The Longest Game

 Here's one of many tangents from a very enjoyable series of conversations I had with Katy Naylor, either side of Katy seeing Jonah Non Grata's Soho show, about that and other participatory projects:

Simon Kane:

Do you know the old Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy text adventure game?

 

Voidspace:

Yes, it’s impossible. Notoriously impossible.

Simon Kane:

Once I worked out what that was doing, I thought this is incredible, because it’s actually subverting what a game is. It’s not a role-playing game at all. I think it’s designed to be about creating a very visceral emotional relationship with the technology. The whole point of it is that it’s almost impossible to play.

 

Voidspace:

I had always thought of that as a bug rather than a feature, and just said it was early days, and they hadn’t actually got the hang of difficulty moderating it.

Simon Kane:

It’s about how you deal – it’s a Kobayashi Maru – it’s about how you deal with this unplayable game.

Voidspace:

In the modern Table Top Role-Playing Game world, in the art-game one-pager space, there are games that are deliberately unplayable. There are all sorts of things that are interrogating the form and just being fun and weird. It’s interesting if that was an idea back in the ’80s.

 

Simon Kane:

It has to be. There’s no reason to make it that unplayable. I think it’s signalled by the very first thing you do, where you have to work out how to turn on the light. That’s unnecessary. And you could die. It's horrible. This machine doesn’t understand how a person exists.

Voidspace:

It’s creating in you the sensation of being Arthur Dent, because Arthur Dent hasn’t got a clue what he’s doing. Everything is alien, nothing makes sense, everything is baffling. And so that ties into the idea of this work being able to create a sense of exchange, or a sense of communication that can put you into an emotional state of someone else who’s in the world of the piece. 

Tell me some more about Jonah.

... which, if you can bear it, I contine to do HERE.

 

 

 

 And you can try to play the old Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy text adventure for yourself HERE.

 If you want to see me in a dressing gown in Islington, you can come and see Jonah Non Grata's other preview, at the Hen and Chickens this Saturday, by getting tickets for almost a tenner HERE.

 Meanwhile, the PR continues to work, keep taking the PR, with a lovely piece from, of all places, ATV HERE and another from Midlands TV HERE.

 (And here is the final scene of Jack Aldisert's The Manikins (A Work In Progress) – one of many other things Katy and I talked about – as passed to me in a manila envelope when I left the venue. Enlarge for spoilers...)

 

Sometimes this blog will just be Three Weeks

A pull-quote. I have a pull-quote. 

 

"Jonah Non Grata" is getting another London outing! Next Saturday the nineteenth of July, at 9.30pm up the stairs of that old stalwart of the Edinburgh preview – but a duck-breaking first for me – the Hen and Chickens pub in Islingon. You can get tickets for just (over) a tenner HERE, and if you have any further questions... well, maybe I've answered them below. Maybe not. Maybe you have some questions about my answers. (And if any of them concern the penultimate anwer, I had a lovely meeting about the book on Monday: Apparently, translation rights are where a lot of the money is in childrens' writing. France doesn't like mermaids, because they're sleazy, and – possibly for the same reason – Germany does not like circuses, so take note.)

 

(Also here are some gorgeous, unpublished Hobbit illustrations from Eva Natus-Šalamounová and her husband Jiří, on display HERE, in Prague, which was yesterday. A good week.)

 

 I now have quite a few articles to to-do over the next few days plugging the show, so let's see how many more end up on here. Apologies in advance. Take it away, Caro Moses of THREE WEEKS...

As you know – because we are always talking about it – we like new stuff here at TW Towers. But you know what, we also like stuff that was first really good a few years ago and which is now getting another run. 

And all that relates to the show ‘Jonah Non Grata’, which was originally staged in London back in 2004 to much acclaim, and is going to Edinburgh this year. It’s the work of Simon Kane, an actor and writer who has worked on loads of stuff I love from various media, like ‘Finnemore’s Souvenir Programme’ and ‘Ghosts’. 

‘Jonah Non Grata’ is an absurdist solo show based on the events that befell the biblical Jonah and I wanted to find out more about it. I put some questions to Simon ahead of his upcoming edfringe run. 

Can you start by explaining the premise of ‘Jonah Non Grata’? Who is it about and what story does it tell?

 Inasmuch as it tells a story, it’s the Book Of Jonah, as in Jonah and the whale.

 A very short, possibly satirical shaggy dog story from the Old Testament about a prophet who refuses the call, tries to run away, is swallowed by a large fish sent by God, does what He wants, but is ultimately disappointed by the outcome. 

 The “premise” of the show, however, is that you don’t need to know any of this, but will nevertheless spend an hour not being bored.

 It’s a solo sequel to work I did with a beautiful immersive collective called Shunt, whose greatest review may have come from someone who’d missed the opening forty minutes of one show and so could just enjoy what they saw without worrying about being expected to get it.

 

What themes are explored through the play?

 

 Exactly the same themes as ‘Hamlet’? Yeah, I’m happy with that answer…

 Refusing the call to adventure. The comforts of inaction. Weighing one’s love for people against one’s anger at the world. The very nature of performance. Depression. Loneliness. Christianity. Extremism.

All that. But with songs and a bit where he thinks he’s gone to the moon.

 

How would you describe it in terms of style or genre?

 

 Pop absurdist clowning. A strange world on a tight budget. A church for a churchless faith.

 

What was the inspiration for this piece?

 A lot of friends were making solo shows that weren’t particularly text-based and, although I love writing, I wanted to join in making something more in the clown genre. 

 One of those friends’ shows was about the performer’s Jewishness, “although,” as he said, “I’m not Jewish, because I don’t believe in God”, so I realised that even though I’m an atheist, I’m also, similarly – or at least culturally – a Christian, and that engaging with this big mood might be a good starting point. 

 I’d also been thinking about the very first plays in English: Mysteries, which might read like spoofs but were the work of people who absolutely believed in the biblical reality of what they were performing, and so I thought about writing my own. You know, something “traditional”.

 Initially, I had considered the various accounts of what Jesus got up to after returning from the dead, but then, after reading a note about Jonah in Alasdair Gray’s ‘Lanark’, I opted for this Old Testament alt, as he seemed a good clown.

 I’ve always liked comedies about heroes who run away – I would later make a Radio 4 show called ‘Time Spanner’ about something similar – and a show that plays with thresholds is a good, cheap concept – every venue has doors. 

 As I mentioned, a third influence was the show I’d just been performing with Shunt, ‘Dance Bear Dance’, a clownish immersive piece about the Gunpowder Plot coincidentally devised during the opening months of the War On Terror.

 I wanted to play more both with the idea of making an audience complicit in a religiously motivated act of violence – but with laffs – and the idea of presenting a surreal church service as a basis for audience interaction – it’s nice if the audience has some clue as to what’s expected of them. 

 My work with Shunt in general also made me want to ensure every show was different and surprising, hence the levels of audience participation, as it used to be called. Basically, everything I do in the show is built upon things I’d already enjoyed doing, and had seen people enjoy me doing. 

 

It’s been quite a while since you first performed it – what motivated you to revive it now? 

 I missed it. And I’d landed an advert, so could afford to take it to Edinburgh. The show had never had a proper launch. It was just a thing I did, that people liked.

 But I’m finally now beginning to learn, not only how to make a show, but how to keep it alive, something I’d never known how to do on my own before. 

 Also, I’m seeing less and less stuff like it, and wanted to see if there was still an appetite for this kind of recklessly – if not irresponsibly – personal silliness. I think you can do anything onstage. I hope this show communicates that.

 

Has the show changed at all in the meantime? 

 Barely. I’ve written a few more jokes about the nature of audience interaction to help me get from A to B. And I might not use a real candle any more, but that’s actually funnier. One of the things that’s so exciting to me is how much it still chimes, but how differently.

 

You haven’t brought it to the Fringe before – why not before and why now? 

 See my previous answer! I couldn’t afford it. I didn’t know how. And I can now and I know how. But also, I think my confidence in the show has grown.

 There are a lot of things I’ve wanted to make a show about right now, but it turns out Jonah is still that show.

 

Are there any post Fringe plans for the show? 

 Hopes, currently, rather than plans. This is why I’ve got a producer. I very much want to just get it in front of as many people as possible for as long as possible.

 It’s my clown show. But I’m also curious how it works as a play text. Theatrical criticism is still very ‘play’-based.

 

What do you like about the Fringe? What will you get up to in Edinburgh when not performing?

 It’s people making things. I’ll see things. Sometimes I’ll see five things in a day and they’ll form into one big thing in my mind. It’s magic.

So do you have a hit list of other shows you would like to see?

 I like finding out what’s interesting once I’m up there, but I will definitely be seeing ‘Simple Town’, and I will definitely be seeing Neil Frost’s ‘The Door’.

 

What drew you to performing as a career? Was it what you always wanted to do? 

 I could do it. I could hide in plain sight.

 My Dad’s an actor and a writer, but he mainly stayed at home on the typewriter when we were growing up, which was very nice for us.

 His brother, however, my wonderful Uncle Gordon, was a proper jobbing, touring actor, and we loved him, and everyone loved him, and acting professionally seemed a very nice, fun, feasible way to not grow up.

 In that sense, yes, it’s something I always wanted to do.

I have to say that you’ve been involved to a greater or lesser extent with some of my Very Favourite Things. What would you say have been the highlights of your career thus far? 

 

 That’s nice! I don’t really think I have a career, because it’s so often work with friends, but I suspect they’re definitely My Very Favourite Things too, and it’s a broad if not hefty mix.

I think the work with John Finnemore is unique in that it has fans who will be fans until I die. Cunningly, however, it’s all been highlights.

 Even the terrible work has been with brilliant people, and having brilliant people in your life is the very best thing. I’ve only one rule: never ever work with or for the bored.

 

What aims and ambitions do you have for the future? 

 I think I still want to do everything.

 

What’s coming up next for you after this?

 I’ve no idea. The next show? I’ve written a screenplay. I’m writing a book. I guess the next thing – now I seem to have worked out how making a show works – is to work out how all that other stuff works too. 

Simon Kane will perform ‘Jonah Non Grata’ at The Assembly Rooms from 31 Jul – 24 Aug, find the edfringe listing here. 

... But you guys knew that.

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.

 

Unposted on Election Night: Spoilers for Vengeance

 Okay, a little more about what's happening in US... 

 B.J. Novak's superb comedy "Vengeance" – released in 2022, but only caught by me on the plane back from Vancouver last August – charts an aspiring true-crime podcaster's attempts to document "the new American reality". And I mean charts. The film is a text. So this post isn't an in-depth review, just a recommendation. I'd originally meant to put it out as an immediate response to Trump's election victory back in November, because I thought: what rational reader wouldn't be thinking "Wait, what the hell's going on?" and I'd enjoyed the film as a search for some answers. Then I didn't post it, and now I've learnt the film's leaving Netflix on February 8th, so quick, HERE IT IS*

 I'll return to "Vengeance" in a bit, and maybe it's too late now for post mortems, maybe no-one's in the mood for "What happened was...", but it's only going to get later, so here's another search for answers I meant to share – answers other than just "Everyone's Abandoned Democracy", which seems hopeless if true – and by the way, I'm so glad Jon Stewart's back...

 

 "What happened was, the country felt like Government wasn't working for them, and – the Democrats, in particular – were taking their hard-earned money, and giving it to people who didn't deserve it as much as them. And so the Democrats got shellacked."

 Or, as Jennifer Pahlka puts it even more succinctly in this article:

"the reality is that Republicans let their voters choose the candidate, and Democrats didn't - twice." 

 Maybe what resounded most, then, rewatching "Vengeance" after Trump's terrifying majority, were its final words, so here are SPOILERS... Our hero's initial understanding of events, before he even arrives in Texas, has proved completely correct: the girl he hooked up with in New York was just a hookup, and despite the conspiracy narratives spun by her family, she did die of an opiate overdose. But his understanding of everything else now – how to act, how to choose, how to love, how to remember... the big stuff – is scorched earth, and when he concludes to her mother, as we're all taught to conclude, "No regrets", the Texan muses back:

"I never understood that... No regrets... In my life, everything starts with a regret... Ends with a regret... In between, regrets... It's all regrets... You run as fast as you can from the last regret... And of course you're just running straight into the next one... That's life... It's all regrets... That's what you should say... No other way to be alive... It's all regrets... Make 'em count."

 

"So Six Flags, the theme park..."

 

"Exactly."

 

* UPDATE: For those who can, it's now up on All4 HERE.

Platypus Vobiscum: a Pius Reader

Being further unsorted contributions to the Church of the Cosmic Platypus, salvaged over the course of two seasons working at "Phantom Peak" from Pius' easel in the corner of Old Town, together with illuminations – some by the author – also sundry anonymous annotations (click to embiggen)...

"Platypus Vobiscum. That's how you work the system. When it works, it works. Peace. Peace. Stop saying Peace. Take. For example take a moment. Did you mean Piece? Do you remember the psalm about the jigsaw? He puts pieces in the jigsaw. And he starts with the corners. The jigsaw is the pieces. Pushing can be pulled. Ink can run out. And then come back. Personally hopping about on the track, listening for rumbling. 

Back to the Circle. Start again. Start at the side."

"Well we start there. Stop saying Stop. Leave me be believe me. NOT EVERYTHING IS A CLUE! THERE you are, you naughty little bargain. I'm not saying the gloves are 'off' off, but nobody seems to be wearing gloves. 'I literally just got off my horse.' It is perfectly possible to exist in a state where you can INSTANTLY decide what being – say – this pen feels like. Or the candles. But I don't know you can do it with your eyes closed. Or you would do it differently. The whole concept of 'wrong', in a way, is – Oh I wanted to say 'wrong'. But."

 

"Is any dance a mandatory movement?

Vanity. Vanity. All is vanity. Apart from dressing as an Oompah Loompah.

Mockery is the sincerest form of flattery. No? But mockery just means imitiation.

In spite of its numerous legs and armour, the millipede is not the strongest animal in the pet shop. The strongest animal in the pet shop is the shopkeeper, for they feed the pets."

"The olden times had no eraser. So sometimes the angels would just look like bats. Imagine if angels hated their wings. What works is a piece of man." 

 

"Who was the first to sit down? When we were shrews, did one of us sit down and realise our hands were now free. But they had not the strength to use them. The more shoes I wear, the more I realise how little I understand about shoes. They go up and down with your feet.

But how?

I'm bang on time, and now does Time bang on me. Ribbons. Safer than candles. Three & four & never more."

"This is why old Mister Sleevey is very careful about where he sets up his knockoffables. And a good scribe always knows where the paper ends. 

I met a blogger from some retro land who said 'Two massive kneecaps – nobody knows whose – take up the landing, hairy lean and tanned. I think they might belong to Nerys Hughes, but now I can't remember how this poem originally scanned.' That's all they said. Then, falling on their face – as if to salvage some measure of grace, after such a dwindling finish – they uttered one last 'Thanks' in accents tinnish. But I would not be moved. I stood there still. I mean still like – oh, you know. And moved, as in Not here because they're there now.

All water is a feature. Even ice.

'a' came after 'the' because it changes the subject.

INFECTIOUS"

 

"Ordinarily this is not a forum for factional hoots. Changing one's mind can be be very useful. Two types  – at least – of crossing out (motives for deletion) A mistake or a change of heart."

 

"This is just to say that

I have sold the elephant

foot umbrella stand

Things fall on my back. And the trays are wet. And the shirts we wash are never as clean as the shirts we didn't buy.

Handwriting wasn't always calligraphy. Who wants to learn cursive when you can sprout the sentence separate and friendly. Not formal and exclusive. And when did exclusive become a compliment?"  

"I've drawn a little city. It's looking pretty pretty.

One can imagine the future, and spend all that time grieving.

SINGS: Elbows and kneecaps and drops of brown liquid. Nicknames that hurt like a stone or a stick would. Hairplugs that give you a tickle-y cough. These are some things that I hope will fall off. Hubcaps and breezeblocks and bits of old sofa. Pablo Neruda and Gordon the Gopher.

Happiness is a sense of control."

 

Spinach or Silence as Sources of Power

 "So, Art is something which is made when you use a material to change something... but it helps people to consider the Art which is in front of them if it is grouped with another set of Art, and it's very difficult to consider Art in isolation from other Art..."

 Born Yesterday has a great format: two twenty-four-hour-old clones of the hosts ask two guests to explain the world in terms of the only three things they've yet had time to learn about. Alexander Bennet and Andy Barr are its perfect hosts, digging down in just the right spots, and presenting perfectly packaged summaries, so no matter how a guest chooses to play it – as hilarious disruptor or dweebish stickler – it's almost impossible not to be entertaining. (Like Taskmaster.) As evidence, I'd like to submit this episode, in which I'm dropped in alongside Andrea Hubert (I'll let you decide which is which) to explain such topics as Cumbria and the concept of "The Ends Justifying the Means" with only Popeye, a Hog-roast, and Birmingham New Street Station as points of reference. Other topics also emerge during the episode, such as animal cruelty in early cinema, Insults, Joy, and whether or not – according to the mathematics of decapitation – Bradley Cooper's nose in Maestro makes him more alive. 

 I've been a fan of this podcast since it began, and obviously I'm always up for explaining the world to babies, so thanks to Andy and Alexander – an old Crystal Maze colleague – for inviting me, and thanks to Andrea for being such a great teammate/opponent and for showing me all her blades. (We appear nineteen minutes in. If you fancy a drinking game, down a shot every time you notice me avoiding saying her name because I get self-consciously stuck on whether "Andrea" has a long or short A, despite it being said numerous times during the record, and the way the name's always pronounced. I'll join you.)

 "So, in building our understanding of what a Mime is, we have been led to believe that, if a dog were to withhold from you its name, it would be able to pick you up..."

 

Wowee! An Official Film!

I call this piece "The Person Who Has To Explain The Art"

 No sorry, my point was that when I initially saw those road signs turned upside-down by French farmers over Christmas my first thought had been simply, oh I guess some stuff's upside-down now. I had clocked the symptoms a few weeks earlier while tearing through Norwich Castle on a twilight ticket and noticing that one of the paintings had definitely been hung the wrong way up. Screwed, in fact. Screwed to the wall – see above. In the next gallery I noticed another, by a different artist, again definitely upside-down (I don't mean to boast, an artist like me just has an eye for these things).

 

  Every room in fact had one painting inexplicably set upside down, and my first thought here was, oh I guess this is some kind of protest – exactly the feeling I didn't get when I saw the protests in Languedoc. (Mum tells me farmers are now blocking every road into every city with tractors, so that's less ambiguous.) I couldn't think what might be being protesting however. So I went up to the information desk and said "Hello" firstly, and then "Can I ask why some of the paintings are upside-down?" and the smiling woman at the desk handed me a leaflet sporting the name Mark Wilsher, explaining "Yes, it's an artist. Five works have been turned upside down. It's all about your reaction to it." And I'm trying to work out how best to explain the way she said it, because I think that's the point of this post.

 

A sidenote: I come from a generation who have been taught, upon reading the words "the smiling woman at the desk", to imagine immediately something counterfeit and sinister – the polite, public face of an industrial carnivore – but after the trip to the castle I went back to punch imaginary tickets on a train pretending to go to the North Pole, or pour and serve real hot chocolate, because most of the jobs I've taken have been pretty public facing – not just the out-of-work actor stuff, but the actor stuff too. Other credits on my CV include: Announcer; Host; Voice; Receptionist; Narrator; Waiter; Lift Operator; and Conductor, bus. But even the murderers on that list were narratively never threats to the public. I like the public, and I like being the public. 

 

 

 Anyway, I don't want you to picture me leaving that exchange with the smiling woman at the desk in any way huffy or aloof. And I don't want to give the impression she didn't seem very much on the side of the exercise. But she did say "It's all about your reaction to it" it in a way that made me wonder how previous enquiries might have gone. I said "Aw thanks" and took the leaflet to let her know she wasn't going to get any trouble from my end at least. I don't know. Perhaps I'm projecting. Perhaps she wasn't deescalating anything, just happy to help. Perhaps I was also projecting when I thought it might have been a protest, or when I thought those upside-down road-signs in France might not. Walking away, I thought: "Well, I guess my reaction to seeing some paintings turned upside-down is to find out why they've been turned upside down. Sorry if you were expecting more, Mark." 

 But now I think maybe the work was actually having her to explain the work to me because – as you might be able to tell – I've had a far more complicated reaction to that. 

 (Sorry I didn't post much here about The Polar Express, but there was Instagram. And that's me with the outstanding Miles Mlambo above. And below, that's me getting over two million likes on TikTok. Boasts of equal stature.)

@bethmae0 💫✨️Just be you✨️💫 #polarexpress #fy #fyp #fypシ #fypシ゚viral #fypviral #foryou #foryoupage #foryoupageofficiall #trend #trending #quoteoftheday #mumsoftiktok ♬ original sound - bethmae🤍

Christmas Quiz!

 Thanks for playing! Just the one question: I have always been a song and dance machine. But who am I dressed as in this picture?

You have the entirety of Kate Bush's Christmas Special from 1979 to leave your answer in the comments. Go!

 

 

 (Tangentially: after hearing Paul Putner and Joel Morris discuss the "Divine Madness" VHS on Joel's brilliant podcast Comfort Blanket, I realise I've always been drawn to piano-playing singer-songwriters more than guitar-playing ones, not a distinction I'd previously noticed. Okay, NOW go!)

 

I Demand To Know Who Built This Pig.

 

 

 You may have seen this substantially meme-ified pig before, in its original untouched-up form. Online reactions to the film have been understandably strong but, beyond the fact that it's a 1907 Pathé recording of an old vaudeville act, I can't find much information about what it is I'm actually seeing. Who was the act? How was it being done? What would a cross section of Le Cochon Danseur look like, for example? How many people would we find? Just the one costumed actor, moving his arms in and out of the trotters to swivel the eyeballs? A little child sitting on the main player's shoulders to operate the head bits separately? How does it all look so coordinated?

 

 The dancing pig is shamed.

  

 And how successful was the act? Because, if it was successful, why have I never seen any contemporary imitations? Why would we not see this level of articulation in a puppet again until "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles"? If Vaudeville could come up with something this impressive in 1907, why would a Master of Cinema like Fritz Lang, the creator of Metropolis, have such difficulty building a convincing dragon nearly twenty years later? If I was Lang I'd have gone "Get me the dancing pig people, STAT!" Or maybe he did. Maybe they built this dragon too, but it wasn't as good. Who built this pig!

 

 

(Okay, now I've looked it out, it's better than I remember, but it's still no dancing pig.)

 I have a question too about the technology used to clean this clip up – less about the wherewithal, and more about its effect. I assume it's some kind of rougher, off-the-peg version of whatever Ai Peter Jackson used to clean up the Beatles footage in "Get Back". A few other youtube clips suggested by my algorithm use the same tech. Here's the first I saw...

 

 My old workplace, the Trocadero, and the next time I was there I took a photograph, to compare the two...

 

 Because, when I watch these clips I feel – as I felt watching "Get Back" – that I'm somehow being transported in time, and then I have to check why, because documentaries aren't new, and film has been around for long enough for me not to be surprised by it. That's my question.

 

 So I've decided, it's not that the retouching makes footage look more realistic, but that it makes it less immeditaely familiar as "footage", and so the brain reads it more literally. One can – rightly – condemn the artificiality of this, if what's intended is the creation of a more accurate record. But what this technology reminds me is that, from its inception, film has never been just a record, it is also a genuine marvel. 

 

Some Things That Might Not Be Obvious About the Making of Finnemore's Ninth

 I'd forgotten I'd already written about the production of JFSP Series Nine, back when we first started recording in March, here. The home recording set-up in that first session, however, turned out to be insufficiently broad-bandy, so most of my remaining lines were recorded half an hour's stroll away, in the Nathan-Barley-themed escape room of Bloomsbury's Syncbox studios...

 

 

 

  I would usually have had only two hours' sleep the previous night from the excitement of knowing this was coming. Sometimes I'd be lucky enough to be joined – in the opposite corner of the studio, no hugging – by Carrie taking a break from the ambulances she now drives, also on about two hours' sleep. John, being John, wouldn't have slept since Christmas of 2020. On such little sleep, a crucial advantage of not performing the series live turned out to be the opportunity for retakes, and the chance for our producer Ed Morrish to direct, well, specifically, me. "Try that again, warmer," was a common note, while Carrie got it, and got on with it.

 

 I'd hoped my tiredness might help me stop overthinking "the point" of a scene, but I'm suddenly remembering how she'd still, occasionally, have to give me an additional note to just "do the thing John asked"... Was it really necessary to have so many scenes of Jerry making up poems, I remember thinking, for example, having no idea yet of the revelations in Episode Five... As I said on the tweetalong (and I've enjoyed seeing how many listeners are surprised by this), we all knew John had a big idea for the shape of this series, but none of us – with the possible exception of Ed – knew what that shape was. And John, again being John (one of his best qualities) would still ask open-endedly for feedback or suggestions, but to take him up on this felt like kicking the tyres on the batmobile. 

 

  In fairness to my lack of understanding, quite a lot of Jerry's episode was recorded first and there wasn't that much to piece together back then. (Only tyrants have favourites, but Jerry might have been the character John found least inherently difficult to create.) But even the author didn't have a clearer idea than was needed of the big picture two sessions in. Take the first recording of the scene where Alex asks Russ about his tattoo...

 John on Zoom: "Okay. Simon. Could you read Alex in this?"

 "Okay. Who's Alex?"

 "Yes. I should probably decide that, shouldn't I."

 "Someone Russ is meeting at a party?"

 "No. Maybe Russ's partner, or husband. Let's decide... Okay, yes, his partner or husband."

 "And is this them meeting at a party?"

 "No. This isn't a party."

 "Shall I give Alex an accent?"

 "No." 

 If you haven't listened to the series, Alex ended up being an Australian, played by John. So yes, of course there was a plan, is what I'm saying, a pretty perfect plan as things turned out, but there was also – perhaps the greatest advantage of the costume-less, set-less, on-book medium of radio – a big temporal overlap with that plan's execution.

 Series Nine is still being repeated nightly at 11pm, the tweetalong will be continuing tonight or, if you have any questions, you can post them below, and you can still hear the whole thing any time you like here.

The Persistence of Memory Round

 I noticed, on the walk I took on Sunday evening, that the moon – like myself – had risen a little later than the day before, and I was reassured by this. Previously I had known only theoretically that it couldn't always show up on time for nightfall, as that's not how orbits work, but my regular urban surroundings had never been flat enough to prove it. I missed the city's pavements, though. The roads between these villages are fringed instead with ditches. I assume that's so you'll crash your car if you skid, rather than drive over a vine. You've got to protect the vines. 

 When I got home, my laptop died – or at least coudn't be woken – and I spent the next few days trying to bring it back to life, which is why this post is actually going out on the night of Wednesday the 22nd. Now the factory settings have been restored though, here, by the light of Sunday's moon, is another quiz for you, this one from August. Match the following ten Surrealist titles: 

 

"The Decoy"... 

"Disturbing Presence"... 

"Floor 4706"... 

"Men Shall now Nothing of This"... 

"The Persistence of Memory"... 

"Hamlet"... 

"The Son of Man"... 

"Stage Fright"... 

"The Uncertainty of the Poet"... 

and finally, "Bicycle Wheel"...  

 

to the following ten Surrealist works. And I'll post the answers in the comments.

 

1. René Magritte, 1964

 

 

 2. Salvador Dali, 1931

 

 3. Remedios Varo, 1959

 

 

4. Marcel Duchamp, 1913 (originally, but pretty easy to throw together, and repeated since)

 

 

5. Gertrude Abercrombie, 1952

 

 

6. Giorgio de Chirico, 1913

 

 

7. Man Ray 1949

 

8. Leonora Carrington,  1958

 

 

9. Edith Rimmington, 1948

 

 

10. Max Ernst, 1923

 

The Natalie Portmanteau Round

 How best to explain this round from September? Maybe I should make having to work out how to play it a feature, rather than a bug.... It's basically a Star-Wars-related "Answer Smash" (two answers elided into one). For example, the answer to the above picture clue is "Judith Hann Solo", as that's a picture of Tomorrow's World presenter Judith Hann on the left, and the actor who played Han Solo on the right (and because I felt that Kathryn Hahn might be even harder to identify than Judith Hann, so went with the standardised pronunciation of "Han", father than the canonical.) The rest I'll let you work out for yourself. It won't always be a person on the left – it might be a show or a thing or a place – but it will always be an actor who played a character in Star Wars on the right, although I haven't actually included Natalie Portman in the end. And I don't care about the spelling. Aswers will be posted in the comments. Chwat!

 

1. 

 

2.

 

3.

 

 4.

 

5.

 

6.

 

7.

 

 8.

 

9.

 

10.