Joy Division Oven Gloves

Nero fiddles while Gordon BurnsChart-manipulation campaign of the week: as part of the ongoing protest against the proposed closure of BBC 6 Music, you've got until Saturday April 10th to buy a copy of Half Man Half Biscuit's indie classic Joy Division Oven Gloves. The aim is, somehow, to get it to number 6 in this Sunday's singles chart. Which strikes me as a tough one to pull off: but anything that gets more HMHB out there is always going to get my vote. So do it, now.

Read the details
Buy the song
Watch the video
Harangue the BBC Trust (politely, mind)
Hear the station
Check the charts


REPOST: Blue Jam

Chris Morris' one and only publicity shot for Blue Jam Originally posted on The Unpleasant Lair Of Spank The Monkey 16/01/1999.

The best bits of all three series of
Blue Jam eventually made it onto a compilation CD - if you follow the Amazon link, note that the user review dated 20/10/2000 has nicked a couple of lines from this very page. (No, it isn't me.) Morris subsequently reworked some of this material into the patchy TV series Jam, as well as adapting the Rothko story into a more successful short film, My Wrongs #8245-8249 & 117.

The CD and the DVDs all appear to be out of print now, hence the hellacious prices on Amazon.

Continue reading "REPOST: Blue Jam" »


REPOST: The Hitch-Hiker's Guide To The Galaxy: Tertiary Phase

Cast photo from the second series of HHGTTG, circa 1980. Left to right: David Tate, Alan Ford, Geoffrey McGivern, Douglas Adams, Mark Wing-Davey and Simon JonesOriginally posted on The Unpleasant Lair Of Spank The Monkey 13/10/2004. Reposted now because the radio show's producer, Dirk Maggs, has just adapted another one of Douglas Adams' books for the wireless.

A six-part dramatisation of Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency starts on Wednesday October 3rd at 6.30pm on BBC Radio 4, and each episode should be available via the above website for one week after its initial transmission. Most of my concerns with Maggs' adaptation of Hitch-Hiker stemmed from him trying to hammer a literary novel into a pre-defined audio format. As this one doesn't have to fit an established structure, maybe it'll be more successful. I hope so, anyway.

Continue reading "REPOST: The Hitch-Hiker's Guide To The Galaxy: Tertiary Phase" »