This blogger likes trees, dear blog reader. They're rather nice.
Anyway, kids - and all other assorted readers - this is the first update in positively ages (hey, what can I say, yer actual Keith Telly Topping has
been busy?!) so there are lots of odds and ends to cover.
Monday 14 May saw the first new
Book Club episode in six weeks thanks to the pesky Bank Holiday. If you want to listen to it, go
here. The books covered were:-
Sally Dugan -
Men Of Iron: Brunel, Stephenson & The Inventions That Shaped Our Modern World (MacMillan)
Doran Swade -
The Cogwheel Brain: Charles Babbage And The Quest To Build The First Computer (Abacus)
Mick Brown -
Tearing Down The Wall Of Sound: The Rise & Fall Of Phil Spector (Bloomsbury)
Ian Abrahams -
Strange Boat: Mike Scott & The Waterboys (SAF)
Alexander McCall Smith -
Forty Four Scotland Street (Abacus)
Stephen Oppenheimer -
The Origins Of The British (Constable & Robinson)
David Winner -
Around The World In Ninety Minutes (Bloomsbury)
Meanwhile, in other radio news here is an important self-aggrandising announcement: There was a significant moment in my radio career today as this blogger recorded what is to be his final preview slot for
The Julia Hankin Show in its current format. Panic ye not, however, my dear blog disciples because from next Monday ... Keith Telly Topping is going to be
a daily feature. 
(Had you worried there,didn't I?) Basically, what we're going to do is pre-record a whole weeks worth of TV previews each Thursday or Friday and then they'll be dropped,
Key To Time-like throughout the week as
Keith Telly Topping's Top Telly Tips (devised by the very excellent producer Scunthorpe Steve Drayton). Keith Telly Topping has just pre-rec'd the five shows for next week (including managing to get a reasonably lengthy, and I think rather enthusiastic, plug in for the first episode of Cornell's two-part
Doctor Who on next Friday's show). The daily clips - they will be three to five minutes in length - will be broadcast around 3:45pm each day Monday to Friday (they might be five minutes either way but it'll be in that sort of time-frame area). So - if you're as incredibly sad as me - you can make it a daily date in your diaries. As ever, they'll also be available on
Listen Again for twenty four hours after each show is completed.
Current Listening:
Robert Johnson
Prefab Sprout
R.E.M.
Darts
The Who - whom this blogger is going to see live at The Arena a week tonight.
james
The Woodentops
Underworld
Current Viewing:
Qi
Top Gear
Lost
The Riches
Heroes
Doctor Who
Kingdom
Not The Nine O'Clock News
Veronica Mars (criminally cancelled just this very week in the US)
The Last Detective
Current Reading:
Don Jordan & Michael Walsh -
White Cargo: The Forgotten History Of Britain's White Slaves In American (Mainstream)
Patrick Bishop -
Bomber Boys (HarperCollins)
Hugh McManners -
Forgotten Voices Of The Falklands (Ebury)
Dixe Wills -
New World Order (Icon Books)
Sinclair McKay -
A Thing Of Unspeakable Horror (Aurum)
David Tossell -
Grovel! (Know The Score Publishing)
Paul Smith -
Wasted? (Know The Score Publishing)
Several of these may feature on the June
Book Club which, all things being equal, should broadcast on Monday 4 June.
Currently Watching (Big Screen Edition):
The Last King of Scotland
Pierrepoint
Both of which are
hugely recommended. And it's not often you can say that about two British films.
Speaking of movies, over the last couple of weeks - between bouts of writing yet more
Charmed and
Buffy articles - this blogger has been doing a wad of short movie reviews for his dear old friend Diana Dougherty's US multi-media fanzine
Raspberry World. For the next issue, Di has decided, perhaps insanely, but we'll leave that matter for another time, to devote the entire magazine to One Thousand And One Movies You Must Watch Before You Die. A fabulous conceit and this blogger was happy to contribute around two hundred reviews of between one an two hundred words each (or, in the case of
Batman & Robin, ten words). It's quite addictive, actually (if a bit Asperger's-esque). Below are three samples of what you can expect from the finished magazine:
Almost Famous (
Untitled): Cameron Crowe's touching, awkward, stimulating recreation of his teenage years as a journalist for
Rolling Stone has just the right degree of wit and insightfulness to ward off potential charges of mawkishness. A rite-of-passage text, a road movie, a social document and sex and drugs and rock and roll. The director's cut -
Untitled - is better, if only because you need forty nine minutes more of this film in your life. '
How old are you?' Oh, and the DVD commentary with Cameron and his mum is hilarious.
The Italian Job (1969): Forget
The Sting,
this is the greatest heist movie ever made. A cultural icon in Britain where men of a certain age can chant along with the entire film and its numerous lines of legendary dialogue ('You're only supposed to
blow the bloody doors off!')
Michael Caine is at his Carnaby Street coolest, Noel Coward's last great movie role, tons of cameos by reliable comedy actors and rising stars (look out for Robert Powell as one of the gang), Tony Beckley totally stealing the show as Camp Freddy, the Mini Cooper chase through the streets of Turin and the greatest (literal) cliffhanging end to a movie ever. Magnificent Qunicy Jones soundtrack (thankfully now available on CD). Clever, funny and dramatic script by Troy Kennedy Martin. Forget, too the awful 2005 remake,
Sauve Qui Peut (La Vie) (1980): A cooly detached - and often quite morbid - look at modern French attitudes to morality from Jean-Luc Goddard.
After twelve years of low budget, militant left-wing and otherwise experimental film projects outside of commercial distribution, this was Godard's effective return to the 'mainstream', with a sizeable budget and French film stars. Worthy, if for no other reason than where else are you going to see Isabelle Huppert getting spanked in the back of Citröen?! English title:
Slow Motion.
For those whose curiosity has been piqued, this blogger post full details on how to order a copy of
Raspberry World once I know myself but the magazine's website, featuring details of previous issues, is
here.
And finally, as this blogger is away this weekend (a short, well-deserved break at his brother's gaff in Yorkshire) Keith Telly Topping may not get another chance before next Saturday to tell you that, if you only watch ninety minutes of television this year, make sure it's Keith Telly Topping's old mucker Paul Cornell's forthcoming two-part
Doctor Who story,
Human Nature - BBC, 7:00, 26 May/2 June.
Must-see telly at its finest.
