Helpings

 It occured to me yesterday, happily and suddenly, that my lack of engagement with the blog might not, in fact, be incontertible evidence of a waning enthusiam for things I see and do as I fall into my fifties, but simply the inevitable consequence of Non Disclosure Agreements. Most of the things from which the rest of my life now hangs are projects a digital signature on a PDF proscribe me from mentioning until the results go out, and by then it feels too late to send a postcard. 

 

 I suppose I could have mentioned I'd spent five beautiful afternoons towards the end of 2024 in a writers' room for Mitchell & Webb's new sketch show when the press release for it first went out back in February, but then I was probably nursing too much guilt for not having been able to mention I'd worked on the pilot script in 2023 (Mitchell and Webb Need Help it was called then. Can I even say that?) Maybe "beautiful" isn't exactly the right adjective, but I definitely want one of the good ones, because being invited aboard the writing team of a sketch show in 2023 felt like receiving a phonecall to say you'd won an Oscar when you didn't even know you'd made a film. 

 

 Here's me in the room, "established" according to Big Talk's press release.

 

 There are many other reasons I'd want the good adjectives: I really enjoy pissing around with millenials for a start. I also don't think I've seen Robert Webb so happy. Watching him and David improvise material across a table in a way I had never witnessed before – perhaps having been away from each other so long – made sitting there, laughing, peeling tangerines, and asking if anyone wanted the window closed feel like contribution enough from me. I did contribute more though, in the end. I contributed The Goomb – a sketch first mentioned on this blog in 2022, and originally submitted to That Mitchell and Webb Look in Two-Thousand-and-Ten. Other sketches were bought, but none filmed. Still, fifteen years on, HERE'S HIGH SCHOOL FAUX PAS!...

 

 

 

TV Shows? Is it not clear HIGH SCHOOL FAUX PAS! is a movie?

 

 Perhaps because the intervening years had been so full of Finnemore (the first series of Souvenir Programme went out in Two-Thousand-and-Eleven) the gap between shows never seemed that big to me, but then I realised fifteen years is also the interval between Sylvester McCoy's Doctor Who and Christopher Eccelston's, which is of course the longest amount of time betweeen two things there can be. It was gratifying to see how well the sketch went down with the new guys. I suppose dying inside while someone watches something you made on a laptop is what brought them here. I am proud. I'm so happy. I am such a fan of everyone involved. You see, this is the problem with not writing about something until it's out. What can you say? I miss them? 

 I'm still in France by the way.

 

Languedoc

 

 Not all the sketches are viewable here. I don't know why. I think what links them is having a "Writers' Room" bit. And I want to share one of those, I just don't know if I'm posting the right one as I can't see it, but if this is the sketch I'm thinking of, Lara Ricote did indeed originally propose it as a car commercial...

Let me know if I'm right. (UPDATE: Back in the UK now. Yeah.)

 

 That's not the actual writers' room of course. Ours was a lot fuller: essentially a sandwich of walls, old fashioned shash windows and the sound of drilling, sideboards covered with awards, a big table on the inside spotted with varying systems of discarded tangerine peel, and a meaty, seated talent filling in between the two. I was there the morning Trump was reelected. I wouldn't have been anywhere else in the world. Stevie Martin wrote a great post about writers' rooms here, by the way, on her substack. And while I'm plugging stuff I have nothing to do with, Lara's comedy special "GRL/LATNX/DEF" is on youtube here, and diamond sharp.

 

And Krystal Evans' instagram is here.

 One of my favourite things about seeing Mitchell and Webb Are Not Helping finally go out in August was seeing all the accompanying Sketch Show Opining. Honestly. Rachel Aroesti in The Guardian defined the form's importance pretty succintly, I think, as "an important mechanism for digesting the world", but she also descibed them as "hit and miss" whereas the truth is – as the Radio Times wrote in its preview – that they're "tapas": different people like different bits. Pete Paphides' observation in his interview with David and Rob in the same magazine, that "sketches are the main space into which they decant their affection for each other" was another lovely summing up. I do think if there were more sketch shows on the telly, people might be better at getting stuff off their chest and differences might not be so likely to become divisions, and I enjoyed self-identifying youtuber video essayist Stubagful's savvy theory below, as to why telly stopped making them: not economics, as is normally suggested, but snobbery: "The sketch show died because the TV industry wants to think it's better than the internet... Nobody wants to be just another content creator." All of Mitchell and Webb Are Not Helping should be available to enjoy on Channel 4 HERE, and I think it's glorious.

Margaret's Fringe. Gilbert's Fridge.

Margaret Cabourn-Smith reflects on her old sketch antics and why you shouldn't use real meat in your shows. You can listen to the full conversation right here! shows.acast.com/out-of-chara... #Comedy #Chat #Podcast #Sketch #Character #VictorianTimes #Liver #Magic #EdFringe

[image or embed]

— Out Of Character (@oocharacterpod.bsky.social) 26 May 2025 at 10:54

 

 As "Jonah" turned from distant credit to looming "to do", I found these and other reminiscences about heading to the Edinburgh Fringe and making "magical worlds... trawling costumes around rooms above pubs" from fellow Finnemoreperson and rising star, Margaret Kaboom-Smith, both inspiring and grounding, and did not in the end use real fish. 

 

 Another reminiscence: Margaret, Carrie, Lawry and I independently tour our production of Yevgeny Zamyatin's "Мы" for ten seconds in 2019

 

 Margaret is often inspiring and grounding, and I happen to have also recorded a (far more meandering) Out of Character with Alex Lynch back in 2022, but never got round to putting it up here, so why not listen to both episodes now, and compare our differing accounts of, say, making Series Nine? (I did not think it might be shit.)

Simultaneously. That's right. Listen to them simultaneously. It's like being in the room with us!

 

 I remember enjoying myself a lot during the recording, and also the punishing heat – so today's actually perfect for a repost – I had just got back from "Bleak Expectations" in Newbury, and had no idea at the time the show would go on to the West End with an almost completely new cast, nor that Series Nine would indeed be the last series of John Finnemore's Souvenir Programme but that it would continue as a series of annual specials, and I'd certainly no idea I would be writing for Mitchell and Webb again in 2025, which I should definitely write about, I know. But I think that's all the loose ends tied up. Our next Silly Voices Day is Friday.

 

Yet another reminiscence: Mayfly Season, Newbury, 2022. Intense.

 

 Oh! The actor whose name I couldn't remember is James Callis, and Lillian Roth is the actress from "Animal Crackers". And I don't think that sound is me belching and rustling crisps, I think it's feedback. And it's a Newcastle accent Gilbert puts on as Len MacMonotony, not Birmingham, and Engelbert Humperdinck he mentions, not Sacha Distel. In fact, here is some "Gilbert's Fridge". They don't make kids' shows like etc.

 

Your Christmas Viewing or a better title to be decided later

 

 Let's catch up. 

 On Monday I joined friends to catch The Wind in the Willows Wiltons at Wilton's Music Hall, chiefly to see Darrell Brockis as Toad; it's amazing what a really high-waisted pair of trousers can do to a man's shape. The weasels were sort of bankers now, as was the book's original author Kenneth Grahame, who resigned as Secretary of the Bank of England in 1908 after either being nearly shot in the face during an anarchist raid, or – depending on which motive you ascribe to the enforced retirement – accusing the Bank's future Governor of being "no gentleman", so I've no idea whose side he'd be on here.

 

 (I have only my parents word for it that, many Christmases ago, "Toad of Toad Hall" was the first show they ever took me to. It was the biggest room I'd ever been in. They tell me the sheer scale of the room made me whimper, then the lights lowered, and I didn't like that at all, and then old man dressed as a mole stuck his head out of a trap door and shouted "Hang white-washing!" and I howled and we left and that was it.)

 

 Pleasingly concurrent with the fortunes of Toad Hall in this production were that of the baby otter puppet, Portly: It's always nice to see the inclusion of Pan, and "Piper at the Gates of Dawn" made a lot more sense as subplot here rather than just interlude. A lovely, lively, warm evening, and Wilton's Music Hall is an exciting space to explore during an interval. Do these photographs convey that? I don't know. Badphone finally expired on Sunday, alas, but I appear to have found a replacement with just as MySpace-era a camera, which was not my intention. I'll have to start hanging around more light.

 

 On Tuesday I caught up for drinks with an old friend who told me that she can get married in Saint Paul's Cathedral, a thrilling possible future theatre project. I also found the following extraordinary performace on youtube while searching for video essays on "Brimstone and Treacle". I'd never made the connection before between Dennis Potter's fable of Satanic Home Invasion, and Mary Poppins (OR HAD I?) 

 

 

 I just wanted to write a good part for Olivia Colman.

 

 And the TKA Smith Family Conservatory of the Art's family production of Poppins sheds little light on the banned seventies teleplay. But it does throw up a blisteringly confident turn from an uncredited singer in a role I don't remember as a rival nanny with a bun of grey hair fastened inexplicably to the top of her head, which the Conservatory has liked so much they've posted twice. In case you didn't manage to catch a Christmas show yourself this year I share both versions here, not for comparison, but to be played simultaneously to see if the resulting reason-shredding resonances open a portal to anywhere.

 On Wednesday evening we performed the ante-penultimate Love Goddess at the Cockpit Theatre. The weather was milder now. The snow had gone. I didn't walk home directly. Badphone's replacement took what it could.

 

On Thursday, well, I wrote last Sunday's post, but I also learnt that that ante-penultimate show had actually been our penultimate as one of the cast had fallen ill, although testing negative for Covid. We'd planned our cast drinks for that evening however as some people had to rush off on Friday, including myself, who would have to be up early to catch a flight from Gatwick on a day of border control and train strikes. Our producer Laura had booked a table at a pub called the Pereseverance, and I hadn't left the flat all day.

 As with the long walk home on Wednesday I found a refreshing solitude in that place. The barman gave me a Guiness in a weird glass, free nuts and sample of an unnamed Christmas cocktail he'd worked on. A lot was ending. Enjoying the uniterrupted ambience, it occured to me I could just try and go straight to Gatwick after the final show though and not worry about sleeping Friday night.

 

 

 I woke at midday, feeling finally Christmassy. The last night went ahead and everything felt new, which may not be unusual for a last night. As I said from the start, everyone's lovely, and while I may not have tried so much towards the end not to be too weird, it's only because that's what happens when you get to know people.

 

 Then that stops, and there's no getting used to it. The show's over. Almog's on another continent now, and I took the Thameslink to Gatwick however many hours ago it was and found a nice, small copy of "Pinocchio" at the airport bookshop. Its tone is very Vic and Bob. In fact Bob Mortimer would make a brilliant Pinocchio. I woke on the plane surprised to see the land up at the top. 

 

 Mum met me at Montpellier just as I received the message that the cast member had now tested positive for covid after all, but that was okay because Susy's tested positive for Covid too. We made it down. That's the main thing. Dad showed us "Creature Comforts" in the cinema (because it's important to be reminded just how perfect Aardman can be...)

 

 

 Tom put on the "Bottom" Christmas special. I'm about to put the presents out. I was meant to be cacting up on sleep but appear to haev written this instead. I hope you get everything you want this Christmas, ole unatendees. 

 Here, one more time, is Orson Welles. 

 

 Big ball to stick your head in by Arthur Handy.

THE GOOMB

 In my first night's sleep after being hospitalised for smoke inhalation in 2009, I had three very vivid dreams. I recorded the details of them as best as I could when I woke up, with illustrations, and here's one of them:

 

 "The freighter that picks me up from the Ice flow is manned by tall silver men with long waterproofs, square heads but aquiline profiles, smooth black dishes for ears and receding chrome spirals on the head. Maybe the cube swivels to accomodate the face. Anyway a nice kind image. THE GOOMB-MEN"

 

 I don't know where I got the name "Goomb" from, but they stayed with me. I tried to put them in a Mitchell And Webb sketch later that year (it was never filmed, maybe I submitted it too late), and I was still contemplating casting them as saviours in some children's book or other until today, when I was knocked sideways to see this image pop up on pinterest: 

 

 

 This is a two-headed Martian from the Twilight Zone story "Mr. Dingle the Strong", an episode I have no recollection of ever seeing. Their heads aren't exactly cubes, and their ears aren't exactly dishes, and their antennae aren't exactly spirals, but that's the Goomb alright, right down to their cheekbones. The clincher for me is that, while I describe them as "silver" in the notebook, I actually dreamt them in black and white.

 Emailing that sketch to Gareth Edwards back in December 2009, I wrote: 

"Hopefully you might find some joy – far too late as it is – in this sketch about aliens I mentioned ages ago, and then didn't write because it seemed you had loads about aliens, and now have written simply because it might turn out to be the very-odd-but-actually-useable sketch I have so far failed to produce." 

 And now UPDATE (April 27th 2023) It looks like it might actually be used now! All hail the Goomb...

 

Unposted Photographs of October 2022 in Chronological Order

 On the first, I left Trafalgar Sqaure in bloom, happy with the city I lived in, and crossed the river to get a better view of it:

 

 In the basement of the Royal Festival Hall, three dancers had found a space outside the toilets:

 

 I've lived in Notting Hill a year now. I finally found the quickest route to the park, but it still feels like I'm finding routes, rather than walks:

 

 Trellick Tower, its green heart still commemorating Grenfell. It always appears in view suddenly, and to the right of where I expect:

 This was the first time I'd revisited the Victoria and Albert Museum since moving up the road:

 

 I suddenly remembered seeing Jennifer Tilly here, and hearing her, and tried to recall the plot of Slipstream:

 Neil and I went to see Big Ben break his News Revue cherry. Their six week run outlasted two Prime Minsters, and Fred Strangebone in a blonde wig turned out to be a very serviceable Keir Starmer. He was the only one to do a silly bio:

 In Tate Britain, I stayed in the box with the racist language for the whole video (I can't find who's this was or what. It was wonderful. Does anyone know?) Others entered the box, and left very possibly because I was in there, but I don't know how better to screen it:

 

 Over the escalators in the tube, adverts are now screened an angle, tampering with my balance over the duration:

 Here, outside the vault of the Ned, it occured to me that on Saturday we should all wear robes:

 

 Then we moved on to Greenwich peninsula, to rehearse the counting of rice:

 Our rice in situ:

 Suddenly, October was beginning to end. I mean, to finish. I caught Ilona's exhibition just as it was being taken down:

 This Flying Tiger model could have got more into the spirit of the season, I felt. I bought nothing:

 On this stage, I saw David dance and speak lines from King Lear. A good block:

 Outside on Regents Street, they were beginning to put up angels:

By this point, my phone had crashed. Everything was harder to record on Badphone, particularly Maxfield Parrish light. Why was it still Summer?

 On this stage, I saw Natasha dance and speak lines from King Lear. I was not expecting that in a production of Henry the Eighth:

 My balance tampered with, I was still happy to have to caught the last matinee, and celebrated with a walk on the beach:

 

 On this stage, I saw my former rice wife Julia cast her own legs as her parents, and her hand as her dog. I'd missed her rumbling, threatening giggle. It got messy:

 

 Rehearsals started for the Love Goddess in Marylebone. Working in daylight suddenly:

 Opposite Alfies Antiques. Everything a walk away:

 And last Saturday, like the first, saw Trafalgar Square in bloom again.

Sometimes this blog will be a large oil painting of David Mitchell's face that I found in Alfies Antiques Market.

 Well it calls itself a market, but I'd call "Alfies Antiques" an Emporium if anything, without even looking up what an Emporium is (although I suspect the definition is a building selling wares at least three storeys tall, composed entirely of mezzanines resulting in an uncountable number of floors, and with as many different types of staircase as possible stuck just wherever there's a space – the Barbican does not sell wares so doesn't count). I have no idea why a painting of David Mitchell takes pride of place above this particular shop, but who needs a reason?

 

 Flanked by gigantic prints of Klimt, Alfies Emporium stands immediately opposite the Cockpit Theatre, where this week we have started rehearsing Love Goddess, the Rita Hayworth musical. Tomorrow is the table read, when we're all less nervous. Today we learnt songs and dancing, and I am very new to the latter. Having just the two feet makes it easier though. I'm learning they tend to take turns, and there's only so many places you can put them, and I must now have calves a centaur. We're also doing hat stuff – our choreographer worked with Gwen Verdon I hear – and while it does distract from the feet, I also learnt today what having a top hat land on my balls feels like. It's no trilby. Still, everyone's lovely and I'm trying not to be weird. Come!

 

Bachmanday 2021

 Today this blog is fortunate enough to celebrate yet another birthday of the irreplaceable James Bachman, which the keener-sensed of you will notice I have marked this year with a video of myself. This is only because missing from last year's thanksgiving was any mention of what a generous hub James Bachman has been in my life; James Backbone, I call him. I've probably never felt more legitimately acceptible among stangers than at his birthday bashes, and the video above (filmed at the London Dungeon in 2012) is something James put up on his channel only because I was too late submitting it for inclusion in the video below, even though, obviously, the far easier course would have been not to put it up at all. Here's what I missed, featuring contributions from a murderer's row of the brightest white, male, then-mid-to-late-thirties comedy writing talent knocking around: Richard Glover, Miles Jupp, Rufus Jones, Jason Hazeley, Joel Morris, Toby Davies, Jonathan Dryden Taylor, John thingy, pretty much every name James had to plough through at the end of every episode of That Mitchell and Webb Sound. He doesn't appear himself (UPDATE: Wait, is that him as Sir Ian McKellan?), but it's a beautiful example of the funniness that could happen around and because of him. I'm very glad he's in Los Angeles, because – you know me – I'm happy when anyone's in Los Angeles, but I've also enjoyed spending today wondering what fun would be happening if he was still local.

 Many happy returns, James. I honestly appreciated being bunged on at the end of this.

A Chair Is a Movable Raised L-Shape For Supporting Your Bum and Back. What?

From Larry Gonick's Cartoon History of the Universe. This and youtube and Carl Sagan and Natalie Haynes are how I know history. And books.

 Hot on the heels of Carl Sagan's take-down of Plato, Natalie Haynes Stands Up For The Classics has a wonderful episode on Western Philosphy's first poet, inventor of Atlantis, founder of an Academy that lasted nine-hundred years, and preserver of the Socratic dialogues, here just for balance. Being less familiar with the Socratic dialogues than the show's contributors I have maybe a happier and certainly a more ignorant take on the old guy's hair-splitting. "That's just like your opinion, man" can be a valid contribution I think. Socrates doesn't seem like a nihilist to me, more like Lebowski. And I was never attracted to "Fatso"'s idea of abstract perfection, but listening to this I realise how priviliged that makes me: When the talk turned to advertising I immediately thought, no that's not right, there's no Platonic subtext in advertising, ads aren't selling an idea of perfection, if anything - like politics - they're selling us an identity. But then I suddenly remembered the perfect Mitchell and Webb sketch below (I think written by Joel Morris and Jason Hazeley) and recalled that advertising treats men very differently to women.

 Men are spared the Platonic ideal. There's toxic masulinity and machismo, sure, but there are so many other options too. We still get to be the default. The fact a priviliged layabout like me can find Platonism - the idea that reality's just an imperfect imitation  - so alien a concept perhaps gives ammunition to Sagan's argument that it was always an inherently oppression-friendly philosophy. And I adore Edith Hall's theory it all came from Plato just being very short-sighted.

Hot and Cold. Open and Closed. More and Less. Right and Wrong.

 Of all the scenes in Shakespeare, Act 4 Scene 2 of Julius Caesar is the one I've fantasy-cast the most. Over decades, we're talking. In the absence of these casts, however, I've never loved the scene as much watching it as I have reading it. So today was exciting, because of course I'll aways fantasy-cast myself as well, but perhaps for the first time on this project – and to the scene's credit – today I also really missed having someone to play off, too. Enjoy.

O Sweet, O Sweet Content!

 

All set!

 I am seriously considering a review of the two-hundred VHS tapes I keep in the cupboard to replace Frankenstein Wednesdays. I started on tape #1 last night, containing Flash Gordon, The Man With Two Brains and The Fellowship of the Ring, Extended Edition (or as my Dad put it, the version where they put all the acting). It's interesting to note that Hobbiton, supposedly the most backward, unchanging community in Tolkein's world, appears to be centuries ahead in its influences of the Medieval-inspired civilisations surrounding it. Boom! Blog done. I'd also been considering blogging about Ming's daughter Princess Aura for a while: She seems to have been to Flash Gordon creator Alex Raymond what Satan was to Milton: entirely and unintentionally heroic.

 Boom! Another blog. Really though today's post is all about flagging up some of the beautiful ways others have been using their time. The magnificent Andy Stanton, for example, has been reading aloud all of a Mr. Gum book, so we can finally know for certain what everyone was supposed to sound like:

 His fellow Nincompoop, and my own colleague and definite future Dr. Who, Carrie Quinlan, has initiated The Wild Freelancer Blog, and also this: 

 The writers of Mitchell and Webb's "Remain Indoors" sketches have remained indoors to bring us this episode of Rule Of Three (no way of embedding that, sorry) while Mighty Fin impresario Robbie Hudson has set up his own Emergency Broadcast System over on Spotify, on which I can occassionally be heard bellowing songs. Seasoned Science shut-in Helen Czerski (six weeks aboard a ship studying bubbles at the North Pole is nothing to her - she's like an astronaut if space had bears) joins the ranks of Science Shambles' Stay at Home Festival:

 More fictionally, Monster Hunters co-creator Matthew Woodcock has created a surprisingly prescient submarine-based thriller for Definitely Human called Down, its presience almost exactly matching that of Avenue 5, if anyone's seen that. No spoilers. Avenue 5's shuttle pilot John Finnemore meanwhile, perhaps most heroically of all, has gone and shaved his beard just to give us this wonderful thing:

 And obviously I've been rebranding procrastination as "social isolation" from pretty much ever since this blog went daily last Christmas (April the first will be the hundredth straight post) but, Oo! My second pilot to Time Spanner, The Dan in the High Castle, is being repeated on Radio 4 tomorrow if anyone fancies a huddle. Huge thanks and love to all these makers and partakers. Be well, everyone.

For when I run out of VHSes.