The BBC have confirmed the scheduled start time of the Doctor Who series 'seven B' premiere, The Bells of Saint John. It will be broadcast on BBC1 at 6:15pm on 30 March 2013 (not 6:10pm as earlier reported by several blogs ... including this one, actually!) The episode launches the new early evening line-up for BBC1, with the new series of The Voice following it at 7:00pm. BBC2 broadcasts Easter from Kings until 6:30pm, which is followed by a repeat of The Good Life leading into a tribute at 7:00pm to Richard Briers, who died last month. Meanwhile, ITV are broadcasting The ITV News followed by You've Been Framed, Channel Four have racing followed by the news, whilst Channel Five are showing the film Police Academy 4.
Madness brought the curtain down on BBC Television Centre with a concert outside the iconic building on Friday. The popular band played a mixture of old songs and new in front of the venue, which is closing its doors on Easter Sunday after fifty three years. The show was screened live on BBC4 and was followed by a special programme where a host of TV personalities share their own TV Centre memories. Madness said they were 'honoured' to be chosen to play the farewell gig. A statement from the band, who shot to fame in 1979 with their cover of ska legend Prince Buster's 'One Step Beyond', read: 'We've played at some exciting places in London lately but the closing of BBC TV Centre, that is close to our hearts. As a band we grew up there, those walls have plenty of Madness tales to tell, a sad day, the end of an era. Oh, but what a celebration.' The Nutty Boys have provided many moments of mischief in the studios and corridors of this famous building - Suggs boasted on stage that they had been banned from just about every BBC show they had appeared on. They mixed their biggest hits with many comic references to the entertainment ghosts which, they claimed, would haunt the corridors from now on. 
The remaining staff who crowded the windows and balconies to look down on the rain-soaked gig in the horseshoe car park were referred to as zombies and given a friendly wave. On Wood Lane itself the crowd who could not get in danced and sang along and the car drivers who normally whizz by crawled to a halt to take in the scene. Before they played their set in front of a selected audience, Madness appeared on The ONE Show recalling their favourite TV Centre moments. The 1960s building in West London, once the home of Top of the Pops and Blue Peter, was sold for two hundred million smackers. It closes on 31 March and will be redeveloped into a hotel, flats, a cinema and office space. The main television studios will be retained and refurbished for leasing out to production companies, including the BBC, from 2014. The transition to the corporation's new London home, New Broadcasting House, in Central London, began in 2012. The Madness concert was followed on BBC4 by Goodbye Television Centre, a two-hour show hosted by former BBC Chairman Michael Grade. The programme featured interviews with some of the biggest names to perform at the venue, including Sir David Attenborough, Penelope Keith, Ronnie Corbett, Sir Michael Parkinson, Sir Terry Wogan and Sir David Jason.
Matthew Sweet's Gruniad Morning Star review of JN-T: The Life and Scandalous Times of John Nathan-Turner by Richard Marson is as frank as the book itself by the sound of it. I quote the following, extraordinary, extract: 'Deep down, most Doctor Who fans prefer this discourse to be about provisional story titles and the limited lift capacity at Lime Grove studios. Their interviewees, however, have begun to talk about more personal matters. The honesty of the former colleagues of the first Doctor, William Hartnell, has ensured that his racism is now part of the accepted narrative of his life. His onscreen companion Anneke Wills has described how she escaped from an abusive marriage to Michael Gough into the ashram of the Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh. In the current issue of Doctor Who Magazine, Frazer Hines – who played Jamie, the only companion to merit a mention in Joe Orton's diaries – talks about the stops second Doctor Patrick Troughton would make on the drive home from TV Centre: "We'd go to three different houses on the way," he recalls. "He'd knock on the door, give this woman some money and then we'd drive off. I'd look the other way." Slowly, all those details about scene-shifters' strikes and monsters built from fox skulls and condoms are being augmented by stories of the everyday emotional sturm und drang of the people who walked through those sets and ran away from those monsters. This is not happening to the cast and crew of Casualty, because a world without Casualty would be only marginally different from this one – whereas for many of us, a universe without The Doctor scarcely bears thinking about. JN-T: The Life and Scandalous Times of John Nathan-Turner will test the limits of that appetite for information. It is the frankest book ever written about Doctor Who, and contains material that could not have been published in the lifetime of its subject, a bookie's son from Birmingham who became the programme's longest-serving producer. Nathan-Turner oversaw Doctor Who throughout the 1980s – its most eclectic decade, in which the style was sometimes Play for Today, sometimes Play Away. He produced a story that comprises a shot-for-shot homage to Cocteau's La Belle et la Bête, and another in which a leather-clad Beryl Reid fights Cybermen on a spaceship.
He produced episodes about a police state in which the chief torturer is a robot made of Liquorice Allsorts, and others about a giggling slug who wants the galactic broadcast rights to execution videos from a planet whose rulers are fond of phrases such as: "I want to hear you scream until I'm deaf with pleasure." This was also the decade in which the BBC's institutional indifference towards Doctor Who – a factor since its birth in 1963 – hardened into hostility, with cruel consequences for Nathan-Turner. In November 1983 the series was celebrating its twentieth anniversary with a Radio Times cover and a film-length special called The Five Doctors. Fifteen months later, Michael Grade, controller of BBC1, was publicly dismissing Nathan-Turner's production team as complacent and their work as "tired, violent and unimaginative." For Grade and his colleagues, Doctor Who and its producer had become an interlocked pair of problems. 'I wanted him to fuck off and solve it – or die, really,' says Jonathan Powell, the BBC's former head of drama, in one of the many brutal remarks collected in Richard Marson's book. 'But it had probably gone beyond solving. The only way of resuscitating it would have been to put a new producer on it – but we didn't want to resuscitate it.' Had Powell and Grade known about some of the incidents described in JN-T, they might have been able to kill both producer and programme at a stroke. Halfway through his story, Marson drops his bombshell. At the age of seventeen, he was dispatched to Television Centre to write a set report on a story called Resurrection of the Daleks. After the recording, he was propositioned by Nathan-Turner in the bar. The following year, on the promise of some stills from an imminent story, Marson made an after-hours visit to the Doctor Who office, where he endured a sexual assault at the hands of Nathan-Turner's partner, Gary Downie, who worked as the show's production manager (he died in 2006). Given the age of gay consent in 1985, this constituted a double offence. Marson's account, though, sounds a surprising note of black humour: he hid from Downie in an adjoining room, readying to defend himself with the nearest object to hand – the script for episode two of Timelash. Marson knows that for Doctor Who fans, this amplifies the indignity – episode two of Timelash is awful.' Aye. And the first episodes wasn't much cop either. This, yer actual Keith Telly Topping his very self has to read. Of course, as anyone with a working knowledge of fandom will know - and, I'm guessing that's a fair percentage of dear blog readers - there have been numerous stories about John Nathan-Turner which have circulated in and on the periphery of Doctor Who fandom since his period in charge of the show. Mostly salacious, several terrifying, some unbelievable. A number of these are probably apocryphal, and, even if they aren't, as some of the individuals concerned are still alive (even if JN-T himself and Gary Downie are not), many of them are almost certainly libellous to somebody. So From The North doesn't intend to touch any of those with a barge pole. But, in the current climate of post-Savile Fiasco interest in 'that sort of thing', one can only speculate how long it will be before one of the tabloids, for instance, starts sniffing around the late Nathan-Turner's alleged doings. (For what it's worth, yer actual Keith Telly Topping met and interviewed JN-T on about four occassions during the years 1985-1989 and always found him to be an affable, genial sort of bloke and one who, most definitely, never made a pass at me. Which, if even a faction of the allegations in Richard's book - and beyond - are true would appear to make yer actual Keith Telly Topping virtually unique in Doctor Who fandom in the 1980s. Seems being a pig-ugly fat kid did have its advantages after all.)
Meanwhile, JN-T's current successor in the role of Dctor Who head-honcho, yer actual Steven Moffat has promised that the show's forthcoming fiftieth anniversary special will 'not be a fanfest.' Something that JN-T his very self often seemed entirely unable to claim about his own productions. The showrunner told Entertainment Weekly that the 3D episode needs to embrace the show's future, as well as its past. 'It is important you don't turn it into a fanfest,' said the popular long-running family SF drama's head writer and executive producer. 'We can't make this all about looking backwards. It's actually got to be the start of a new story.'
On BBC1 on Thursday evening, MasterChef continued to cook up decent numbers with 4.41m overnight viewers tuning in at 8pm. The second episode of the new series of Prisoners' Wives was watched by an audience of 4.09m at 9pm. BBC2's Horizon had an audience of 1.17m at 9pm. ITV attracted 3.89m punters for The Martin Lewis Money Show at 8.30pm, while Home Delivery at 9pm only managed to pull in a devastatingly poor 1.6m. On Channel Four, Britain's Secret Shoppers had an audience of 0.84m viewers at 8pm, before Born To Be Different was watched by 1.25m at 9pm.
Fans of the BBC1 comedy Not Going Out may finally see the friendship between landlady, Lucy, and her flatmate develop into romance. The sixth series, starring Lee Mack and Sally Breton, is due to start on 5 April. Mack, who plays unemployed lodger, Lee, has revealed that two versions of the final episode have been filmed. Speaking on BBC Radio 4's Front Row on Friday, Mack said: 'We are sure now what we're doing, but we weren't for a long time.
Every series we have the conversation, "right, should we make this the series where we get together?" And in fact this series - for the first time ever - we filmed two endings to the series.' The BAFTA-winning comic said he didn't want to give too much away, but admitted 'it was quite interesting' filming both versions. 'I'll just say there's two versions and people can do the math,' he added. Lee's affections for Lucy first came to light in series two, but despite arranging dates and kissing under the mistletoe, the pair have never quite managed to, ahem, get it together. 'The problem we've always got is if we go out, then what little format we have is gone,' Mack said, during the Front Row interview. But he agreed that next year, fans 'could be' seeing the first series of Going Out. 'Or', he added, 'we could be seeing the seventh series of Not Going Out!'
Chris O'Dowd's acclaimed comedy Moone Boy has been recommissioned for a third series before the second has even been broadcast. The IT Crowd and Bridesmaids star has revealed that he is already writing the next batch of scripts for Sky1, based on his childhood in rural Ireland. The new order follows the way the second series – due out in the autumn – was commissioned before the first aired when Sky said they were 'on to a real winner' with the show. O'Dowd – who co-writes the series with Nick Vincent Murphy – has said of the show:
'All of the experiences are ones that I had. The show is slightly more surreal and more comedic than my life, though.' Which is a relief, frankly. O'Dowd, will also make his directorial début with season three. David Rawle plays the part of eleven-year-old Martin Moone, growing up in Boyle in 1989, with O'Dowd as his imaginary friend, Sean. The show also features animated sections to reflect this imaginary world. The series, which won a British Comedy Award last year for best new programme, started as one of Sky's one-off Little Crackers shorts, which was shown at Christmas 2010. Guest stars in the first series included Johnny Vegas and Steve Coogan, whose production company Baby Cow make the programme.
Holly Willoughby has admitted she is "a slob" when not working. And this constitutes 'news' apparently. Well, it does in the Sun anyway.
The accusations that TV is being 'dumbed down' has been voiced countless times in recent years - usually by odious lice with some sort of sick agenda going down - but they 'can't be levelled at the BBC's MasterChef.' At least, that's the opening salvo in a rather typical and spectacularly full-of-its-own-importance piece of a pure cock in one of the organs with the sickest of sick agendas, the Gruniad Morning Star. 'In a tale which sure to go down in comedic folklore,' the Gruniad crows at its own magnificent cleverness, the show's hosts, Gregg Wallace and John Torode, reveal that they 'spice up (and sometimes even hold up)' filming with 'saucy jokes.' 
This revelation is, at least, according to the Daily Lies, a newspaper with a reputation for accuracy and fairness that's roughly on a par with a lump of faeces floating, nastily, in the gutter. Which is, also, a pretty accurate summation of the newspaper's contents, as well. 'The chuckles and chortles,' continue the Gruniad, come via 'some fairly ground-breaking gags concerning sausages, and, pork in cider!' That's the newspaper's exclamation mark, not this bloggers, please note. 'It's probably safe to say that Steven [sic] Fry's job on Qi is secure for the time-being,' this clever dick tosser of no importance continues. Getting the wrong 'Stephen.' That actually sums the Gruniad up in a nutshell; they can't even take the piss out of the Daily Lies without screwing it up. Wankers.
As if being a British national treasure and celebrity tweeter wasn't career enough, Stephen - with a 'ph' - Fry has signed up to appear in his first US sitcom. In a move being flagged as Fry's attempt to emulate ex-partner Hugh Laurie's spectacular Stateside success, the Qi host is to star in CBS pilot Super Clyde, about 'a meek, unassuming fast food worker who decides to become a superhero.' That's not Stephen's part, of course – the fast food worker is played by Rupert Grint. Stephen will instead play sidekick Randolph the butler – 'the Alfred to Clyde's Bruce Wayne,' says the Deadline website, which first broke the story last week. The writer is Greg Garcia, whose previous credits include My Name Is Earl.
Right, that's enough frivolity, onto the serious stuff.
Fears that bloggers and small-scale news websites will be dragged into the new proposed system of press regulation, so facing crippling costs - which had been whipped up by self-interest pressure groups, self-interest scum newspapers and arse-licking right-wing scum MPs - appeared to be lifting on Friday when Labour and the Liberal Democrats agreed to table last-minute amendments in the Lords to make it clear they will be excluded from the proposals. The fear that bloggers and small-scale enterprises would be drawn into the Leveson net of regulation has provoked outrage - albeit, not with this particular blogger who couldn't care less. A diverse group of bloggers including ConservativeHome's Tim Montgomerie, LabourList's Mark Ferguson, Guido Fawkes's Paul Staines, Lib Dem Voice's Stephen Tall and Political Scrapbook's Laurence Durnan, in a letter to, of course, the Gruniad Morning Star, warn of the 'unforeseen consequences' of the law and demand that we should all give quiche a chance. 
They write: 'Even the smallest of websites will be threatened with the stick of punitive "exemplary damages" if they fall foul of a broad range of torts encompassing everything from libel to "breach of confidence."' Indeed. So, probably best not to do that, then, eh? 'The authors of these proposals should reflect on their remarkable achievement of uniting both Tom Watson and Rupert Murdoch in opposition.' They add that this appears to be the outcome of 'a botched late-night drafting process' and 'complete lack of consultation with bloggers, online journalists and social media users,' who may now be caught in regulations which 'trample on grassroots democratic activity' and Britain's 'emerging digital economy.' Though, only if they break the law. But alleged Labour and Lib Dem 'sources' said that they would be tabling manuscript amendments to the crime and courts bill in the Lords to 'remove this threat.' Two separate proposals have been suggested, either removing small businesses from the ambit of the proposed legislation or making it clear that 'not for profit' groups would be excluded. It is thought that both proposals in the eyes of civil servants have technical deficiencies, or will prevent opportunities for big media to circumvent the exemplary damages legislation. Instead civil servants are working on proposals based on either size or turn-over. It is understood cross party agreement has been delayed due to a reluctance from the Conservative ministers to become involved. 'The Conservative handling of the issue over the past fortnight has left many observers perplexed', reports the Gruniad Morning Star. Discussions are also being held on whether there is any virtue in the three party leaders meeting the newspaper groups next week to persuade them of the need to co-operate with the proposed new system of self-regulation. Lord Black, the executive director of the Torygraph Media Group, is hoping to persuade peers on Monday that it would be 'wrong in principle' to create a system allowing courts to award exemplary damages against newspapers who remain outside the approved regulator. Black, who is a Tory peer and former director of the press complaints commission, was one of the most influential players behind the scenes in the newspaper negotiations with the government in the run up to Monday's deal. 
Newspapers have been split over the Leveson deal but Black's bid to get amendments on exemplary damages removed will have the unanimous support of national newspapers – which have received 'legal advice' from - allegedly - 'top barristers' saying that the creation of a special class of punishment for one type of defendant would be 'contrary to Article Ten of the European Convention on Human Rights.' The House of the Lords will debate the Leveson amendments which have been tacked on to the crime and courts bill in a bid to get royal assent before the end of this parliamentary session. There is not expected to be a vote on the matter and alleged 'sources' allegedly say that Black will not be moving any amendments, 'but others may.' A steering group of national newspapers, headed by the legal director of Trinity Mirra Group Paul Vickers, meets on Wednesday but the attitude of the big three groups appears to be hardening. One - anonymous - senior executive from one - anonymous - newspaper alleged said that it would be 'a badge of honour' to be part of the breakaway group that gave 'two fingers to Cameron.' The political fallout from the Leveson deal sealed on Monday continues with former Lib Dem leader Paddy Ashdown claiming David Cameron made 'a colossal strategic blunder' in pulling out of talks on the creation of a new regulator for the press. Lord Ashdown said the Prime Minister had, simultaneously, damaged his standing with his own MPs, angered his supporters in the newspapers, and strained relations with his Lib Dem coalition partners. In an interview with BBC Radio 4's The Week In Westminster, Ashdown said Cameron managed to achieve the 'Tory nightmare' of forcing Nick Clegg to line up with Labour. 'I have not seen an avoidable strategic blunder made by a British prime minister or indeed the leader of a British political party which matches that of Mr Cameron over Leveson,' he said. 'He marched his troops up to the top of the hill and then he had to march them back down again. In terms of strategy, this seems to me to make the Grand Old Duke of York look like a military genius.'
Mister Will He Is has criticised Universal Music for their handling of Leanne Mitchell's career after winning The Voice last year. Mitchell struggled in the charts after the first series ended, only reaching number forty five with 'Run to You', a cover which she performed on the BBC1 show's final. Because it was shit, largely. Mind you, that's never stopped lots of stuff getting a lot higher up the charts than she managed. Anyway, the Black Eyed Peas singer said that the 'handling' of Mitchell had been done in a way which would have been appropriate 'five years ago.' he continued: 'I don't think people were considering today's behaviour and how we digest content. It was television five years ago. I hope we've learned from that because I'm part of this show. I hope the label that the artists have to go with have learned from it. So with this year's winner, we already have songs ready to go. The label need to have an understanding of what the market is thirsting for and yearning for.' Explaining why he thought Mitchell's career had got off to a start which would make a snail look like Usain Bolt, he said:
'We had a hole in the system. There were all these people singing on television and then one of them wins. Directly after they win - I don't know what happened. I don't know if the label engaged and surrounded it. I don't think the rushing happened and if it did, it was too slow. Especially in this day and age when everything changes every twenty seconds on Twitter. You go from something being hot to "Oh, it's not hot anymore."' Speaking about the lessons he had learned from series one, Mister Will He Is said: 'You have always got to be hunting and searching for what you're going to do next week, next month, next year. We should be thinking about the winner of The Voice [series two] right now. I have a song written right now.' Tom Jones, who mentored Mitchell on the show, admitted that he would have liked to have worked more closely with his acts after the show ended, but said that it 'wasn't possible' because of record label contracts. 'The problem we have as coaches is that we have no say in what they do. They are locked up,' said Jones. 'We help them to where they want to get in the show. I would have liked to have carried on working with a few of them. But all you can do is show them where to go.' He added: 'The thing is when you win, you are signed then to Universal Records. It's just a start. It's just a start for her. You've got to do an album and hopefully have enough say in it yourself.'
Jim Davidson has addressed his latest arrest over a series of historic allegations of sexual offences during his live show in Telford on Friday night, telling the audience: 'I can't remember what I was doing in 1978. I can't even remember which wife I had in 1978.' Four people laughed. Which, to be fair, is about average for a Jim Davidson joke. Davidson later blogged: 'People think I should be hiding, well I'm not. I have nothing to hide and life goes on, as it should.' In January, Davidson was arrested by detectives investigating alleged sexual offences as part of Operation Yewtree set up in the wake of the Jimmy Savile fiasco. Davidson's solicitor stated that Davidson 'vigorously denies' the allegations. On 20 March 2013 Davidson was re-arrested over fresh allegations of sexual offences. He also denies those allegations.
Four million pounds in cold weather payments to help vulnerable people pay bills have been made in March, compared with none in March 2012. Indeed, Thursday night was so cold that the big thick quilt which has been enough to keep yer actual Keith Telly Topping warm and cosy each night all of this bleak winter suddenly wasn't anywhere near enough and he had to get up in the middle of the night to find an additional couple of blankets and a hot water bottle. It's the third week of March, people, we should be into spring by now! What's going on with the weather?
Bill Bailey is asking men around the world to grow a beard throughout April to 'show solidarity' with endangered Sumatran orangutans. And, to keep the arctic wind off their face as an added bonus. The Sumatran Orangutan Society, of which Bill is patron, hopes that 'Ape-ril' will become as globally successful as so-called 'Movember.'
Gateshead football club face a three hundred and sixty eight-mile round trip to Boston United's York Street ground for their 'home' fixture against Newport County on Thursday 28 March. Weather has forced the postponement of the game on four previous occasions. York Street was the closest suitable A-Grade venue available to The Heed in order to complete the fixture before the regular season's end on 20 April.
Pitch issues at the Gateshead International Stadium, where the club are tenants, have forced the switch. Boston is the sixth alternative venue for Gateshead, with other games scheduled for Hartlepool, York, Carlisle, Blyth Sparatans and Middlesbrough. The decision to stage the game at Boston will, however, save Newport more than an hour's travel in each direction. The Lincolnshire town is two hundred and fifteen miles from South Wales, compared to three hundred and five miles from Newport to Gateshead.
Yer actual Saint James Paul McCartney MBE has revealed that he once asked electronic music pioneer Delia Derbyshire – the creator of the Doctor Who theme music – to remake one of The Beatles' most famous songs, 'Yesterday'. Of course, insufferable Beatles nerds like this blogger knew this story already, given that McCartney has mentioned it in several previous interviews and a lengthy quote concerning exactly this notion was included in his official biography, Barry Miles' Many Years From Now in 1997. But, that hasn't stopped the Gruniad Morning Star from claiming that it's 'news'. If we're mocking the Sun for its Holly Willoughby nonsense, then this qualifies just as much. The former Beatle (they were 'a popular Beat Combo of the 1960s,' m'lud, you might have heard of them) said that as a fan of experimental music he wanted the BBC Radiophonic Workshop composer to create a different version of the song. 'I even found out where Miss Derbyshire lived, and went round to visit her,' McCartney told Q magazine. 'We even went into the hut at the bottom of her garden. It was full of tape machines and funny instruments. My plan in meeting her was to do an electronic backing for my song 'Yesterday'. We'd already recorded it with a string quartet, but I wanted to give the arrangement electronic backing.' Derbyshire is now hailed as one of the most important figures in the history of electronic music in the UK. As part of the Radiophonic Workshop – the avant-garde wing of the BBC's sound effects department – she created the distinctive signature tune for new TV series Doctor Who in 1963, using musique concrète techniques and sine-and-square-wave oscillators to realise Ron Grainer's piano score. In 1967 Derbyshire's work as a member of electronic outfit Unit Delta Plus shared a bill with that of The Beatles at a 'Happening' at The Roundhouse in North London. The Beatles had created an - infamous - fourteen-minute 'freak out' called 'Carnival of Light' for the Million Volt Light and Sound Rave which has never been officially released or, indeed, heard outside of a select few in their inner circle. (McCartney, reportedly, wanted to include a fragment of it on Anthology but George Harrison vetoed its inclusion.) Macca did not explain why nothing ever emerged from his encounter with Derbyshire in her hut (ahem), but he said: 'The Radiophonic Workshop, I loved all that, it fascinated me, and still does.' Living in London in the mid-1960s, the young Beatle developed an interest in the work of left-field composers including Cornelius Cardew (whom he saw perform with the group AMM in 1966) and Karlheinz Stockhausen (whose image appeared on the cover of Sgt Pepper).
Again, none of this is new to anyone that's read Revolution in the Head or half-a-dozen other books of the Fabs and their doings but the Gruniad are still running it as some kind of world exclusive. Pfft. Hippie Communist bellends. 'There came a time when John [Lennon], because of his association with Yoko and the avant garde, became thought of as the one who turned us all on to that. But that early era was more mine,' Macca noted. Derbyshire has a fascinating, if highly eclectic subsequent career working with the collective White Noise on their 1968 masterpiece An Electronic Storm (later, a huge influence on Kraftwerk and, via them, pretty much all music in the last thirty years) and composed film music. If the much-overused descriptive phrase 'genius' applies to anyone, it applies to Delia Derbyshire. She then stopped producing music and worked as a radio operator for the laying of a British Gas pipeline, in an art gallery and in a bookshop during the 1970s, only rekindling her interest after working with Pete Kember (once of the group Spaceman 3) shortly before her death in 2001 at the age of sixty four. After Delia's death, over two hundred and sixty reel-to-reel tapes and a box of a thousand papers were found in her attic. These were entrusted to Mark Ayres of the BBC and in 2007 were given on permanent loan to the University of Manchester. Almost all the tapes were digitised in 2007 by Louis Niebur and David Butler but none of this music has yet been published due to copyright complications. In 2010, the University acquired Delia's childhood collection of papers and artefacts from Andi Wolf. This collection is accessible at the John Rylands Library in Manchester. 'Yesterday' originally appeared on The Beatles' 1965 LP Help! It is one of the most covered songs in the history of popular music, with more than two thousand two hundred versions known to exist.
Jermain Defoe scored twice as England registered their biggest win for twenty six years with victory over a desperately awful San Marino. Allesandro Della Valle's own goal got England under way, before Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain's smart finish. Roy Hodgson's team then scored three more goals before half-time through Defoe, Ashley Young and Frank Lampard. Wayne Rooney's free-kick and Daniel Sturridge and Defoe goals added gloss though England remain two points behind World Cup Group H leaders Montenegro. England face Montenegro on Tuesday, after Montenegro beat Moldova 1-0. England were never even remotely troubled by San Marino, who are joint bottom of the FIFA rankings and, for once, these didn't lie. The victory was the first time England have scored eight goals since they beat Turkey by the same margin in 1987.
There's a thoroughly excellent review of Thursday night's Record Player at the lovely Chris Barron's website, The Other including a rather tasty photo of yer actual Keith Telly Topping and team-mates Christian and his divine missus, Vicky, picking up our prizes for winning the quiz. (The winning of which yer actual Keith Telly Topping contributed but two points!) The prizes, incidentally, included, not five English pounds this time but, rather a - non-HMV - record token ... for five English pounds. Yer actual Keith Telly Topping his very self blagged a promo copy of the next Jimi Hendrix CD so, that was worth the trip on its own.
If you're wondering, yes that is a Toon away top circa 1994. What can I say, everything else was in the wash that night. The next edition of Uncle Scunthorpe's quite wondrous Record Player will be a Good Friday special at the Tyneside Cinema, a Glam Slam, similar to last year's Punk Off, presented by yer actual Uncle Scunthorpe and the divine Sheena Revolta her very self. If you're in the vague North Tyneside area and have five English pounds to spare, why not pop along and join Mr Drayton and his many friends as we celebrate the golden age of glam rock.
From Zowie Bowie to Rolan Bolan, yer actual Slade to hello Sailor, and there will definitely be a healthy slab of yer actual Chicory Tip, in an evening dedicated to stack-heeled shoes, star jumpers, Hai Karate aftershave®™, eyeliner, Oxford Bags, foot stomping tunes and a time when yer actual Gary Glitter was still vaguely acceptable as a topic of polite conversation. Includes spoken word interludes, fave 45's (if 'Gudbye T'Jane' doesn't feature, yer actual Keith Telly Topping will be sending both Gene Hunt and Jack Regan round to Stately Drayton Manor to smash up all his toys) and a Glitter Stomp Discotheque with plenty of babysham and shit. And proper Mud-on-Top of the Pops-style thumbs-in-belt-loops dancing. Extra points will be awarded for anyone who turns up dressed like a camp auld queen.
Yer actual Keith Telly Topping his very self, incidentally, used to love Chicory Tip, dear blog reader. And, indeed, any other band that played with their underkeks on top of their pants. That's style.
For today's Keith Telly Topping's 45 of the Day dear blog readers, we have another avenue of the diverse village that was 1970s rock. Yer actual Big Paddy Bop. Here's Phil and boys, with their masterpiece.
The remaining staff who crowded the windows and balconies to look down on the rain-soaked gig in the horseshoe car park were referred to as zombies and given a friendly wave. On Wood Lane itself the crowd who could not get in danced and sang along and the car drivers who normally whizz by crawled to a halt to take in the scene. Before they played their set in front of a selected audience, Madness appeared on The ONE Show recalling their favourite TV Centre moments. The 1960s building in West London, once the home of Top of the Pops and Blue Peter, was sold for two hundred million smackers. It closes on 31 March and will be redeveloped into a hotel, flats, a cinema and office space. The main television studios will be retained and refurbished for leasing out to production companies, including the BBC, from 2014. The transition to the corporation's new London home, New Broadcasting House, in Central London, began in 2012. The Madness concert was followed on BBC4 by Goodbye Television Centre, a two-hour show hosted by former BBC Chairman Michael Grade. The programme featured interviews with some of the biggest names to perform at the venue, including Sir David Attenborough, Penelope Keith, Ronnie Corbett, Sir Michael Parkinson, Sir Terry Wogan and Sir David Jason.Matthew Sweet's Gruniad Morning Star review of JN-T: The Life and Scandalous Times of John Nathan-Turner by Richard Marson is as frank as the book itself by the sound of it. I quote the following, extraordinary, extract: 'Deep down, most Doctor Who fans prefer this discourse to be about provisional story titles and the limited lift capacity at Lime Grove studios. Their interviewees, however, have begun to talk about more personal matters. The honesty of the former colleagues of the first Doctor, William Hartnell, has ensured that his racism is now part of the accepted narrative of his life. His onscreen companion Anneke Wills has described how she escaped from an abusive marriage to Michael Gough into the ashram of the Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh. In the current issue of Doctor Who Magazine, Frazer Hines – who played Jamie, the only companion to merit a mention in Joe Orton's diaries – talks about the stops second Doctor Patrick Troughton would make on the drive home from TV Centre: "We'd go to three different houses on the way," he recalls. "He'd knock on the door, give this woman some money and then we'd drive off. I'd look the other way." Slowly, all those details about scene-shifters' strikes and monsters built from fox skulls and condoms are being augmented by stories of the everyday emotional sturm und drang of the people who walked through those sets and ran away from those monsters. This is not happening to the cast and crew of Casualty, because a world without Casualty would be only marginally different from this one – whereas for many of us, a universe without The Doctor scarcely bears thinking about. JN-T: The Life and Scandalous Times of John Nathan-Turner will test the limits of that appetite for information. It is the frankest book ever written about Doctor Who, and contains material that could not have been published in the lifetime of its subject, a bookie's son from Birmingham who became the programme's longest-serving producer. Nathan-Turner oversaw Doctor Who throughout the 1980s – its most eclectic decade, in which the style was sometimes Play for Today, sometimes Play Away. He produced a story that comprises a shot-for-shot homage to Cocteau's La Belle et la Bête, and another in which a leather-clad Beryl Reid fights Cybermen on a spaceship.
He produced episodes about a police state in which the chief torturer is a robot made of Liquorice Allsorts, and others about a giggling slug who wants the galactic broadcast rights to execution videos from a planet whose rulers are fond of phrases such as: "I want to hear you scream until I'm deaf with pleasure." This was also the decade in which the BBC's institutional indifference towards Doctor Who – a factor since its birth in 1963 – hardened into hostility, with cruel consequences for Nathan-Turner. In November 1983 the series was celebrating its twentieth anniversary with a Radio Times cover and a film-length special called The Five Doctors. Fifteen months later, Michael Grade, controller of BBC1, was publicly dismissing Nathan-Turner's production team as complacent and their work as "tired, violent and unimaginative." For Grade and his colleagues, Doctor Who and its producer had become an interlocked pair of problems. 'I wanted him to fuck off and solve it – or die, really,' says Jonathan Powell, the BBC's former head of drama, in one of the many brutal remarks collected in Richard Marson's book. 'But it had probably gone beyond solving. The only way of resuscitating it would have been to put a new producer on it – but we didn't want to resuscitate it.' Had Powell and Grade known about some of the incidents described in JN-T, they might have been able to kill both producer and programme at a stroke. Halfway through his story, Marson drops his bombshell. At the age of seventeen, he was dispatched to Television Centre to write a set report on a story called Resurrection of the Daleks. After the recording, he was propositioned by Nathan-Turner in the bar. The following year, on the promise of some stills from an imminent story, Marson made an after-hours visit to the Doctor Who office, where he endured a sexual assault at the hands of Nathan-Turner's partner, Gary Downie, who worked as the show's production manager (he died in 2006). Given the age of gay consent in 1985, this constituted a double offence. Marson's account, though, sounds a surprising note of black humour: he hid from Downie in an adjoining room, readying to defend himself with the nearest object to hand – the script for episode two of Timelash. Marson knows that for Doctor Who fans, this amplifies the indignity – episode two of Timelash is awful.' Aye. And the first episodes wasn't much cop either. This, yer actual Keith Telly Topping his very self has to read. Of course, as anyone with a working knowledge of fandom will know - and, I'm guessing that's a fair percentage of dear blog readers - there have been numerous stories about John Nathan-Turner which have circulated in and on the periphery of Doctor Who fandom since his period in charge of the show. Mostly salacious, several terrifying, some unbelievable. A number of these are probably apocryphal, and, even if they aren't, as some of the individuals concerned are still alive (even if JN-T himself and Gary Downie are not), many of them are almost certainly libellous to somebody. So From The North doesn't intend to touch any of those with a barge pole. But, in the current climate of post-Savile Fiasco interest in 'that sort of thing', one can only speculate how long it will be before one of the tabloids, for instance, starts sniffing around the late Nathan-Turner's alleged doings. (For what it's worth, yer actual Keith Telly Topping met and interviewed JN-T on about four occassions during the years 1985-1989 and always found him to be an affable, genial sort of bloke and one who, most definitely, never made a pass at me. Which, if even a faction of the allegations in Richard's book - and beyond - are true would appear to make yer actual Keith Telly Topping virtually unique in Doctor Who fandom in the 1980s. Seems being a pig-ugly fat kid did have its advantages after all.)Meanwhile, JN-T's current successor in the role of Dctor Who head-honcho, yer actual Steven Moffat has promised that the show's forthcoming fiftieth anniversary special will 'not be a fanfest.' Something that JN-T his very self often seemed entirely unable to claim about his own productions. The showrunner told Entertainment Weekly that the 3D episode needs to embrace the show's future, as well as its past. 'It is important you don't turn it into a fanfest,' said the popular long-running family SF drama's head writer and executive producer. 'We can't make this all about looking backwards. It's actually got to be the start of a new story.'
Fans of the BBC1 comedy Not Going Out may finally see the friendship between landlady, Lucy, and her flatmate develop into romance. The sixth series, starring Lee Mack and Sally Breton, is due to start on 5 April. Mack, who plays unemployed lodger, Lee, has revealed that two versions of the final episode have been filmed. Speaking on BBC Radio 4's Front Row on Friday, Mack said: 'We are sure now what we're doing, but we weren't for a long time.
Every series we have the conversation, "right, should we make this the series where we get together?" And in fact this series - for the first time ever - we filmed two endings to the series.' The BAFTA-winning comic said he didn't want to give too much away, but admitted 'it was quite interesting' filming both versions. 'I'll just say there's two versions and people can do the math,' he added. Lee's affections for Lucy first came to light in series two, but despite arranging dates and kissing under the mistletoe, the pair have never quite managed to, ahem, get it together. 'The problem we've always got is if we go out, then what little format we have is gone,' Mack said, during the Front Row interview. But he agreed that next year, fans 'could be' seeing the first series of Going Out. 'Or', he added, 'we could be seeing the seventh series of Not Going Out!'Chris O'Dowd's acclaimed comedy Moone Boy has been recommissioned for a third series before the second has even been broadcast. The IT Crowd and Bridesmaids star has revealed that he is already writing the next batch of scripts for Sky1, based on his childhood in rural Ireland. The new order follows the way the second series – due out in the autumn – was commissioned before the first aired when Sky said they were 'on to a real winner' with the show. O'Dowd – who co-writes the series with Nick Vincent Murphy – has said of the show:
'All of the experiences are ones that I had. The show is slightly more surreal and more comedic than my life, though.' Which is a relief, frankly. O'Dowd, will also make his directorial début with season three. David Rawle plays the part of eleven-year-old Martin Moone, growing up in Boyle in 1989, with O'Dowd as his imaginary friend, Sean. The show also features animated sections to reflect this imaginary world. The series, which won a British Comedy Award last year for best new programme, started as one of Sky's one-off Little Crackers shorts, which was shown at Christmas 2010. Guest stars in the first series included Johnny Vegas and Steve Coogan, whose production company Baby Cow make the programme.Holly Willoughby has admitted she is "a slob" when not working. And this constitutes 'news' apparently. Well, it does in the Sun anyway.
This revelation is, at least, according to the Daily Lies, a newspaper with a reputation for accuracy and fairness that's roughly on a par with a lump of faeces floating, nastily, in the gutter. Which is, also, a pretty accurate summation of the newspaper's contents, as well. 'The chuckles and chortles,' continue the Gruniad, come via 'some fairly ground-breaking gags concerning sausages, and, pork in cider!' That's the newspaper's exclamation mark, not this bloggers, please note. 'It's probably safe to say that Steven [sic] Fry's job on Qi is secure for the time-being,' this clever dick tosser of no importance continues. Getting the wrong 'Stephen.' That actually sums the Gruniad up in a nutshell; they can't even take the piss out of the Daily Lies without screwing it up. Wankers. As if being a British national treasure and celebrity tweeter wasn't career enough, Stephen - with a 'ph' - Fry has signed up to appear in his first US sitcom. In a move being flagged as Fry's attempt to emulate ex-partner Hugh Laurie's spectacular Stateside success, the Qi host is to star in CBS pilot Super Clyde, about 'a meek, unassuming fast food worker who decides to become a superhero.' That's not Stephen's part, of course – the fast food worker is played by Rupert Grint. Stephen will instead play sidekick Randolph the butler – 'the Alfred to Clyde's Bruce Wayne,' says the Deadline website, which first broke the story last week. The writer is Greg Garcia, whose previous credits include My Name Is Earl.
They write: 'Even the smallest of websites will be threatened with the stick of punitive "exemplary damages" if they fall foul of a broad range of torts encompassing everything from libel to "breach of confidence."' Indeed. So, probably best not to do that, then, eh? 'The authors of these proposals should reflect on their remarkable achievement of uniting both Tom Watson and Rupert Murdoch in opposition.' They add that this appears to be the outcome of 'a botched late-night drafting process' and 'complete lack of consultation with bloggers, online journalists and social media users,' who may now be caught in regulations which 'trample on grassroots democratic activity' and Britain's 'emerging digital economy.' Though, only if they break the law. But alleged Labour and Lib Dem 'sources' said that they would be tabling manuscript amendments to the crime and courts bill in the Lords to 'remove this threat.' Two separate proposals have been suggested, either removing small businesses from the ambit of the proposed legislation or making it clear that 'not for profit' groups would be excluded. It is thought that both proposals in the eyes of civil servants have technical deficiencies, or will prevent opportunities for big media to circumvent the exemplary damages legislation. Instead civil servants are working on proposals based on either size or turn-over. It is understood cross party agreement has been delayed due to a reluctance from the Conservative ministers to become involved. 'The Conservative handling of the issue over the past fortnight has left many observers perplexed', reports the Gruniad Morning Star. Discussions are also being held on whether there is any virtue in the three party leaders meeting the newspaper groups next week to persuade them of the need to co-operate with the proposed new system of self-regulation. Lord Black, the executive director of the Torygraph Media Group, is hoping to persuade peers on Monday that it would be 'wrong in principle' to create a system allowing courts to award exemplary damages against newspapers who remain outside the approved regulator. Black, who is a Tory peer and former director of the press complaints commission, was one of the most influential players behind the scenes in the newspaper negotiations with the government in the run up to Monday's deal. 
Newspapers have been split over the Leveson deal but Black's bid to get amendments on exemplary damages removed will have the unanimous support of national newspapers – which have received 'legal advice' from - allegedly - 'top barristers' saying that the creation of a special class of punishment for one type of defendant would be 'contrary to Article Ten of the European Convention on Human Rights.' The House of the Lords will debate the Leveson amendments which have been tacked on to the crime and courts bill in a bid to get royal assent before the end of this parliamentary session. There is not expected to be a vote on the matter and alleged 'sources' allegedly say that Black will not be moving any amendments, 'but others may.' A steering group of national newspapers, headed by the legal director of Trinity Mirra Group Paul Vickers, meets on Wednesday but the attitude of the big three groups appears to be hardening. One - anonymous - senior executive from one - anonymous - newspaper alleged said that it would be 'a badge of honour' to be part of the breakaway group that gave 'two fingers to Cameron.' The political fallout from the Leveson deal sealed on Monday continues with former Lib Dem leader Paddy Ashdown claiming David Cameron made 'a colossal strategic blunder' in pulling out of talks on the creation of a new regulator for the press. Lord Ashdown said the Prime Minister had, simultaneously, damaged his standing with his own MPs, angered his supporters in the newspapers, and strained relations with his Lib Dem coalition partners. In an interview with BBC Radio 4's The Week In Westminster, Ashdown said Cameron managed to achieve the 'Tory nightmare' of forcing Nick Clegg to line up with Labour. 'I have not seen an avoidable strategic blunder made by a British prime minister or indeed the leader of a British political party which matches that of Mr Cameron over Leveson,' he said. 'He marched his troops up to the top of the hill and then he had to march them back down again. In terms of strategy, this seems to me to make the Grand Old Duke of York look like a military genius.'Mister Will He Is has criticised Universal Music for their handling of Leanne Mitchell's career after winning The Voice last year. Mitchell struggled in the charts after the first series ended, only reaching number forty five with 'Run to You', a cover which she performed on the BBC1 show's final. Because it was shit, largely. Mind you, that's never stopped lots of stuff getting a lot higher up the charts than she managed. Anyway, the Black Eyed Peas singer said that the 'handling' of Mitchell had been done in a way which would have been appropriate 'five years ago.' he continued: 'I don't think people were considering today's behaviour and how we digest content. It was television five years ago. I hope we've learned from that because I'm part of this show. I hope the label that the artists have to go with have learned from it. So with this year's winner, we already have songs ready to go. The label need to have an understanding of what the market is thirsting for and yearning for.' Explaining why he thought Mitchell's career had got off to a start which would make a snail look like Usain Bolt, he said:
'We had a hole in the system. There were all these people singing on television and then one of them wins. Directly after they win - I don't know what happened. I don't know if the label engaged and surrounded it. I don't think the rushing happened and if it did, it was too slow. Especially in this day and age when everything changes every twenty seconds on Twitter. You go from something being hot to "Oh, it's not hot anymore."' Speaking about the lessons he had learned from series one, Mister Will He Is said: 'You have always got to be hunting and searching for what you're going to do next week, next month, next year. We should be thinking about the winner of The Voice [series two] right now. I have a song written right now.' Tom Jones, who mentored Mitchell on the show, admitted that he would have liked to have worked more closely with his acts after the show ended, but said that it 'wasn't possible' because of record label contracts. 'The problem we have as coaches is that we have no say in what they do. They are locked up,' said Jones. 'We help them to where they want to get in the show. I would have liked to have carried on working with a few of them. But all you can do is show them where to go.' He added: 'The thing is when you win, you are signed then to Universal Records. It's just a start. It's just a start for her. You've got to do an album and hopefully have enough say in it yourself.'
Four million pounds in cold weather payments to help vulnerable people pay bills have been made in March, compared with none in March 2012. Indeed, Thursday night was so cold that the big thick quilt which has been enough to keep yer actual Keith Telly Topping warm and cosy each night all of this bleak winter suddenly wasn't anywhere near enough and he had to get up in the middle of the night to find an additional couple of blankets and a hot water bottle. It's the third week of March, people, we should be into spring by now! What's going on with the weather?
Gateshead football club face a three hundred and sixty eight-mile round trip to Boston United's York Street ground for their 'home' fixture against Newport County on Thursday 28 March. Weather has forced the postponement of the game on four previous occasions. York Street was the closest suitable A-Grade venue available to The Heed in order to complete the fixture before the regular season's end on 20 April.
Pitch issues at the Gateshead International Stadium, where the club are tenants, have forced the switch. Boston is the sixth alternative venue for Gateshead, with other games scheduled for Hartlepool, York, Carlisle, Blyth Sparatans and Middlesbrough. The decision to stage the game at Boston will, however, save Newport more than an hour's travel in each direction. The Lincolnshire town is two hundred and fifteen miles from South Wales, compared to three hundred and five miles from Newport to Gateshead.Yer actual Saint James Paul McCartney MBE has revealed that he once asked electronic music pioneer Delia Derbyshire – the creator of the Doctor Who theme music – to remake one of The Beatles' most famous songs, 'Yesterday'. Of course, insufferable Beatles nerds like this blogger knew this story already, given that McCartney has mentioned it in several previous interviews and a lengthy quote concerning exactly this notion was included in his official biography, Barry Miles' Many Years From Now in 1997. But, that hasn't stopped the Gruniad Morning Star from claiming that it's 'news'. If we're mocking the Sun for its Holly Willoughby nonsense, then this qualifies just as much. The former Beatle (they were 'a popular Beat Combo of the 1960s,' m'lud, you might have heard of them) said that as a fan of experimental music he wanted the BBC Radiophonic Workshop composer to create a different version of the song. 'I even found out where Miss Derbyshire lived, and went round to visit her,' McCartney told Q magazine. 'We even went into the hut at the bottom of her garden. It was full of tape machines and funny instruments. My plan in meeting her was to do an electronic backing for my song 'Yesterday'. We'd already recorded it with a string quartet, but I wanted to give the arrangement electronic backing.' Derbyshire is now hailed as one of the most important figures in the history of electronic music in the UK. As part of the Radiophonic Workshop – the avant-garde wing of the BBC's sound effects department – she created the distinctive signature tune for new TV series Doctor Who in 1963, using musique concrète techniques and sine-and-square-wave oscillators to realise Ron Grainer's piano score. In 1967 Derbyshire's work as a member of electronic outfit Unit Delta Plus shared a bill with that of The Beatles at a 'Happening' at The Roundhouse in North London. The Beatles had created an - infamous - fourteen-minute 'freak out' called 'Carnival of Light' for the Million Volt Light and Sound Rave which has never been officially released or, indeed, heard outside of a select few in their inner circle. (McCartney, reportedly, wanted to include a fragment of it on Anthology but George Harrison vetoed its inclusion.) Macca did not explain why nothing ever emerged from his encounter with Derbyshire in her hut (ahem), but he said: 'The Radiophonic Workshop, I loved all that, it fascinated me, and still does.' Living in London in the mid-1960s, the young Beatle developed an interest in the work of left-field composers including Cornelius Cardew (whom he saw perform with the group AMM in 1966) and Karlheinz Stockhausen (whose image appeared on the cover of Sgt Pepper).
Again, none of this is new to anyone that's read Revolution in the Head or half-a-dozen other books of the Fabs and their doings but the Gruniad are still running it as some kind of world exclusive. Pfft. Hippie Communist bellends. 'There came a time when John [Lennon], because of his association with Yoko and the avant garde, became thought of as the one who turned us all on to that. But that early era was more mine,' Macca noted. Derbyshire has a fascinating, if highly eclectic subsequent career working with the collective White Noise on their 1968 masterpiece An Electronic Storm (later, a huge influence on Kraftwerk and, via them, pretty much all music in the last thirty years) and composed film music. If the much-overused descriptive phrase 'genius' applies to anyone, it applies to Delia Derbyshire. She then stopped producing music and worked as a radio operator for the laying of a British Gas pipeline, in an art gallery and in a bookshop during the 1970s, only rekindling her interest after working with Pete Kember (once of the group Spaceman 3) shortly before her death in 2001 at the age of sixty four. After Delia's death, over two hundred and sixty reel-to-reel tapes and a box of a thousand papers were found in her attic. These were entrusted to Mark Ayres of the BBC and in 2007 were given on permanent loan to the University of Manchester. Almost all the tapes were digitised in 2007 by Louis Niebur and David Butler but none of this music has yet been published due to copyright complications. In 2010, the University acquired Delia's childhood collection of papers and artefacts from Andi Wolf. This collection is accessible at the John Rylands Library in Manchester. 'Yesterday' originally appeared on The Beatles' 1965 LP Help! It is one of the most covered songs in the history of popular music, with more than two thousand two hundred versions known to exist.Jermain Defoe scored twice as England registered their biggest win for twenty six years with victory over a desperately awful San Marino. Allesandro Della Valle's own goal got England under way, before Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain's smart finish. Roy Hodgson's team then scored three more goals before half-time through Defoe, Ashley Young and Frank Lampard. Wayne Rooney's free-kick and Daniel Sturridge and Defoe goals added gloss though England remain two points behind World Cup Group H leaders Montenegro. England face Montenegro on Tuesday, after Montenegro beat Moldova 1-0. England were never even remotely troubled by San Marino, who are joint bottom of the FIFA rankings and, for once, these didn't lie. The victory was the first time England have scored eight goals since they beat Turkey by the same margin in 1987.
There's a thoroughly excellent review of Thursday night's Record Player at the lovely Chris Barron's website, The Other including a rather tasty photo of yer actual Keith Telly Topping and team-mates Christian and his divine missus, Vicky, picking up our prizes for winning the quiz. (The winning of which yer actual Keith Telly Topping contributed but two points!) The prizes, incidentally, included, not five English pounds this time but, rather a - non-HMV - record token ... for five English pounds. Yer actual Keith Telly Topping his very self blagged a promo copy of the next Jimi Hendrix CD so, that was worth the trip on its own.
