Rob Wickings's Blog, page 73

Reading The Signs At The Reading Festival

The August Bank Holiday weekend offers up an almost unrivalled set of distractions and attractions for the discerning punter, and always presents yr. humble writer with something of a dilemma. London offers both the UK’s biggest free festival, the Notting Hill Carnival, and the country’s largest gathering of horror fans, Frightfest (more on this from our embedded correspondents on the ground, fear fans). 

And then there’s the Reading and Leeds Festival, the climax of the music, mud and over-priced lager season. For the first time in three years, X&HT will be on site. 

Thanks to docoDom, we’ve snagged tickets to the Sunday performances, which to my mind is very much the strongest day. But the buzz about this year is especially intense, with headline performances from Kasabian, The Cure, and my personal favourites, The Foo Fighters. Throw in a “secret” set by Green Day at some point on Friday or Saturday, and you’ve got the makings of something very special. 

Sunday is looking pretty Foo-centric, with appearances by Eagles Of Death Metal, and Me First And The Gimme Gimmes both having strong connections to the headlining band. Look out for a guest appearance from Chris Shiflett of the Foos during the Gimmes, as he’s part of the core studio band. 

I’m also excited to see The Mark Lanegan Band, who again have links to the Foos through their shared association with The Queens Of The Stone Age. Blues Funeral, the latest album, is one of my favourites of this year so far.

Other potential highlights for me include The Black Keys and The Gaslight Anthem on the Main Stage, both touring the best albums of their careers. We should never discount The Kaiser Chiefs, who know how to get a festival crowd jumping.

Keep an eye on the other stages as well. I love The Cast Of Cheers’ new album, and the prospect of The Futureheads abandoning their punkfunk clatter for an acoustic and acapella set has curiosity value if nothing else on the Festival Republic Stage. Turbonegro and Gallows will be tearing the canvas off the Lock Up Stage. The Radio 1/NME is especially strong on Sunday, with a great mix of dance, rock and indie from Justice, Two Door Cinema Club, The Horrors and SBTRKT. 

But the highlight of the day has to be the Foos, who claim Reading as their spiritual home. We’ve seen them twice on the holy ground of Richfield Avenue, and Grohl and co know just how to lift a capacity crowd and get them roaring along with every chord change. They are one of the finest live bands on the planet, and Reading always gets them lifting their game to a higher level. I’m jittering with excitement about what’s in store on Sunday. 

Drowned In Sound have a great Reading and Leeds playlist up on Spotify, just to get everyone in the mood. See you all on Sunday. 

Let’s get this party started.

The Word is Out On Frightfest From The Gruesome Twosome

This weekend is one of the most important in the horror calendar. The August Bank Holiday is home to Frightfest, the five-day smorgasbord of shivers, the feast of fear, the cornucopia of chills that sits at the bleeding heart of London’s Leicester Square.  

Frightfest the 13th is bigger than ever, with nearly 100 films spread over five days and three screens. So the question is, how by all the nether gods do you navigate all that? What’s your gameplan, pilgrim?

Fret not, fear fan. There is a way.

X&HTeam-mates Leading Man Clive and Mightily-Tashed Stu have come up with the goods, whether you’re a neophyte or a seasoned veteran. They’ve started up a podcast, The Gruesome Twosome, through which they discuss all things horror. The first season of five episodes focusses exclusively on Frightfest. They have all the scuttlebutt. What to see, what to try out, what you absolutely cannot miss even if you have to sell your sainted granny’s soul to Pazuzu The Unforgiving to snag a ticket. There are tips for first-timers, and the all-important guide to surviving five days and nights of horror without your brain going pop. There’s ten years worth of knowledge here, and you would be a fool to ignore it. 

But hey, enough of my yakkin’. Let’s let Clive and Stu take us by the hand and lead us down into the darkness…

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Dawn Of The Dandy

Ooyah! Further news from the beleaguered DC Thomson show us a story with a few more twists in it than anyone anticipated. 

 

As Alexander points out in the comments of my previous post, I fumbled the figures on The Beano, adding an extra nought to the total. But it’s also interesting to note that the figures for the Dandy are even worse than I reported, dropping down to under 7 and a half grand. Full figures here. 

Meanwhile, the mainstream press are finally starting to notice, with London’s free daily paper Metro giving it’s traditional geeky page three splash over to the story. But there’s a twist. It turns out that DC Thomson hadn’t planned for the news to come out, and the offices are now in “lockdown” to prevent further leaks of future plans for the title. Official confirmation came from Dundee only yesterday–which meant that once again, Twitter had a four day lead on traditional news sources. The leak left DC Thomson, who were clearly unprepared for the broad spread of reaction, reeling.

As for the lockdown: The Dandy website is now a single intriguing splash page with a countdown set to run out at the end of the year, a link to the Dandy App and an email sign-up. 

Comics creators, most notably Desperate Dan artist and writer Jamie Smart, passionately pointed at the comic’s rich history and continued worth. Any campaign to kickstart sales and get Thomson to reconsider the shut-down of the print edition are, I fear, too little, too late. But I’m happy to declare that the title of my previous blog post was wrong, and that the title will continue. In the Dandy’s landmark 75th year, it will be fascinating to see how Thomson and the editorial team move forward into a new, digital-only edition.

I hope it’s a success. I really do. And I’ve already signed up to see what the new edition is going to be like.  

The Death Of The Dandy

It was sad, but not really surprising, to read about DC Thomson’s decision to finally shutter The Dandy. It must have been a decision that the normally pragmatic Scottish publisher was putting off, knowing just how unpopular it would be. Was it coincidental that the announcement came out the day after the end of the Olympics, when everyone was still in hangover mode? No, I like to think they chose their moment well. 

The sad thing is, of course, that with the exception of a small core of comics nerds and nostalgists, it’s unlikely anyone really cared. As for The Dandy’s target audience–the ugly truth is that they moved on years ago. 

As DC Thomson withdrew The Dandy from the rolls of the British Publisher’s Association, it became clear just how unloved the comic had become. It had a readership of just 8,000. It’s a fool’s errand to compare this figure to the Dandy’s heyday in the 50′s and 60′s, when it regularly sold 2 and a bit million copies. Publishing is a very different game these days, and a magazine editor would gnaw off their own arm for a chance at a distribution figure of even half that. But the book had been shedding readers at a disastrous rate for years, despite the best efforts by the publisher and editors to retool it for a modern audience. A reboot as a fortnightly title, Dandy Xtreme, in 2010 didn’t help. Nor did the appearance of TV celebs like Harry Hill and Cheryl Cole as recurring characters. The readers kept slipping away, off to the internet and the tellybox. The announcement of the paper’s disappearance never even made the mainstream press (at the time of writing, anyway).The poor old Dandy never had a chance, really. 

 

Actually, that’s not entirely true. The companion paper, the more famous Beano, still pulls in 365,000 readers, and it’s likely that some of the Dandy’s more popular characters will reappear there. The Beano seems to be able to connect with a modern audience in a way that The Dandy couldn’t. But Britain’s second-favourite comic didn’t do itself any favours. It was increasingly difficult to find in the shops–a fault that you could put on DC Thomson quietly putting the title to sleep, or on the shrinking shelf space newsagents offer to comics (which still doesn’t explain why the Beano is doing so well by comparison). The Dandy’s online presence remains inexcusably awful, though. Their website only offers comics for sale as clunky zip files, and up until late last year, there was no easy way to read the paper on the web. This is just plain dumb in an era when many kids have access to pods and pads and PCs. In the month when my beloved 2000AD rolled out a widely acclaimed app for the iPhone and iPad, it really feels like Thomson did too little, too late to bring The Dandy properly to a 21st century audience.

It’s doubly sad because the content of the paper was going from strength to strength. The editors were prepared to push boundaries and be playful, trying out risky stylistic strategies with the art. Jamie Smart’s take on Desperate Dan is more overtly cartoony than the traditional image of the cow-pie eating cowboy, chunky and economically drawn. But that buttress of a jaw is instantly recognisable. Smart by name, smart by nature; his Dan stories are solidly constructed and goofily hilarious. Likewise, talents like Steve Bright brought their effortless touch to strips like Beryl The Peril, updating them while keeping their anarchic edge. The paper, when you could find it, was a fine example of British comedy strip story telling.

I wonder just what proportion of that last 8,000 readers were kids, and how many blokes of a certain age who simply couldn’t bring themselves to stop reading it. There’s already been woeful scenes on Twitter as people bemoan the loss of a childhood favourite. The release of an expensive coffee table book on the art and history of the Dandy only strengthens that. It’s the sort of posh, pricy volume that you wouldn’t allow within scribbling distance of a sticky-handed child. Like the fall of Woolworths, if you pushed the nostalgists, I bet you they would remember little about the paper, and certainly wouldn’t recognise it if presented with a copy of today’s Dandy.The sad fact remains that, even in it’s 75th year, a milestone that made it Britain’s longest running comic, there simply wasn’t the interest anymore.  Perhaps DC Thomson are right, and it’s time to take the best of it, along with all our fond memories, and move on.

So long, The Dandy. See you in the funny papers.  

(Some images are courtesy of Lew Stringer’s most excellent blog, Crikey! Essential reading if you’re a British comics fan.)

Our Revels Now Are Ended: Considerations on The Olympic Games

The Closing Ceremony of the London 2012 Olympics is still nine hours away, and I’m already starting to feel tearful. I have surprised myself by the wholehearted way I’ve embraced these Games. The TV has barely been away from the Olympic channels, and TLC and I have been glued to the BBC’s outstanding coverage. That is, when we haven’t been out watching events. What the hell’s happened to me? I don’t like sport. I’ve never liked sport. And yet, here I am, feeling emotional about the fact that it’s coming to a close.

It shouldn’t have been a surprise, of course. As soon as it became clear that London had won the Olympics, TLC and I knew we had a rare chance to immerse ourselves in a world-class experience. We were lucky enough to snag fencing tickets in the lottery, and booked a brace of events through a travel agent, accepting right there and then that the Games would be a replacement for a big summer holiday. It was expensive, but totally, totally worth it.

Seeing Olympic events live is a completely different prospect to watching them on the telly. The crowd is as much a part of the action as the athletes on the field of play. We watched a volleyball match between Poland and Russia in a packed Earl’s Court–packed, that is, with vocal Poles. Whenever Russia served, they were heartily, cheerfully booed. It was not to be Poland’s night. They were comprehensively taken apart by the Russians, losing three sets to nothing. But the roar whenever the Polish team scored a point had to be heard to be believed. I’ve seen Bruce Springsteen at Earl’s Court, and even the noisy Boss fans had nothing on this crowd. You could feel the whole building vibrate.

But if you want to talk about noise, the place to be is the Olympic Stadium when a member of Team GB is competing. The roar is a physical thing, wrapping round you like an over-enthusiastic hug, drumming on your bones. The Stadium is state-of-the-art, comfortable, accessible and the sightlines are all fine. But acoustically, the place is a triumph, designed to build crowd noise up into thunder.

You’re applauding all the time. You applaud when a jump or a run goes well. You applaud when it doesn’t. You applaud before people start their jump. You applaud if they get through the heats. You applaud even more loudly if they don’t, just to make the athletes feel a bit better about all that hard work and sacrifice being for nothing.

Not that it was, of course. I don’t hold with the idea of Olympic gold being the be-all and end-all, that if you don’t get a spot on the podium that you’re a failure. Competing in the Olympics is a big fucking deal. It’s the culmination of years of effort, of focus, of doing without, of eating right, of pain and endurance. And that, my Readership, is why we applaud the stragglers, and the ones that fall at the third attempt. Because they have still achieved more simply by striding into the arena than we can really know. They’ve made the grade, and the least we can do is let them know that they’re champions before the starting pistol goes off.

The most remarkable thing about the 2012 Olympics is the way that our expectations simply refused to materialise. That the Team GB athletes would fail to make the grade. That there would be organisational and transport fubars that would strand thousands of angry ticket-holders miles from the Olympic Park. That somehow, we’d mess it all up, become a laughing stock. Even now, as the finish line comes into view, I think we still can’t quite believe what’s actually happened–that we were not only up to the challenge, but that we absolutely bloody nailed it. Our best medal haul in 104 years. A cheerful, clean and easy to navigate capital. A showpiece Olympic venue that not only works, but looks amazing and symbolises a lasting legacy. Let’s not forget, this time last year, London was reeling after a week of riots, and commentators on both wings of the press were expending huge volumes of hot air on how multicultural Britain had failed. The nay-sayers are quiet now, and if they do pipe up, like the moronic Aiden Burley, they simply show how out of touch they are. Our medal winners are an extraordinarily diverse bunch, from every background, a rainbow of colours, class, and ethnicities. I’ve always believed the major strength of this beautiful island nation of hours is the way that we’ll accept, adopt, and adapt influences from around the world to create something new and quintessentially us. The Olympics has shown that clearly, polished it up and made it shine.

We’re on the cusp of something new here, something brighter. I’ll be honest. I’m a little giddy with the promise of it all. You could sneer and call it bread and circuses. Our economy has flatlined. We are ruled over by buffoons and malicious reactionaries. In a lot of ways, we are at our lowest. But we have to build up from somewhere. And these last two weeks, when we have seen our little country at its best seems like a great place to start. In some ways, I’ve seen what David Camoron (sic) means when he’s talking about the Big Society. Thousands of volunteers, giving their time freely and good-naturedly, all working together to create something greater. You don’t have to legislate for that. Give us the right motivation, and we’ll bite your arm off for the chance to help. Team GB doesn’t just have to be the athletes that have done us so proud. We can all play a part. We are all Team GB.

And hey, it’s not like it’s all over yet. The Paralympics starts in a couple of weeks. Yes, we have tickets to a day at the Olympic Park for that. I love the cheeky posters promoting the Channel 4 coverage that say simply, “Thanks For The Warm-up.” The Paralympics will show the extremes of human endeavour and tenacity, and by the looks of it Team GB will be right up there in the medals table. TLC and I are intensely excited about the whole thing. As producer Paul Carter puts it:

Those lamenting the Olympics closing… I promise the Paralympics will blow your socks off. If you have feet. Unlike me. #nosocks—
Paul Carter (@Juniorc0) August 11, 2012

But that’s a little way into the future. For now, we have a closing ceremony to look forward to that I can guarantee will see me in raggedy, tear-sodden bits. It’s been one hell of a fortnight. Well played, Great Britain. Bloody well played.

All photos are by TLC. There’s more to enjoy on her Flickrstream.

Happy Families: X&HT Saw Splice

Coincidence fascinates me. I mean, I don't believe there's anything in it. It's clearly just my brain mapping meaning and pattern onto unrelated events. But it's still fun when it happens.

As a serial procrastinator, it's taken me the best part of six months to get engineers out to look at the stuttery HD playback on our plusbox. When I finally did so, it took less than five minutes to sort, and I was left with a more open schedule for my day than I'd planned. So, I had a bit of a browse on our newly sprightly V+ feed, and found a block of free movies, including one I'd missed on its limited UK release–Vincenzo Natali's bio-sci-horror Splice.

The coincidence kicked in as the credits rolled and I realise that the film starred Sarah Polley, director of the most excellent Take This Waltz that I raved about earlier in the week. The two films could not be more different. Take This Waltz is a delicate, precise parody of chick flick clichés. Splice is… Well, it's bugshit crazy, in a very good way indeed.

We're in familiar territory to horror and SF fans. Mad scientists, delusions of godhood, an experiment that horribly exceeds all expectations. The main characters are cheekily named after the stars of the classic Bride Of Frankenstein, and are as unchallenged by ethical concerns.

Elsa and Clive are heavy hitters in their field, creators of new forms of life that are paving the way to new breakthroughs in science and medicine. Of course, it's not enough. As their corporate sponsors try to focus their attentions on more traditionally profitable enterprises, Elsa and Clive have other plans. Fusing the DNA of their creations with that of humans. You know, just to see what'll happen.

What happens is Dren. A rapidly growing creature that starts off looking like a molerat, but in weeks takes on the physical attributes of a pretty, wide-eyed girl. Some of them, anyway. Dren has centaur-like legs, with the ability to leap into roof-eaves, and a tail loaded with a brutally effective stinger. She can't talk, communicating in soft hoots and chirps, but thanks to the amazing, transparent performance from Delphine Chanéac we have no problem understanding Dren's intellegence and, as the film goes on, her pain.

Typically with this sort of horror, the line between human and monster becomes increasingly blurred. Dren has no agenda, no secrets. Elsa and Clive have plenty, and they allow them to colour their relationship with their creation in terrible ways. Elsa, scarred by an abusive childhood, finds that she is repeating history with Dren. Clive crosses the line in an even more basic way, in a sequence that will simultaneously hike up your eyebrows and drop your jaw. Ultimately, neither of them cannot figure out whether Dren is a toy, a pet, a child or a specimen. They consistently underestimate their creation, and that is their downfall.

Like Take This Waltz, Splice takes well-worn genre clichés and revitalises them just by taking them to their logical conclusion, by ramping them that little bit too far. Elsa and Clive are not just terrible scientists. They're certifiable fuckups, tolerated by their company for as long as they bring in the money. Dren is a creature of appetite and instinct, and Natali and Chanéac never flinch from showing that. It's inevitable that an unhappy ending is coming, but the final twist works beautifully, showing just how deranged Elsa is, just how twisted her concept of motherhood.

Execution is everything in a film like Splice. It has to be played straight to stop things teetering into absurdity. It succeeds–just, despite the more brain-mashingly berserk moments, due mostly to the performances of the excellent cast and the flawless effects work. Sarah Polley and Adrien Brody both bring a frayed, haunted quality to their portrayals of the damaged scientists. I had forgotten what a good actress Polley is, and she's on top form here. It's possible she may never act again following her acclaimed directing work. That would be a shame.

OK, Splice is hokum. I don't buy Natali's insistence that it's a cautionary take on the dangers of modern science–film-makers have been using that line since James Whale's original Frankenstein. But it's well-crafted and convincing hokum, consistently entertaining, deliciously perverse. It's worth a look for that alone, but Delphine Chanéac makes Splice a monster movie with a disturbingly sexy undertone and a real sting in the tale.

This Is Not A Love Song: X&HT Saw Take This Waltz

In a lot of ways, romantic fiction is all about making excuses for infidelity. There are no end of stories out there that feature a main character trapped in a loveless marriage, only to be swept off her feet and out of the door by a dashing hero archetype. The spineless schlub of a husband shrugs, smiles and lets her go, content to let the caged bird fly. She's a free spirit and she deserves more than he can offer because… because she's the heroine, OK?

Sarah Polley's amazing new film Take This Waltz applies an overdue stress-test to the cliches, with a simplicity and honesty that's rare in the chick-flick world.

Margot seems to have it all. She is a successful freelance web designer that lives in a warm cosy house in Toronto with her husband, Lou, a food writer. She has a family that dotes on her, and wants for little. Yet she is restless, bothered and frequently on the verge of tears for reasons that she can't even properly explain. Her relationship with Lou is tender but childish, filled with silly games and baby talk. Margot seems adrift in her own life.

A nested set of coincidences nudges her into the path of a neighbour, raffish artist Daniel. He seems to see through her defences, understanding instinctively that she wants something from him. Gradually, Margot is drawn towards Daniel, allowing herself to be seduced. They do not sleep together. They barely touch. But the attraction becomes undeniable, and Margot eventually chooses not to deny herself. She leaves Lou, and in a scene familiar to romcom fans the world over, dashes to find him.

What happens next reframes everything we've seen up to now, and turns what has been a charmingly told and beautifully acted but predictable story into something with significantly more bite. And it's done with one simple idea. Polley doesn't end the story with Margot and Daniel in their love nest, having hot athletic Hollywood sex and gazing soulfully into each other's eyes. She keeps going. And all of a sudden the seeds she's sown through the story take root and push to the surface. Following a hilarious aquaerobics sequence, Margot is told by one of her classmates “new things get old too”. We get to see that life has a way of carrying on after the fade to black. And suddenly we see sweet, mercurial Margot in a whole new light, as the happy ending crumbles and frays, and a line of her favourite song comes back to haunt her. She's come too far. She can't rewind.

Frankly, I could watch Michelle Williams in just about anything. I'm never disappointed. I trust her instincts at finding and supporting the best scripts. She is, as ever, brilliant here, playing Margot with a dose of Manic Pixie Girl and a core of lonely vulnerability. It's very much her showcase, but the cast uniformly shines. Seth Rogan is perfectly cast as Lou, who gets a lovely grace note of dignity at the end of the film that shows there is more to him than the loveable but clueless cuckold. Luke Kirby plays Daniel with just the right lightness of touch. It would be easy to make him a lothario or a creep, and it's to the credit of both his performance and Polley's script and direction that he's neither. Sarah Silverman as Margot's recovering alcoholic sister-in-law Geraldine comes close to stealing the show, with a fearless performance.

In fact, fearless is a word I'd happily use to describe Take This Waltz. There's already been much discussion of the female nudity in the film, but it never comes across as exploitative. It's simply there. But to me, the fearlessness comes from the way Sarah Polley addresses the lies and bullshit at the core of so-called chick flicks. This is not to say it's an angry film. It's funny, warm and sensual to the point of overload with gorgeous, heavily saturated camerawork from Luc Montpellier. Seriously, it's so nice to see a film in colour these days without a heavy green or blue wash over the top. Toronto has never looked more inviting.

Take This Waltz has trickled out across the worldwide release schedules since June, and doesn't get a full release in the UK for a fortnight. Once it does, I urge you to go and see it. You will not see a finer, and nuanced or prettier antidote for the romcom blues than this all year.

 

A Golden Day: X&HT Went To The Olympic Time Trials

Sometimes, you just get lucky. Fate, which so often conspires against you, shifts the balance in your favour. Just for a little while. As long as you’re aware of it, then fate can give you a moment that you will treasure for a very long time.

Yesterday, fate put me close enough to the legendary Bradley Wiggins to feel the slipstream as he rocketed past. And that was just one part of an amazing, dizzying day.  

One of my day gigs is running the blog for my brother-in-law’s family business, the ethical merchandise company Pier32. He and his family live in sunny, charming Thames Ditton, which just so happens to be a spit and a whistle away from the Olympic cycling time trial route, which winds through Hampton Court and Kingston. We invited ourselves over, hoping we might catch a glimpse of the action. 

Readership, we had no idea. Ian and Sandi’s gaff is a two-minute walk from Hampton Court Way–part of the course. Better yet, it was quiet enough that we could set up comfortably right on the roadside. With a set of folding picnic chairs in tow, we had the sort of grandstand view that people wouldn’t get if they paid big bucks for a ticket by the finish line. 

We made the sensible decision to sleep over the night before, knowing that the roads around the course would be closed from early morning. It was wise indeed. We had a chance for a leisurely breakfast, a jug of coffee, and a morning in front of Ian’s big fat telly, all the better to enjoy the rowing.

Which meant, of course, that we had time before wandering down to the trackside to watch Heather Stanning and Helen Glover win Team GB’s first gold in the sculls at Eton Dorney, maybe ten miles away from Thames Ditton. A remarkable achievement, carried out with aplomb and cool style. We jumped up and down and whooped as the girls swooped onto the finish line, nearly a length ahead of everyone else. I had no idea that most of the Olympic rowers are based just up the road from us in Caversham. Another source of pride. 

Already euphoric, we headed down to Hampton Court Way, where the neighbourhood had set up gazebos and flags. We were literally at roadside. A burly, cheerful Olympic steward paced up and down, keeping us updated as to who was off first and next. The poor guy could have done with a megaphone. He was seriously husky by the end of the day. 

Suddenly, he bellowed at us to stand clear, and just like that, the race was on. Every ninety seconds, a police bike swished past (occasionally offering a wave to the punters) followed by the riders. Sleek and bullet-quick in shiny lycra and stormtrooper helmets. Unsmiling, except when they caught sight of a national flag. Which should have meant that Liz Armitstead and Emma Pooley should have been grinning all the way round. It was hard to tell. They were moving that fast. But every inch of the ride was thronged with union flags and people like us, roaring our lungs out, willing our girls to glory.

Sadly, all our screams and yells and flag-waving weren’t enough to get them onto the podium. An amazing effort, but we knew that wasn’t the end of it. 

Back to home base, a snack and a look at some more rowing, before we were back at the roadside for the men’s time trials. By now the threat of rain had passed, and Hampton Court was bathed in sunshine. Our friend with the foghorn voice paced up and down. Kids scrawled encouraging messages on the road in chalk. I settled back in a fold-up chair, in a nice clear spot, lined up my camera for the perfect shot and waited. 

There were twice as many male riders, but the line-up seemed to go just as quickly. To be brutally honest, although we cheered and clapped dutifully, we were only there for two reasons, and they were close to the end of the pack. The cheers as Chris Froome span past were easily twice as loud as for the rest of the pack. There was only one man who could top it, and he rocketed past ten minutes later, to a fanfare of yells and shouts. The guy was moving. Look at the pic. He’s bending light. My poor camera barely had the ability to catch him. And he was close. A footstep away, an arm’s length. Half a blink, and he was gone, powering away. 

Twenty-five minutes later, Bradley Wiggins made history, blasting into Hampton Court Palace nearly two minutes ahead of his nearest rival. A gold medal, his fourth, not quite a month after he became the first Brit to win the Tour De France. Either one would make for a lifetime’s achievement. Together–well, let’s just say the BBC Sports Personality Of The Year Award is something of a one horse race this year.  

By that point, we were back at home base, popping the champers, raising a glass as Bradley conducted the masses in the National Anthem. 

The sun was out, and all of a sudden it was very, very nice to be British. 

 

For more pics of the day, check out TLC’s Flickr set. 

London Calling! X&HT Went To The Olympics

I’m not a sporty person. Far from it. I’m a clumsy goof who was always picked last for games at school, and most sporting events leave me not just cold but catatonic.

The Olympics is different. There’s something about it that stirs me. Maybe it’s the sheer sense of endeavour, the drama that comes from so many people spending years and years in the pursuit of a dream. Once every four years I buy into that dream, completely and wholeheartedly. And with the Olympics in London, well, let’s face it. TLC and I had to be there.

Even in the early stages of the competition there’s been excitement, spectacle and controversy. Danny Boyle’s extraordinary, mind-mangling Opening Ceremony was seen by most as a triumph–unless you were watching the show on America’s NBC network, who cut out the 7/7 tribute and larded commentary over the top by people who didn’t seem to know what they were talking about. Comments by Tory blowhard Aiden Burley and the Daily Mail, who seemed deeply discomfited by Boyle’s vision of a multicultural Britain were widely derided as at best out of touch, and at worst inflammatory* and racist. Britain’s been multicultural for centuries. Get over it.

Shockingly, there were arrests outside the Olympic Park, as the peaceful Critical Mass bike ride, which has been riding the streets of Newham without trouble for years, was corralled, kettled and arrested. Pepper spray was used, and the riders, including one 13 year old, were held without charge for 9 hours. The policing of protest in the UK has become a matter of real concern over the past few years, and these unfounded, urn-necessary arrests will do nothing to help the already tarnished reputation of the Met. More on that over at The Guardian.

Onwards. The competition itself got off to a cracking start, if a little bit slowly for the England Expects brigade. Medals yesterday for Lizzie Armitstead in the women’s cycling road race (neatly pipping the Tour de France heroes Mark Cavendish and Bradley Wiggins, who were lost in the peloton on Saturday) and Rebecca Adlington’s brave, brilliant bronze have helped to quell the jitters a bit, and there’s plenty to come. We also have the makings of a full-blown scandal, as blocks of seats for popular events remain visibly empty. This is a pie in the face for Lord Coe and LOCOG, who were always insistent that tickets had sold out quickly, but that they had been fairly distributed. When you have to call in the army to fill up empty seats, questions are going to get asked. This one isn’t going to go away anytime soon.

Enough grumbling and bleakness. Our Olympic experience began yesterday, with a trip to Docklands and the ExCel arena. We had snagged tickets for the fencing, a sport of which TLC and I knew little. Isn’t that the sort of thing Errol Flynn did? Buckling of swashes, doing of derring? The pointy end goes in the other man, right?

If there are any fencing fans out there–ok, yes, I know, put the epée away, I’m sorry. Fencing is a brutally fast, cerebral and unforgiving sport that’s both tactically and physically demanding. We went to the Men’s Individual Sabre contest, which is probably the fastest of the lot. Matches last on an average for ten minutes, and both contestants will give their all. Over the course of four matches, the sport won itself a new couple of converts. We were both on our feet with the crowd at the end, roaring our approval at the extraordinary display of courage, tenacity and skill on the field of combat. Yes, combat. Let’s not be coy here. It’s in the rules. At the beginning of each match, the referee is instructed to “start the fight.” The Tron-style graphics, where the whole floor lit up whenever a fighter scored a point only helped to make the matches more thrilling for an SF fan like me. The masks and speed of the thing just made it feel more like a futuresport to me. Frankly, I still hanker for Olympic Rollerball, but until then, the fencing is a pretty fair substitute.

As to the whole experience–well, it was fine. Despite typically English grumbling about transport and logistics, and baleful predictions of armed soldiers strong-arming the citizenry, there was an ease and a lightness of touch about how we were treated that left us feeling very positive indeed. The DLR whisked us in and out of central London without fuss. The “airport-style security” was managed with smiles, humour and a breezy efficiency. There were soldiers around helping out, but they were courteous and respectful, and I saw no-one toting an HK.

Yes, sure, the ExCel was corporate and expensive. What world-class entertainment isn’t these days? In fact, I was reminded a lot of the last couple of arena gigs we’d been to. Beer and food will cost you, but it’s part of the experience, and London’s hardly alone in being a pricy tourist hub. Eat somewhere else first if it’s that much of a problem. We did, and had a great time with a beer and a burger in a pub down the road watching Lizzie Armitstead snag the silver.  

But the day didn’t feel half as corporate as it might have, and for that you have to thank the volunteers. They were everywhere, smiling, helpful and clearly having the time of their lives. Their enthusiasm rubbed off on the rest of us, and meant that everyone was a little calmer, a little more patient, a little less inclined to let a minor irritation blow up into a major incident. That’s a lot more than I can say for a lot of big events that I’ve attended. Event organisers can learn a lot from this example. I’m not talking about snagging free help to help shift the masses around. I’m talking about what happens when people are clearly engaged and enjoying their job. That’s not as tough a prospect as it sounds. Treat your employees with a modicum of respect and allow them a little dignity, even if they’re serving food or emptying the bins, and they’ll do what they do with a smile. LOCOG, for all their foibles, have at least figured this out. You can see it in every volunteer’s face. They’re there because they want to be, and they value the experience. And we’re bringing the love right back in exchange.

Let’s put it like this. The biggest, most spontaneous round of applause on the night of the Opening Ceremony was reserved for the volunteers. I think that, despite the obvious and justified accusations of commercialism levied at the Games, they’re showing the true spirit of the Olympics. In a lot of ways, I wish I’d gone for it now. I look great in purple. 

 

*no pun intended. 

DocoBanksy Gets A Screening

The DocoPhone starts ringing. I dive for it, my responses hard-wired after years of loyal, unquestioning service to a playful, capricious master. 

I lift the handset, and listen while it clicks and purrs–the line connects through a bewildering array of redirects, anonymisers and scramblers. The call could be coming from the other side of the world, or three doors down. There’s no way of knowing, and believe me, smarter people than me have tried. There’s one last ear-shredding blast of modem noise and then…

“Hello, Twinkle.” 

He’s in a good mood, which always sets my nerves twitching. That’s usually the precursor to one of his more unusual requests. His way of softening the blow. The last time he’d called me “Twinkle” was before the Murmansk job, when I ended up running for my life from the Russian cops after stickerbombing the Hotel Arctic. The time before that, I had spent 15 hours moving a van full of his tape archive from London to its new secure storage facility, 100 miles away. 

When DocoBanksy calls you “Twinkle”, you should brace for impact, and apologise in advance to your loved ones. You’ll have a long day ahead of you.

“Things are moving ahead,” says DocoBanksy. The voice is, as ever, flat and uninflected, run through a set of filters to squash out any signs of the man on the other end of the phone. There is silence when he isn’t speaking, an utter deadness that gives no record of his surroundings. I picture him in one of those sound booths with foam spikes on the walls. Even so, I can always hear past the counter-measures, hearing the ferocious intelligence and wit glittering behind the wall of tech he throws up before he contacts the outside world. Even I, his cohort, his co-conspirator, one of the very few people that he knows he can trust implicitly, have to face his security suite. 

“Things are moving ahead.” The import of the phrase sinks in. I’m suddenly light-headed, and have to sit down. “Does that mean…?” I barely breath the question. He hears the thrill and panic in my voice and lets out a chuckle, dry as last year’s leaves. 

“That’s right, Twinkle. The film’s done, and we’re getting it out into the world.” 

It has been three–no, scrub that–five years since Docobanksy first made contact, and rolled me into his international network of art-seditionists. I had little choice in the matter. The DocoPhone had arrived in a brown envelope heavily encrusted in stickers, and begun ringing as soon as I slipped it out. The voice on the other end of the line had laid out the plan in brief, blunt terms. DocoBanksy needed a writer, a theoretician, a sloganeer. I had the job. I didn’t have a say in the matter. He can be… extraordinarily persuasive. Let’s just say I’m not in this for the money. 

“Time to spread the word, Twinkle.” Even through the thick layer of electronic filtrate, I can hear the excitement in his voice. 

“We’re opening the Portobello Film Festival. August 30th, 7pm. Start spreading the new-hewwws….” Oh lord, he’s singing. The anonymising software does hideous things to his rich baritone, turning an invitation into a threat. He chuckles again. “We’ve got just over a month. Gather the faithful, Twinkle. Form a line. I want queues round the block outside the Westbourne Studios. I want it standing room only, six deep at the bar. I want a roadblock, Twinkle. I want it rammed. Chocker. Packed to the bloody gunwales. Off the hook. Off the chain. Off the scale. Off the planet.”

He takes a breath. I wait. I know him too well.

“One more thing, Twinkle. Tell them I’ll be there. One night only. In person. I’m breaking cover for this one.”

I can hardly believe it. The damn’d elusive DocoBanksy out in the world, amongst his followers. It flips everything I know about the man on its back, belly exposed to the open. A paradigm shift on a geological scale. 

“This is it, then.” I can barely get the words out. “You’re going public. No more hiding. We have product, and we’re showing it.”

That bone-dry chuckle again. “Yeeeeah. About time, eh?”

My throat swells. My eyes flood. The world spins around me. “And then what? What’s next? What do I do?”

And even through the filter-stack, through the snarled web of misdirection and telephonic subterfuge, I can feel him smile. A warm, honest, genuine smile. 

“Well, that’s up to you, isn’t it, Twinkle?” 

There’s a harsh, violent blast of white noise, and the line closes. I stare at the Docophone for a minute or so.

Then I get up, shove it in a pocket, and look for my laptop. Time to go to work.  

 

 

DocoBanksy screens at the Portobello Film Festival on August 30th at 7pm. For more details, and to snag tickets when they become available, bookmark the PFF website.