May Update

I like trees, they're really rather nice.

Anyway, kids and all other assorted readers, this is the first update in positively ages (hey, what can I say, I've been busy?!) so lots of odds and ends to cover.

Monday 14th 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:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/tyne/content/articles/2007/01/08/radio_newcastle_book_club_feature.shtml

The books covered were:
Sally Dugan - Men of Iron: Brunel, Stephenson and 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 and Fall of Phil Spector (Bloomsbury)
Ian Abrahams - Strange Boat: Mike Scott & the Waterboys (SAF)
Alexander McCall Smith - 44 Scotland Street (Abacus)
Stephen Oppenheimer - The Origins of the British (Constable & Robinson)
David Winner - Around the World in 90 Minutes (Bloomsbury)

Meanwhile, in other radio news...

Important self-aggrandising announcment:
There was a significant moment in my radio career today as I recorded what is to be my final preview slot for The Julia Hankin Show in its current format.

Panic ye not, however, my lovely disciples because from next Monday ... I'm going to be a daily feature! (Had you worried there...!)

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 for Today" (devised by the very excellent Scuthorpe Steve Drayton).

I've 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'll be three to five minutes in length - will be broadcast around 3:40pm 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 24 hours after each show is completed.)

Current Listening:
Robert Johnson
Prefab Sprout
R.E.M.
Darts (!)
The Who - whom I'm going to see live at the Arena a week tonight.
james
The Woodentops
Underworld

Current Watching:
QI
Top Gear
Lost
The Riches
Heroes
Doctor Who
Kingdom
Not the 9 o'Clock News
Veronica Mars(criminally cancelled just this very week)
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 4th June.

Currently Watching (Big Screen Edition):
The Last King of Scotland
Pierrepoint

Both 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 - I've been doing a wad of short movie reviews for my 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 mag to 1,001 Movies You Must Watch Before You Die. A fabulous conceit and I was happy to contribute around 220 reviews for between 100 and 200 words each (or, in the case of Batman & Robin, 10 words!) to the cause. It's quite addictive, actually (if a bit Aspergers-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 49 minutes more of this film in your life. 'How old are you?' Oh, and the DVD commentary with Cameron and his mum is hilarious. (KT)

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, THIS is the daddy. (KT)

Sauve Qui Peut (La Vie) (1980): A cooly detached - and often quite morbid - look at modern French attitudes to morality from Jean-Luc Goddard. Worthy, if for no other reason than where else are you gonna see Isabelle Huppert getting spanked in the back of Citröen?! English title: Slow Motion. (KT)

For those whose curiosity has been piqued, I'll 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:
http://dvillage.org/RASPBERRYPLANET/

And finally, as I'm away this weekend (short, well-deserved break at my brother's gaff) I may not get another chance before next Saturday to tell you that, if you only watch 90 minutes of television this year, make sure it's my old guv'nor Paul Cornell's forthcoming two-part Doctor Who story, Human Nature - BBC, 7:00, 26th May/2nd June.

Must-see telly at its finest.