Fart for Art's Sake

"If a man stands in a room, farts and calls it art then it's art, as far as I am concerned."

Not my words, you'll understand, but those of Mark Lawson, art critic, journalist and plainly a much more tolerant bloke than me. I was talking to him a few years ago and challenged him as to how he could consume so much theatre, TV and so on, without going round the bend.  He loves his art  (or is it culture, I'm never sure) does Mark Lawson.



And so, if Open Air (Mon 25th Mar - Fri 29th Mar, 9.02am) is anything to go by, does Radio 4. In tiny 3 minute slivers, so as not to frighten the horses. I'm paraphrasing, but I think the Controller (Gwyneth Williams) said she wanted R4 to become more of an artistic playground. God forbid I turn into someone who grabs a pitchfork and heads for Portland Place at such suggestions ... but aren't the pipe-smoking kulcha-warriors over at the Radio 3 Senior Common Room a better lot to chuck art at? The trouble is, no one would hear it.

I listened to the 3 minute interventions (even the nomenclature bugs me) as they went out and again via the web.  Very often context can make a huge difference: busy kitchen -v- routine car journey, walking the dog -v- dropping off to sleep, brushing your teeth -v- staring at a computer screen not quite believing this stuff got commissioned....

They were not uniformly awful.  It would be unfair and illegitimate to brand them as such.  What united them was their failure to grasp radio as a medium of artistic expression. The intention behind the pieces was fairly clear, it was the execution which let them down.  Except the second one, which was a poem arranged by Ruth Ewans and written by some 14 year old school children about an imagined brighter future where their woes were no more.  It was read beautifully, but the choice of John Tusa made it sound like the bit on iPM where they read out listeners' droll accounts of their week. Well modulated whimsy.

It was the first one which seems to have upset most people. Christian Marclay set out, I assume and to quote Withnail, to "liven you stiffs up a bit..." He tried this by wheeling out that horny old cliche of "pretending it's all gone wrong". Little bits of off mic Today programme, little bits of stumbly umms and errs, a few seconds of silence - all very arresting but far, far, from original.  His were techniques toyed with by Victor Lewis Smith, perfected by Armando Iannucci and exploited to great effect by Jon Holmes and Alice Arnold in the much missed Listen Against.   He developed the fun into cut-up pieces of the pips ("But it's radio FOUR - you gotta 'ave the pips!!!" No. No you don't.) And then the greatest chestnut of them all - some of Charlotte Green's trademark giggling. Come on! You were engaged to make us think, not to tut in exasperation.

The march into radio cliche pounded onward on Wednesday with Peter Strickland's homage to the football results.  The network took the deliberate decision on the Monday NOT to warn listeners they were about to hear some art (it would have blown the hilarious premise that it'd had all gone wrong, see?) but  the unpleasantness that was about to unfold on Wednesday was, at least, pre-empted by a warning of "do not adjust your radio". As the corny short wave tuning FX degenerated into unlistenable distortion, the sound of radios being very swiftly adjusted will have followed suit.

By Friday my suspicion that the audience had come second to "the big idea" was confirmed when a child stumbled her way, almost unintelligibly, through an excerpt from the preface to The Picture of Dorian Gray. Don't ask me what Mark Wallinger had intended with this, but the outcome was a self indulgent tax on the patience of the listener and unfair on both the performer and on Wilde.

These were some big guns rolled out by Radio 4 and Art Angel (I am assuming, or rather hoping against hope that Art Angel paid for it). I have always been one to speak up for creativity and its licence to fail. Maybe they thought they were making "pure radio"? Perhaps it really was a liberal experiment in re-imagining the radio space? If they did, 9.00 on a weekday morning is the wrong slot for them. I would perhaps go so far as to say these experienced and well respected artists were unfairly exposed at such a time.

I like art, maybe not as much as Mark Lawson, but I go and see things, watch, listen and so on - so long as the artist has more than a basic grip of the medium he or she is using to create in, I'm happy. I don't expect a sculptor to be particularly adept at oil painting or a conceptual film maker to be good at radio.

The Radio 4 audience are fiercely loyal and so tricks like this can sometimes be played and got away with - because what we ended up with was not 3 minutes of exciting audio, but three minutes of people across the UK wondering what the hell was on.

They called them "interventions" - which I always thought was that moment when you confronted an alcoholic.  Maybe someone should have intervened a little more during the production process...?


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The five 3-minute commissions are permanently available to hear online and I would welcome you to do so and see if I'm right.

Jigsaw - The pieces make a pretty picture

Having your trousers fall down in front of Hugh Fearnley-Whittigstall once is unlucky, twice looks like you've got a crush on him.  I'm learning to live with it, but it's still troubling comedian Tom Craine.  Luckily for him, he has the various voices of Nat Luurtsema and Dan Antoploski to help him through his crises. And the Radio 4 comedy audience.

A photo of the members of Jigsaw I copied from their website

I don't know how these three came together - they each perform in their own right (Dan's been around for ages) but all three hail from the Avalon Management stable.  Maybe that had something to do with it?  If it did, it's almost as curious that the rather lovely 15 minutes of radio I listened to tonight didn't come from the mighty Avalon Productions - It's "in house", i.e. pulled together by that dwindling but talented band of merry makers beavering away a stone's throw of Broadcasting House.


Maybe they're all in the same Masonic Lodge*? Maybe they were just all sharing a damp flat in Upper Norwood and by some strange, possibly magical, happenstance realised they were all comedians with an Edinburgh show to fill.

Speculation like this will get us nowhere. Whatever it was that brought these three towering mini-beasts of the comedy undergrowth together ... IT WAS A VERY GOOD THING.

Sketch comedy - whether it's on TV or radio - tends to be cursed as the "curate's egg" of production. Consistency is incredibly hard to pull off. Take any number of examples with sketch shows of yore (you'll find plenty on Radio 4 Extra) with big names in their comedic infancy like Armstrong & Miller or other Footlights-types from whom we never quite heard again in this arena (... And Now In Colour) or other shouty young graduates who go on to great things in different directions, like The Cheese Shop.

Sketch shows have for a long time been the teenage of comedy writer/performers; much of their comedic maturity is ahead of them and many of their short-comings are all too obvious.

In basic terms, a 50/50 hit rate on sketches is pretty good.

In my opinion Jigsaw smash this target out of the ball park. Granted, it's a 15 minute programme - but it's packed with character, gags, set ups, runners, sound effects, funny voices - the lot. It uses radio properly. These are not just the best sketches from their Edinburgh show (OK, some of them might be) they really work on the listener's imagination.  There are also a couple of shit puns - but I am prepared to forgive them almost anything for the blackest sketch I have heard in a LONG time about a life-support machine.

This is 15 minutes of energy from 3 relatively experienced stand-ups, honed with some imaginative and subtle production (purely from a budgetary perspective I'd like to know where this was recorded) and I highly recommend it to them-as-likes-laughing.

The series starts on 20th February at 11:15pm on BBC Radio 4, or click here to listen via the magic of the Internet. Catch it now, before there's another embarrassing incident with a TV chef.

Out of curiosity - what are your picks of the sketch show genre?



*This is unlikely

UPDATE: Twitter tells me that two of the three (Nat and Tom) were at one time linked, romantically, and they just got chatting to Dan and Jigsaw was born. So now we know...

Engagement & the beauty of the human voice.

Possibly the ponciest title I could find. 

I was struck, today (metaphorically, you understand) as I was unloading the dishwasher.  

On my own, in the kitchen, with the family phaffing about in another room, and the self-consciously eccentric Stanley Baxter Playhouse having just finished - I was joined by someone else: Nicola Walker.

She wasn't really in the room with me (that would have been weird and probably rather awkward) but I became utterly absorbed by her voice and the story she was telling.

It was the second episode of three of Annika Stranded, a new Scandanavian detective character (there weren't enough) whom the blurb says is "not as astute as Sarah Lund or Saga Norén perhaps, but probably better company".  I think the blurb is right!

I had every intention of reviewing Desert Island Discs, with guest Aung San Suu Kyi - an excellent edition for lots of reasons - but I realised, bent over the crockery, I had become that most precious artefact, sought by every practitioner of radio from community station volunteer to World Service controller: an engaged listener.

Engagement is an over-used word in communications - but rarely happens with the consumer (in our case, listener) and if it does, not for very long. 

It is true that there is more and more to distract us from what we ought to be doing - but that's one of the things that makes radio so tremendous. I was supposed to be emptying the dishwasher (Oh! The glamour of the blogosphere!) - which Twitter or the TV would probably have made a whole lot clumsier. A story being told to me and me alone captured me and my imagination and yet enabled me to do what needed to be done, dull as it was.

Nicola Walker

No speech radio snob, here - a dose of Dan and Phill on Radio 1 or Christian's Choice Cuts on Absolute - might do a similar job, but for me it was the beautiful voice of Nicola Walker and the words of Nick Walker (related? Don't know...) which drew me in. 

In the heady world of showbiz I occasionally inhabit, actors give credit to writers and writers (occasionally) to performers. The truth is, it's the synergy between the words, the voice and the technical jiggery-pokery which creates an arena for engagement.  The sum of its parts, plus VAT.

All the programme makers left to chance was that bit of magic which kept the kids out of the kitchen for half an hour!

Annika Stranded is a beautifully crafted gem and I recommend you give it fifteen minutes when you can. 

It's available on the BBC Radio iPlayer till Sunday.  Each programme works as a short story, so it doesn't matter if you've missed the first in the series.

As ever, I'd be glad to hear from you, below. Is there an aspect of radio you'd like me to cover or discuss?

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In and Out of the Kitchen - Review - 21 Jan 13

A picture of Miles Jupp I borrowed
from the BBC Website

I have very few regrets, except putting a "coins into piggy-bank" sound effect over a recording of a poem by Spike Milligan.

He had given a beautiful reading of "Pennies from Heaven" which I had the audacity to think I could illuminate. I was probably wrong - it was too "on the nose" (snout?) and the programme would have been better without it.

No one seemed to mind, though Roger the engineer gave me an "are you sure" sort of look - it was only one of the 40 or so poems - and, bizarrely, said cassette is still on sale via via Amazon for $551.19. World's gone mad.

Anyway, sound effects can make, or mar, a radio production and this week's "pick" (with one notable exception) uses them superbly.

Today I listened to the first episode of the second series of Miles Jupp's superb, In and Out of the Kitchen. A total joy. I shall not burden you with plot - if truth be told there isn't a great deal to burden you with - but the production, writing and especially performances make this a real highlight.

Well, how would YOU illustrate
sound effects?

I don't mean to get hung up on the FX (too late!) but there are two (maybe more, doesn't matter for now) "schools" of thought: The Archers school where the listener might believe the action is really taking place in a pub / field / Jazzer's bedroom sections; and the more impressionist school where the effects are counter-realistic, but create atmosphere, pace and (in this case) comedy.

Producer Sam Michell has - notably in the recipe bits - added effects with such grace and rhythm that it feels almost like a musical accompaniment.  As a listener, you might not even notice them (sometimes that's the point, too) but they add considerably to the overall enjoyment of the programme.

Miles Jupp's performance as Damien Trench is superb (he'll not thank me for reminding you he was Archie the Inventor in nursery edu-soap Balamory) - perhaps because he's not a million miles from Jupp himself: awkward, self-effacing and hilarious. He's teamed with the hugely likeable Justin Edwards (both, co-incidentally, alumni of topical comedy sketch show Newsjack on BBC Radio 4 Extra).  They're the straightest gay couple outside Ambridge and their scenes together are witty and engaging, but too few.

This episode is fairly conventionally structured with an A-plot conceding a restaurant review and the hunt for a suitable lodger: "Am I really going to have to use the phrase guest bedroom?" The B-plot concerns Trench's literary agent, from whom I suspect we can expect to hear considerably more as the series progresses.

It's a scene with the agent that, if forced, I might take minor issue with - and it's sound effect related! In a script filled with originality, and a scene with some beautifully observed drunken dialogue, the section with expletives obscured by car horns and police sirens, felt rather out of place. Easy jokes more readily at home on a topical comedy sketch show, perhaps.

When you're enjoying the world created by radio you can forgive it a momentary lapse (we've all had them) and I enjoyed this world very much.  Did I mention it was also very, very funny?

IN AND OUT OF THE KITCHEN can be heard on BBC Radio 4, 
Mondays at 1130am from 21st January and via the BBC Radio iPlayer.

Click HERE for the programme's page on the Radio 4 website.

I'd be delighted to hear your views on the programme - or any aspect of radio - in the section below.

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Tom Thumb Redux - Review - BBC Radio 4 11 Jan 2013

An awful lot of unrest in the world.

There tends to be a lot of shouting in radio drama - most of it in cars.

To be fair, they don't always shout - quite often there's a good deal of muttering and a stately pause as the actor girds him or her self for a good old roar. And sometimes it's in a field or outside a pub.

On a good day the shouting is enough to stop a passer-by in his or her tracks as they pass my office door. I smile weakly and say, "it's just Radio 4..."

Either that or it's someone washing up and reflecting on a few lessons learned in the previous 40 minutes.

Of course - I exaggerate. But not much.

Friday's play (sorry - DRAMA. I don't know why they don't call them plays any more. I am sure the meeting will have used the word contemporary more than once) was one of those absolutely ear-catching exceptions to the rule.  I listened to it again, tonight, and I insist that you do, too.

Ron Cook - actor

Tom (played by Ron Cook, pictured) is not having a good day when the story opens. It looks likely he's going to get the sack from his job as a research scientist (the money's run out and he doesn't seem the easiest man in the world to get along with, either at home or at work) - He feels fat and unloved.

I am not going to tell you much more of the plot - I hate that in reviews - but some rash, drink fuelled, self-experimentation leads to Tom ... shrinking. How he, his wife and his colleague deal with it and the situation it leaves them in makes for a splendid 45 minutes listen.

This is a prime example of when original radio drama works - it carries the listener, at first by comedy and then by horror, into the minds of the characters. We are right there asking ourselves how on earth the character might deal with the situation - and ultimately how we might react in similar (if unlikely) circumstances.

The dialogue, expertly provided by writer Melissa Murray, is augmented superbly by the un-credited provider of the music which fitted the mood perfectly. (Maybe it was just something plucked from the depths of the library by producer / director Marc Beeby - in which case a hat-tip to his decisions). Also the way in which the central character's voice was "shrunk" worked perfectly. No helium-filled comedy-squeeking, here. This was pitch-perfect.

The overall atmosphere of the piece was unsettlingly disjointed - an effect subtly created by breaking one of the rules of drama production. Instead of scenes smoothly and almost unnoticeably eliding into one another, these abruptly cut and re-started (a technique used in TV & film, but rarely in radio) to great effect.  And make sure you listen all the way to the end...

I wanted to confidently recommend a production in my first blog, especially to reluctant "not for me" non-drama listeners. Give this a go. Tell me what you think. 

Don't make me shout about it.

Click HERE. Tom Thumb Redux, by Melissa Murray. BBC Radio 4

The world needs another blog like I need another chocolate biscuit.

Not me - but it might as well have been

I have decided to try and get my thoughts about speech radio - and most notably comedy and drama - scrawled as coherently as I can on this virtual toilet wall.

I've never done anything like it before.

Why?

I have probably listened to the radio every single day of my life since I was a tiny child - I've been entertained, informed, amused, aghast, impressed and deflated by the sounds I've heard. This is the approach I wish to take with my blog - a listener with something to say. 

And hopefully a listener who can persuade, encourage and tempt non-listeners into a world of information, stimulation and imagination.

Taking the piss or pointing out short-comings is easy. So I'll probably do that at first ... but what I really want to do is have something constructive to say about an aspect of popular culture in the UK about which I care passionately.

I have no idea if anyone will ever read this - but there's little point in the false modesty of thinking "I'm doing this for me" - I already know what I think about stuff.  I want to find and converse with others who might share my point of view - or oppose it.

I just hope I can make it interesting (and short!) enough to catch somebody's attention.

Biscuit, anyone?

Yummy