked for that black fella in the States". Cameron and Griffin smugly watch (from Cameron's makeup room as he is being applied with a concentration of makeup that makes him look startlingly similar to Data from Star Trek: The Next Generation) as Gordon Brown does little but frown and huff around party political broadcasts and the Lib Dems continue to try and figure out what they actually stand for, while the votes for Cameron flood in.
Then Cameron wins. Britain gets Nick Griffin, but sexier and pretending not to be a right-wing fascist (for now).

Well, Maybe Facebook Mobile is a bit much...

My girlfriend has a friend who has decided to renounce facebook, myspace and the like. While this is, of course, an acceptable course of action in itself (nobody's forcing him), the grounds on which he has decided to do so are a little iffy.

Firstly, this man lives in Australia, and has many friends in the UK. He has cited that the reason he is deleting his facebook page is because he wishes for his life to be more like it was when he was younger, free of the over-reliance on technology; SMS, social networking, internet chat etc.

Again, there is little wrong with strivance to be free of a life laced by the internet, but when friendships so long-distance rely on a quick and convenient means of communication, is disregarding these means the best course of action, short of wishing to live the life of a misanthropic hermit? I'm sure, at 26 years old, these aren't his plans.

But between disgruntled standup comics complaining about it on BBC3's 'Most annoying things' and those people you meet that say things along the lines of 'I don't participate in all that internet bollocks', I am a little perplexed by the apparent prejudice that surrounds social networking sites. What is really wrong with a fast, free and broad way to keep in touch with everyone you know at a few clicks of the mouse? The Internet is the greatest source of knoledge, communication, entertainment, everything. I recall there were similar attitudes toward mobile phones when they started becoming commonplace, but I'm sure there's already a 12 year old blog covering that somewhere. Maybe people that complain about facebook don't even know why they complain, they just feel its somebody's duty to create a backlash against any new technological development. Maybe they took The Terminator too seriously. I wonder if people were uneasy at the invention of the printing press?
Most of the criticisms against it fail to convince. Some argue that facebook shouldn't be a replacement for real, face to face communication. But it isn't- nobody is sitting indoors on a Friday night, pint in hand, talking to their friends on facebook who are doing the same as them. The last time I checked, pubs and restaurants were still pretty packed-out. I use facebook constantly, but I don't see or speak to my friends less. Another criticism that comes from a very close friend (who, by the way, lives in New Zealand and keeps in contact with his UK friends using the Internet...hmmm) is that if you really cared that much about all the people that you add on facebook, then you'd make the effort to phone them or write them a letter. Write them a letter! This just smacks of a silly, roundabout way to go to awkward lengths just to spite a website. What real fundamental differences are there between a piece of paper and a computer screen? They're just two different means to the same ends, and the former costs money and takes longer. I lost touch with a good friend from School because he moved house and I drunkenly lost my phone around the same time. Obviously I couldn't contact him to tell him I wasn't ignoring him, but guess how we finally got back in touch, nigh on 7 years later? Facebook. My friend may have a point regarding the addition of people you otherwise wouldn't give a second thought in the real world, but that's at the behest of the individual. I personally don't add people I never cared for before.

Then, like it or not, the world has gone the facebook way. Refusing to board the bandwagon in this instance is less a statement of noble defiance and more a petty clinging on to the less-enriched aspects of days gone by. What harm does it do to your integrity to have a facebook page? The benefits outweigh the flaws. In the real world, the world that the anti-facebook brigade seem so scared of falling off, whether or not you are a member makes no difference. And to those that wish to hark back to their bygone glory days, it seems to me that the fact isn't considered that in those carefree days you saw your friends and family every day because you had to go to school and you lived at home. That's the difference between childhood and adulthood, and also the reason that fewer children have facebook pages, they don't need them. In most cases, YOU do. Your friends from school, the ones that were so easy to network with socially, have departed for greener pastures, as you grow up the people you love leave your convenient bubble and spread around the world, and facebook should be commended for supplying a means to make the distant ones seem closer, not sneered at as a misguided target for hypocritical technophobia, and it really does baffle me as to why this hasn't occured to, of all people, a man in Australia whose friends live half a planet away.

Or maybe I just didn't take The Terminator seriously enough.

I Spelt 'Embodiment' Wrong

If I plan to make something of myself as a writer I should perhaps start getting into the habit of re-reading things before I unleash them upon the big wide world. I apologise to anybody who spotted that glaring error and I endeavour to ensure that such a travesty shall never occur henceforth.

You may notice that I'm being hyperbolic. This is, fortunately, a conscious effort and, even more fortunately, in jest and merely to bring me to the main point of this post. Unfortunately (oh it was going so well with two 'fortunately's'), I have found my prosaic style often veers toward mannerisms best suited to the the early Eighteen-Forties, by which I mean that I have developed (or perhaps always possessed) a tendency to over-describe and over-emote the somewhat mundane, in ways befitting (but, you must understand, not reaching the calibre of) George Elliot or Wilkie Collins. I have suspected it is an inclination stemming from a possible sub-conscious aspiration to Charles Dickens, which, if so, can be forgiven. However it may also be due to my having recently watched Withnail and I for the ninetieth time, and being infected by Richard Griffiths' character Monty's insistence on striving to verbalise to the highest possible degree the English language will allow ('as a youth I used to weep in butcher's shops'). Given the nature of his character (an overbearing, over-reacting sexual harrasser, for those who don't know), this can not be forgiven.

The optimist in me insists on telling me that said inclination is simply the manifestation of me finding my preferred writing style, that of a somewhat ironic harking back to a now virtually alien society. I can only think of the positives in attributing such profundity of language to a story largely set in the grey, WKD-fuelled environments of Uxbridge and Harrow. If nothing else the linguistic tone will prevent the story from being taken more seriously than it intends to be. What on Earth could be wrong with a story that includes the following paragraph

Jet Tea awoke with an erection. It wasn't a problem, for he often

awoke in such a state of arousal, particularly of late, and particularly

on days Jet Tea knew he would be receiving a visit from Vicky.

I'm fairly certain that a key element of successful comedy is the pairing of levels of culture that shouldn't be paired. Remember the episode of The Office (the proper one, not the American one) in which David Brent and another colleague spend a large portion of the working day discussing Fyodor Dostoyevsky? Had that exchange taken place at 9pm in a dimly lit BBC4 studio between two academics, it wouldn't have been the least bit humourous. As it is, it occurs in a Slough paper office, between an idiot boss and a postgraduate temp, and as a result is hilarious, because the setting doesn't match the content.

So, if I may slightly tweak the elements of setting and content into scenario and tone, therein lies what I hope may be the greatest strength of my novel, alongside the characterisation of which I discussed in my previous blog. I could perhaps further my attempts to emulate Dickens and spend an entire chapter detailing the sublime, archaic architecture of NatWest bank or wax lyrical upon the plight of the heretics in that park down Windsor Street, to add an environment to the comedy. Or it could be completely shambolic, misinterpreted (I must remember that Jet Tea pronounces that word 'misinterpretated') and see me come off as a pompous purveyor of sub-Victorian dross, the kind that has no place on our Twenty-First Century highstreet bookshelves.

Speaking of highstreet bookshelves, I feel it is of some interest (if only to my future, memory-numbed-by-alcoholism self) to report that I experienced my first contact with the world of professional literature yesterday, in the form of an email from a publishing company (that I shan't name) telling me that I am on their contact list. This may be, I am fully aware, the literary equivalent of adding Rough Trade Records on MySpace, but it is still exciting to me. For, being predominantly concerned with making it as a musician for the last seven years, and understandably having gathered a modest supply of knowledge of how that would work, beginning a career as a writer is the first completely brand new, uncharted territory, terra-incognita experience I have gone through in some time. I should print that email and have it framed. In terms of relevence to my success it predates even a rejection letter, but its still the first email I have received that is remotely of that kind. Perhaps in twenty years time I can remove it from the loft (or my sleeping bag, fortunes pending) and show it to people as a letter from when I tried to be an author. Or perhaps, if I may allow myself a little optimism, it will be the first of many. Watch this space.

P.S. You'll be pleased to know I spell checked at least seven words this time round.

Arachno-Nostalgia

I planned to, in this blog, paste a funny mock-biography about William the Spider, a cartoon I made once. The biog was written in the form of a Dickensian memoir, and the humour lay in applying hyperbole, fond recollection and an ambitious lifespan to a spider that was prone to being stepped on.

But to my horror I find that blogspot doesn't allow material to be pasted into the blog, everything has to be typed from scratch (and no way am I typing that out again). The motivation and necessity for this absurd form of techno-prejudice is beyond me, so instead I'll use this intended spider-time to reflect on a new sub-theme I'm going to be applying to my novel.

Just to let you catch up, I'm partway through writing a novel about my friend, Jet Tea, with particular focus on his tendency to fall in love with every girl he meets. Within the realms of the novel, the tendency is manifest as a curse imposed on him by a magician, but as a means to satirise that way of behaving in the real world. The male tendency to over-exaggerate feelings of interest toward the opposite sex into neo-Keatsian poetic agonising has not been sufficiently covered as of late. The overall tone of the novel is that Jet Tea is the modern-day imbodiment of an angst-ridden romantic poet from the Regency era, albeit one who finds himself isolated in an environment where this sort of behaviour has no place. Surrounding characters are largely matter of fact about their feelings; not unemotive but honest with themselves. Jet Tea's expressions of feeling are melodramatic and hyperbolic, laced with overstretched metaphors and similes to put how he feels into words. With nobody to sufficiently counter-remark him, Jet Tea's main goal becomes to leave (nicely aligning the fictional Jet Tea with the real one, who has moved to New Zealand and achieved almost immediately what he was striving to do since I've known him; find love. Congratulations Mr. Tea).

But on a walk to clear my head and get some fresh air yesterday, I found myself listening to The Magnetic Fields' 'You Must Be Out of Your Mind' on my iPod. The song, in particular its lyrics, for some reason left me with feelings of nostalgia and lament for bygone days. I say 'for some reason' because the song itself is about a falling out of some kind, but the lyric 'you think you can leave the past behind / you must be out of your mind' fits my scenario just as sufficiently. The early parts of the novel see a regular scenario in which the three best friends (Jet Tea, and fictional characters based partially on myself and Glen Strachan), living in close proximity to one another, regularly meet at the pub for a drink and a debate. This was something I, at least, now think we took for granted. Jet Tea is now on the other side of the planet, Glen is out in the countryside and I 'm unemployed skulking around a flat in North London. The likelihood of meeting up at the local nowadays is slim, and unlikely to ever happen casually ever again. Such meetings now will be reunion-based, with conversation probably of the reminiscent variety. Its a shame, but its life, and it isn't like we don't communicate any more, only last week Jet Tea phoned me up drunk to tell me he'd refused a lift home on the basis that he didn't like the designated driver's taste in music, and I've seen Glen regularly as well.

But that brought me to thinking I should layer the narrative with a second tone, one of the fear of change. I thought about having this emit from my character, but that would contradict the largely unpoetic world in which Jet Tea lives, so its going to be a second hardship Jet Tea has to contend with, probably ultimately accepting it and deciding that the only way to numb the sadness of the end of the status quo is to begin again in a completely alien environment. That's where New Zealand comes into play.

Forgive me if I've ruined the ending of the unwritten novel for you (if that's the case then thank you for even considering reading it), but this story isn't really about the plot, its about the characters. There are plenty of biopics and biographies where the reader knows full well how it will end. Hey, Titanic and the Star Wars prequels wouldn't have been so successful if the audiences had such a huge problem with knowing how things turn out. The bottom line is, The Life and Loves of Jet Tea (working title) may be a fictional story, but its eponymous hero is very much real, and in real life Jet Tea buggered off to New Zealand with no intention of returning, so that's where my Jet Tea will go, so that the two parallel timelines can converge and the Jet Tea of the future is both the Jet Tea of the past and the Jet Tea of fiction.

Oh, and if you want to see that spider cartoon, its here.

Big Audio Dynamite

I'm writing a Doctor Who short story for a Big Finish competition. Big Finish is the company that produces most of the Doctor Who audio dramas, and also a series of short stories. Haing read a fair few of the short stories and liking them a lot, and with little to fill the Who-shaped whole that last year's lack of a proper series has left me with, I've found myself getting into the audio dramas.

They're mostly great, but that's unsurprising. They don't have the cautions and restrictions of a special effects budget there to stop the story from being as ambitious as they want it to be like the classic TV series, they're not producing episodes for the whole country and thus having to make sure the lowest common denomenator is always kept in mind like the new TV series, and they have a plethora of lifelong Doctor Who fans who happen to have become superb sci fi and fantasy writers at the helm, all of whom are given mostly free reign over what they write and how far they play with the formula. So its easy to understand why the stories are so good.

They've also provided an invaluable way to do greater justice to the ill-treated Eighth Doctor, having only one TV appearance (he should have been invited to do that short Children In Need special instead of Peter Davison) despite his energy and ability but instead due to low ratings in the US for said story's airing. The Big Finish Audios have given him plenty of stories and even the opportunity to spar with a great companion in Sheridan Smith's (the blonde from 2 Pints of Lager) Lucie Miller (gone now sadly).

So having become an even bigger Doctor Who geek this way (there are whole spinoff series set on Gallifrey but I wont go into that) I have begun trying to get myself into this environment. Steven Moffat's Who career began, as I understand, with a short story. Now he's in charge of Doctor Who! He gets to decide who the Doctor is, what he does and what villains he bumps into. Imagine having that job. The first opportunity I went for was the chance to write one of four 25 minute audio plays featuring the Fifth Doctor (Peter Davison) and Nyssa. Although this is my least favourite Doctor and companion, I went for it and wrote a story where the two of them are effectively out of space Lenny Henrys, turning up on a devastated planet and appealing to its government to allow aid workers to land. Big Finish reported that around 1,200 people entered this, which put my likelihood of getting the job close to slipping in the shower on an airplane while putting my socks on. But they're still reading them as I type this so I haven't given up hope yet.

The next one was, to my delight, a short story competition (though to be released as an audiobook rather than a hardback), this time allowing me to write for any of the first eight Doctors (their liscence doesn't cover the new series) and any companion. Instinct led me to assume I'd either automatically opt for Tom Baker's Doctor, or spend ages mulling over who I should write for instead. To my surprise, however, I found myself immediately picking the Sixth Doctor, Colin Baker, and Peri. For those who don't know the Sixth Doctor is largely considered fandom's least favourite. I myself am not a fan of his 'era', but, while writing dialogue for him and enjoying doing so a great deal, I realised that it can't really be the Doctor himself people don't like.

On paper, Colin Baker has everything a successful Doctor needs. He can act, to get that issue out of the way, he has a commanding presence; whatever's going on in the scene, its always him you're drawn to (and not just because of his ridiculous clown coat) and he's got a big alien-looking face that's capable of displaying a thousand emotions. Add to that his curly hair and surname and there's very little about him that's different to everyone's favourite Doctor (pre Tennant anyway), Tom Baker.

So why is he often so neglected in polls? Simple. Everything else about Doctor Who was shoddy at that time and, as previous showrunner Russel T Davies has said, actors are the front line. When you see any film that you find dreadful, you always remember it as 'that shitty film with so-and-so in it.' Its not Colin Baker's fault that the props, writing and supporting cast were at their weakest, and its not Colin Baker's fault that the producer at the time insisted on dressing him in a horrendous multi-coloured clown costume when, as one of the darkest Doctors thus far, he should have been wearing something subtle and sinister (I've seen fanmade mockups of him in a black suit and he looks superb). Put Colin in the 'golden age' of the mid seventies instead of Tom and he might today be regarded as the best Doctor ever.

Which brings me back to Big Finish audios. Despite his misguided reputation and his abrupt sacking from Doctor Who by Michael Grade, Colin has had good grace enough to lend his services to Big Finish as the Doctor for many audio plays. Listen to him, if you're partial to a bit of Doctor Who and not too worried about not having anything to look at while the story is taking place. He's been in many brilliant audios but at gunpoint I'd recommend Jubilee or Medicinal Purposes (the latter of which also features David Tennant as a madman, before he received the part of the Doctor himself). Listen to one, close your eyes and imagine Colin Baker away from bad actors, papier mache walls, tin foil hats and a stupid costume, and just allowing himself to be the Doctor as best as anyone ever could, acting out a proper script that every Doctor Who story should have. Because let's be honest, there are thousands of people itching to be able to write for Doctor Who (myself very much included), and now the TV programme has the budget to do almost any script justice, so there's no excuse why it shouldn't be top notch all the time.

Retroactive Present Tense?

Once, in a small but pleasant flat somewhere in the London borough of Barnet, there lived a twenty-something male named Joe Gardner. Joe was, though not through lack of trying, unemployed and living off of a mistakenly allocated credit card and the leftovers of a graduate overdraft.
Joe's goal in life was to be a writer. So he would often sit, day in, day out, at his laptop, writing short stories, lyrics and general plotless ramblings, whilst simultaneously working on the novel he was writing about his best friend.
One day, Joe decided to open an internet blog to store thoughts, ideas and the opportunity to look back at his progress on the path to recognition for his supposed creativity. If nothing else, the blog would be a good place to direct his frustrations and restlessness with the world of literature. Nonetheless, Joe was determined to one day have published something other than two mediocre poems in a little-known anthology when he was eighteen. So he sat down, armed with a coffee and a list of publishing companies, and a head full of ideas (some of them contrived), to make something of himself.

Unfortunately, no more of this story can be related to you, as it is still being written.