Stuff with bits in One of my skills, though not one which of any use to anyone, is to look at the line-up for a given reality television programme in the first week or so and guess who'll win even though I haven't seen a broadcast second of it. The trend began with Lisa Faulkner in Masterchef and continues to this day. At this point I'm not following either the Great British Bake Off or Strictly Come Dancing, but my guess is that Ruby will win the former, and Sophie-Ellis Bexter the latter. I have no proof other than how I assume human beings think and a certain amount of narrative game theory, though I'd certainly be more certain of a Sophie success if Abbey Clancy wasn't there. Not that I've seen either of them dance. Or want to.
What I have seen is this trailer for Sophie Ellis Bexter's new album coming in January, Wanderlust, in which she reminds us of the unique quality of her voice in a kind of meringue of middle era Natalie Imbrugia and Corinne Bailey Rae at her imperious best. Have all of these promo videos been shot already? Is that how it works. Or is it a promo video recorded especially to cover this medley? I'm dramatically out of touch with these things how.
I'm equally out of touch about the whole Man of Steel business though I know what happens, somewhat, impossible as it is to avoid spoilers in the gap between a film's theatrical and rental by post appearance. Only just recently did I realise how much affection I have for Superman, realising almost as quickly afterwards that it's because he's effectively the Doctor Who of the DCverse, a benevolent alien, last of his kind, defending the Earth with the help of a female companion, Lois. No wonder Russell T Davies used Lois and Clark as one of his models for nuWho. That series is conspicuous by its absent from this nostalgic celebration, a Kryptonian equivalent this Grant Morrison tribute to Batman:
Which in its own way has its own connection with Doctor Who given the propensity of some fans, like me, to assume that it's all one grand narrative and that everything officially licensed or spin-off of something officially licensed is included and equally important (oh you should hear my Cushing theory). Since I'm here, you will have seen Moffat's blabbing about regenerations again in the run up to the 50th anniversary and the number of incarnations there have been. My standing theory was that the Ninth Doctor was somehow the first, that as well as a new series it was a brand new Doctor, and Gen of Deek of all places crystallizes it with the words "whole new regenerative cycle" which for all we know might have happened during the Time War. For obvious reasons I don't like the idea of them killing off the Eighth Doctor. The other theory I've seen around suggests that the metacrisis regeneration somehow counts and with the Hurt Doctor that means Capaldi is actually the thirteenth or fourteenth Doctor depending on the story which is being told.
Meanwhile back in 1970. With the BFI Player still pretty flaky and far less free archival material than was intermated (though loads of Q&As) I've been working my way through their YouTube channel which features plenty of the same material in a more user friendly form, and with added extras of preview stuff from dvd releases like this fascinating short film about rush hour at Waterloo Station. Update the graphical furniture, give everyone smart phones and a similar film made now wouldn't be that much different.
Then in 1988, Kylie gives this edgy interview to Network 7, which in places oscillated between a Leveson testimony and having to field the kinds of questions which would eventually require the need for someone to want to give a Leveson testimony. Her inquisitor Jaswinder Bancil, would go on to executive produce Hotel Babylon, which unfortunately for trivia fans wasn't the BBC drama series, but an ITV attempts at a Word-like magazine show introduced by Dani Behr seen here interviewing Green Day. The Big Breakfast too by the looks of it.
I had wanted to include an embed of this short piece about the underground b-movie scene in the UK, a forerunner to YouTubers, but the uploader won't let me. Includes a hilariously young Edgar Wright talking about his first feature, Fist Full of Fingers.
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