Fuddland

Entries concerning radio programmes and events.

In case you’ve not heard already [and I only found out by accident, sometime last month, that it was happening]: starting earlier this week, BBC Radio 4 is broadcasting brand new episodes of the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy!

Most of the original cast are back — sadly, several members have died over the twenty-two years since the last episode, but the replacements seem more than up to the job. Perhaps strangest of all is the fact that Douglas Adams himself, despite passing away in 2001, fills one of the role, having recorded readings from the novels sometime in the past.

What’s particularly impressive is that these new episodes are being recorded and can be listened-to [over the web, at least] in 5.1 surround sound. Let me tell you, listening to Arthur and Ford dashing about my room, from one corner to another to another, chasing a flying sofa which has washed up on prehistoric Earth due to eddies in the space-time continuum, is a very odd experience indeed — but a joyous one nonetheless.

Read the rest of “H2G3”…

I don’t listen ever to the radio for music; I much prefer to put my own specific choices on, or trust WMP’s automatic playlist generators to keep track of my MP3 collection. However, after reading about Radio 1’s landmark 10 Hour Take-over — firstly over at City of Sound and then in more detail at hackdiary [how cool is it to be able to read first-hand accounts from the people who built the system?] — I’ve been tuned in since ten o’clock [actually, not really “tuned in” as I’m listening via their broadband stream, now that it works properly], and it’s very entertaining — much better than shows dedicated to specific genres.

The idea is simple: from ten o’clock this morning until eight o’clock tonight, all playlists are scrapped and the entire output is dictated by the public texting- or emailing-in their requests, which are processed and managed by some nifty bespoke software. It’s made for some genuinely eclectic mixes — for example, here’s what was played in the last hour or so:

1. Coldplay - Shiver
2. Janet Jackson - That’s The Way Love Goes
3. Dolly Parton - 9 to 5
4. Felix - Don’t You Want Me
5. Joy Divison - Love Will Tear Us Apart
6. Foundations - Build Me Up Buttercup
7. Suede - Trash
8. House of Pain - Jump Around
9. Manic Street Preachers - A Design For Life
10. Paul McCartney - We All Stand Together (The Frog Chorus)
11. Hole - Celebrity Skin
12. Dennis Waterman - I Could Be So Good (Theme from Minder)
13. Men at Work - Down Under
14. Elbow - Newborn

I’m definitely impressed at the technology running everything — nothing seems to have fallen over so far — but it’s the choices made by the Great British Public™ which have made this idea really successful: I keep listening because I want to see what’s coming up next — it really could be anything. [Gah, they’re playing “Do the Bartman” now — perhaps it’s not such a great idea after all!]

Read the rest of “10 Hour Take-over”…

or perhaps i’ll just stay in, save my money and be consummately entertained by those boys of ‘i’m sorry i haven’t a clue’.

for me, the highlight always seems to be ‘one song to the tune of another’ — apart from humph’s usual fantastically confusing explanation of the rules, graeme garden’s amazing rendition of ‘the theme to the flintstones’ to the tune of ‘my way’ and harry hill’s touching [and slightly disturbing] ‘the ugly duckling’ to the tune of harry nilsson’s ‘without you’ were hilarious.

if you can somehow imagine a special royal family edition of the board game monopoly being played on the radio, then you’ve probably already got a smile on your face. just listening to the sound of four people playing a board game makes me laugh for some reason, and when it’s peppered by each team member’s funny comments [‘go directly to mustique, do not pass goa’] and picking up chance cards [‘you’ve come 73rd in a beauty contest. must be all that in-breeding’] — well, what more can i say? i think it’s brilliant, and i know i’m not doing it justice here. if you hurry — thanks to the wonders of audio-on-demand [surely the best thing to happen to radio since its inception?] you can still listen to the latest edition.

i listened to the very funny ‘now show’ at the weekend — british satire at its best from steve punt and hugh dennis, who used to be in the mary whitehouse experience with the more successful [but not funnier, in my opinion] newman & baddiel.

a couple of classic points raised in the show: in the past, we’ve had military codenames such as ‘operation overlord’ or ‘operation sealion’ — one of the points being not to give the game away in the planning stages. what’s the codename for the coalition’s current attack on iraq? ‘operation enduring freedom’ — not so much as a codename as a brandname [although it’s not quite as bad as its former name — ‘operation infinite freedom’]. and the americans are attacking using apache helicopters — isn’t that like the spanish naming their choppers ‘aztecs’, or the australians flying around in ‘aborigines’?

they also reckoned the word ‘coalition’ is a bit of a misnomer too — you don’t say, “i really like that musical coalition ‘simon & garfunkel’” do you? although officially there are forty-four countries in the coalition, can you name more than six of them?

Read the rest of “now then, now then”…