When I Googled Stooky Bill

 

 Probably not the original Stooky Bill

 Yeah, I'm not sure sticking that disclaimer up is... Anyway, here – probably – is sculptor and video artist David Hall making a light meal of the fact that the first ever subject to be televised was a puppet. I read somewhere that teething problems meant John Logie Baird's pioneering televisor had required more light than the human epidermis could withstand, but I can't now find where, and the wikipedia entry for "Stooky Bill" only says that human faces had "inadequate contrast" and a puppet would show up better, so maybe it's not true.

 

 

Also probably not the original Stooky Bill (source)

 

 It does sound like an odd reason for using a puppet. And I know the original performers for The Man With the Flower in His Mouth whitened their faces and gave themselves blue lips (although I can't now find where I read that either *UPDATE: it was here.*) Anyway, I learnt of the thrillingly Smirhesesque existence of Stooky Bill yesterday when I decided to do a little more research into television's origins, and then realised he'd actually appeared on this blog before, back in January of 2020. Here's another picture of him alongside a second puppet called simply "James". (That's certainly a lot of lightbulbs.)

 

The original Stoooky Bill. Don't know which one's him though.

 

  And it was in researching Stooky Bill I then learnt of the existence of David Hall, whom I'm only assuming produced the uncredited or miscredited video above from a mention of something very similar on his site here. Hall made a number of similar "TV interruptions" for MTV in the nineties, and earlier, for Scottish Television, back in the seventies. Here's one of those:

 

 I enjoy the brattiness of having the water drain at an angle – Sorry, SPOILERS! This was decades before the tyranny of choice, of course, when television was just something you had on, and if broadcasters decided they were going to take four minutes out to pretend your television was filling up with water, that's what you'd get. I suppose this country never produced an Andy Kaufman because it never needed one. 

 Here's a lovely little film of Hall at work, the kind of work the tag "thinginess" was created for...

 

 

"We've seen you this morning putting grass in what looks like a fish tank."

Sometimes this blog will just be Tinsel and Custard

 

 

 Is there a word for the opposite of nostalgia? For the unhousingly alien disclosure of things past you'd forgotten you'd even tried to forget? Quentin Smirhes' innovations in this nameless, benighted field continue to go from strength to hideous strength. The botched Schools and Colleges module "Dont You Start" (beginning three and half minutes in) might be the QTV team's most ambitious bit of salvaging yet, but grisly as you might find it, it's angora wool compared to the botched experiments in A.I. Quentin now broadcasts over on instagram. Go and browse and dredge, for they are works of genius, and you will not come back unchanged.

The Village

 "I say people will insist on things being different."

 After Sunday's post, I can't stop thinking about Thatcher, so here's some Socialism. My parents recommended "They Came To A City" to me, or at least told me they'd enjoyed it – it's an unapologetically utopian thought experiment from pipe-smoker J. B. Priestley, just before Orwell put him on a list, and according to my parents, a lot of it has come true. There's another slice of the film on youtube, but these are all I could find. What my algorithms throw up next is not a third clip, but perhaps the most concentrated dose of Seventies British Programming I've encountered outside of pastiche...

 It's called "No Two The Same". I don't know why. It's from 1970, and features a nervous writer called Ian Nairn, saying nice things about a couple of housing estates in Pimlico. Here's Ian with his back to us, interviewing a doctor:

  Initially I wasn't sure why they were both leaning on a car, but then I noticed Ian having a bit of a sit for pieces to camera other presenters might have remained standing for. There didn't need to be a chair nearby. A wall or a bollard would do.

 I looked Nairn up. He died thirteen years after this was shot. I realise that's morbid, but it's a hard question to ignore while you watch him in action. He's really not comfortable standing.

 But he's talking about hope. Not towering hope like Priestley's, just something on the "oh that'll be nice" scale, and it's a tone I'm unfamiliar with. It's not an unemotional watch. Here's more. 

 Here are lives having attention paid to them, not just by Ian and his film crew, but by the makers of the places they inhabit. 

 It's common to dismiss architects like Le Corbusier for asserting "a house is a machine for living in", but I'd rather that than the uninhabited gated off from the uninhabitable.

Ian talks of it as a village, but also seems to enjoy the anonymity these new places afford. It's odd to think hope also looked like this.

 "Nice day for it," he says as he's greeted at the door. I think it's the first time I've heard this said for real, outside of a sketch.

 But all this is real.

  Which isn't to say it's not funny.

  But it's not just funny.

 Here's the full piece:

  P.S. Bonus notice: It opens EXACTLY like an old episode of Dangermouse, to the point where I wonder if it was an influence.

Transmitter Information

 I recorded the first act of Richard the Second today, on a new phone which didn't come with a compatible cable, so I'm bluetoothing it over to my laptop instead and a little box is telling me that this will take six hours. And then I can start editing. There won't be a Shakespeare transmission tonight therefore, but it'll be up tomorrow, and apologies but it's four minutes to midnight so I'm going to see if I can turn in instead. Incidentally I find that Sean Raynard's, Stephen Evans' and "Quentin Smirhes"' QTV Closedowns provide great closure to a day's viewing - stark reminders that it's probably time to stop looking at a screen. Enjoy the following then, and have a very pleasant and peaceful night. Good night.

Musty Corn!

 No sung blog Sunday today, sorry! I've been wrestling with iMovie, trying to get today's Journal of the Plague Year reading up. Apparently it doesn't like it when I shift filters to give footnotes because the clips are too short, but you didn't need to know that, anyway I put on a suit for some of this, which is how I was finally reunited with my muti-ballpoint retractable, but that's in the video, look, I promise to do more with this blog than just plug the youtube channel, but for all you seventeenth century health and safety regulation fans here's what I've done today. The new regulations governing the depth of a grave are quite interesting, but be warned it's not nice what happens to the dogs, and if you simply want to hear me having a too much fun saying "musty corn" in Patrick Allen's voice*, jump straight in at 14 minutes 23 seconds:

* Oh alright, Sir Maxwell House's voice (... and thanks to Quentin Smirhes for the video).